How to do a Blind School visit

A lot of friends, through good intent, want to mark an occasion (a loved one's passing on anniversary, a birthday, an auspicious event) at an orphanage or blind school. 

Many corporates also approach us for celebrating Volunteering Day or week at a Blind School. 

This post is for all such audience. 

The post is being written as a result of a similar discussion on a parenting group. Thank you for the prompt. 

Plan 

1. Reach out to a blind school near you. Ask them what volunteering and sponsoring options they have. Most will have a meal sponsorship. If you choose this, ask for a date that is available and choose your menu (most schools have menu options for donors to choose). 

2. Ask the school what the expected conduct is. Are you allowed to serve? Are you allowed to freely interact or do you wait? Can you eat with them? How many people can visit? 

3. Prepare your visitors. You are not going there to teach, to mentor, or to help. You are going there to learn. It can be an inspirational visit. Think about the things you want to learn. Is it Braille? How to walk and go up or down stairs with eyes closed? How to eat without looking at the plate (a skill that TV watching eaters will find useful)? 

4. If you are a corporate, please don't ask for an opportunity to teach or do entertainment. Most good schools have a schedule for the students. Most corporate employee are NOT trained on special education and therefore are NOT qualified to "teach" anything. You can have an experience sharing session esp in areas where there is interest. It can be sections like - What does a work day look like for you? What kind of skills are needed to do this work? What kind of people should aspire to do your work? 

On the Day 

1. Arrive on time. Preferably, a little earlier. 

2. Please ensure that you stick to the numbers invited and the conduct that the school has recommended. 

3. Have genuine conversations. The stories of the people you are interacting with are inspirational. Some of them were abandoned as children. Some of them found out late in life that they are going to lose their sight. A conversation with these students is likely to be a masterclass in self-motivation. Having said that, please understand that this is their "normal", so it may not be a good idea to tell them how strong they are repeatedly (once is enough). Do ask questions about everyday things like what do you do in ur free time, what kind of music do u listen to? 

4. Some conversation topics to avoid are - Who do you have at home? When did you lose your sight? How do you feel about losing your sight? Can I help you in any way? 

5. As the event ends, thank the school for having you. If you have carried gifts, please give them as  you would give them to a friend. 

After

If you would like to relive the memory again and again,  do write how you felt, and keep it in a place that you can read again. 

Record and Upload! - The Esha Summer Project 2014 is back

The Esha Summer Project is back!

This year, its bigger, its better and its more co-ordinated.



CLABIL Project - Opening the World through Audio

Some of you may have recorded for CLABIL over the last few years.. this year, we will work with every child to know what they like recording, so that the kids have fun doing the recording.

Am very happy to share that this year, the Summer Camp was inaugurated by the founder's 6 year old son, by recording 1- 10 in Sanskrit.

Here is how to go about it:
1. Email eshabraille@gmail.com with the ages of your children, and please do provide an email id/ phone no. at which you can be contacted.
2. Someone from Esha will call you and discuss what will be best for your child to record.
3. It will help for parents to listen to the first few recordings to ensure that the audio is audible and not too muffled.

4. Once the recording is done, simply upload to google drive using the credentials that the esha team will have shared with you.

That's it! The Esha team will do the cataloging and add it to the library.

But its not all altruistic. Encourage your child to record and listen back to their own voice, and watch their voice modulation improve automatically. You will be surprised at the results by the end of summer. We promise!

To see what the children have done already, go to www.braillecards.org/audio.php.

 

new file uploaded: The importance of Voice Delivery in an interview

SOIL (School of Inspired Leadership, Gurgaon) did a Read Fest during the Joy of Giving Week. This was our second year of the REad FEst and while a big round of applause goes to the student volunteers for making it all happen so well, one file stands out. The files are still in post processing and will be added to the main catalog sometime this week.

But this one file, i didnt want it to wait..

The importance of voice delivery in interviews. If you are visually challenged and need help for interview preparation.. this is the file you have been waiting for. Dont miss this excellent tutorial by Sapan, a student at SOIL.

You can download this file from here.

How to Organise a Read Fest - Part 2

Organising – Preparatory Work

1.      Take permission from IT and other relevant departments for the infrastructure requirement:

a.       Meeting rooms, with as little ambient noise as possible. These will be used as recording rooms. If you are choosing adjacent meeting rooms, it makes sense to leave one room empty between 2 recording rooms.

b.      Each meeting room needs a laptop / desktop with a working mic(internal or external mic is fine)  . This computer must have “Audacity” installed. Audacity is freely downloadable from www.sourceforge.net. Just search for Audacity and download. After this, try to save a test file as mp3 format. The system will prompt you to download a dll file by pressing a button. This button takes you to the dll file download site. It is safe. Please download dll and then save the file as mp3 once more. All Audacity computers should be able to save mp3 formats.

c.       Each recording room will also need water bottles / glass for the recording volunteer.

d.      You need to put up posters and also do some internal marketing to generate awareness about the event.

e.       Content: If you are a school / college, please request your teachers to contribute their papers / question banks for the Read Fest. They are an invaluable resource. If you are a student, please record your notes for all subjects if they are not already available in the catalog. If you are an office, record experiences of your profession so that other people can take a more informed career decision. The blind do not get career counselling or a chance to interact with professionals in this way. You can also record interview facing tips.

f.       All computers must be usb enabled. The content, once done, will be taken by the organiser in a pen drive.

g.      If any permission is required to send a pen drive / import a pen drive into office, please take such permissions.

h.      Arrange for visitor management to be approved if you are expecting any visitors – either from Esha or external for recording.

i.        All computers must also have unrestricted net access to Wikipedia, blogs and all other sites.

j.        If the requirement is of sample question papers and you have found some free ones offline, do save the link in favourites and ask the site administrator for permission. It is not always possible to find it last minute.

k.      Load the following documents on all machines:

                                                              i.      How to record for CLABIL (audacity user manual)

                                                            ii.      Read Fest FAQs

                                                          iii.      How to record (audio file)

l.        At some distance from the recording rooms, but close enough to be able to see them, is a control center. You need 3 volunteers are the control desk at all times. These volunteers will play the following roles:

                                                              i.      Content management – what has been recorded and what needs to be done yet. The content manager also does on the spot cataloguing as the files get recorded, or makes the catalog at the end of the read fest. But a record of what is being done by whom is kept by this person.

                                                            ii.      Queue management – who goes in in what order, who has practiced what they are going to record, who is ready to go in, how long is each one’s slot et al. The queue manager co-ordinates with the content manager to give content to volunteers and with the meeting room manager to send ppl when rooms get free.

                                                          iii.      Recording room management – This person is responsible for managing which meeting room is empty, guiding the volunteers to the meeting room, ensuring there is a glass of water there for them, then giving them a tutorial on audacity, explaining :

1.      How to record

2.      How to pause and resume recording

3.      How to stop and listen back if they doubt correct recording.

4.      How to check recording.

5.      How to correct by deleting the wrong parts.

6.      How to start a new segment.

7.      How to save as mp3 file and at what location.

8.      How to name the file for easy cataloguing.

9.      How to check your voice recording and correct before starting the final recording.

When the volunteer finishes, this person checks that the file has been saved correctly (mp3 format, naming convention, location of file) and then asks the queue manager for the next person who will come in.

All these 3 are full time roles with a lot of running around and 3 volunteers are mandatory for the control desk. Otherwise no one has a good experience.

2.      Complete the set up et al.

3.      Circulate a mail / communication asking for volunteers to pre register, with the Indian language that they can record in. This will help you prepare content.