ABDF

Yesterday (June 22nd) I went into Mamunai West Division with Prabha, our local partner in the area. Our goal was two-fold; to inspect all our water tanks to assess how they’ve been holding up, and to visit the school in Navatkadu, site of our 5th Grade Scholarship pilot project. Here’s a brief update on both:

Our water tanks have all held up very well, structurally speaking. The tanks themselves are intact. The flaw in our design, however, turns out to be the pipes and spigots. Both are made of plastic rather than metal, which reduced the construction costs. Well, stuff happens, and now we need to replace about a quarter of the spigots, and two of the pipes. Reasons for damage include, in one instance, a cow scratching herself on a spigot, which snapped off (Shalampailkerny tank) and a road crew backing an earth-bearing tractor trailer into another, taking the whole pipe off (Mankikkadu tank). I’ve yet to get the estimates, which I will have in a couple of days, but I think the solution is to replace all the pipes and spigots with metal, a more durable solution.

Our tank in Mangikkadu also needs to be repainted, as one candidate in the recent parliamentary elections decided to plaster it with political posters. After villagers complained to him, he tried to remove the posters and, when he couldn't, he splashed black paint on it. It looks really ugly, and a coat of paint will be cheap, so I decided to go ahead and repaint it.

Have a look at some of our water tanks; they can be found on our Projects page.

Fifth Graders are spending two hours a day, for days a week, in extra tutoring.

We then visited the school in Navatkadu. The teacher in charge of the project, Mr. Paththinathan, has been working very hard at making the program a success, and thus far parents have been supportive. Continued support for the program in the future will depend on the results of the exam, which takes place in August, with results released in September. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

To get the low-down on our pilot project in Navatkadu, and see more pictures, visit the Testing Project page.