Tag Archives: charity

News

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OK, so it’s my turn to write an entry for the blog. Over the last few months we have been talking a lot about the future of the charity and how we want to approach the next 5 years. But we haven’t talked much about these ideas and this vision on the blog. As many of you who read this are supporters of Chennai Challenge in one way or another we know how important it is to keep you updated. So please consider this an overdue update.

In February one of my entries talked about Future Forecasting. I mentioned the First50 and that we had been thinking about what direction we want to take the charity. Let me begin by answering some questions. The First50 is a celebration of the last 6 years – we have now taken 50 people to Chennai on one of our annual projects. When we realised this we got quite excited and decided to hold an event. Invitations have now gone out to the 50 alumni of Chennai Challenging to THE event of the summer. We will be holding a celebration dinner with the super mega-team that is the First50 and we can’t wait! f50Be assured that during June loads of photos will go up to celebrate this date. Owen (my brother and the designer of our logo and flyers etc…) has also designed a logo for the campaign. Have a look around his website at his work for us and many others. As a part of this campaign we will also have a fundraising challenge, which we will release details of later on – so keep your eyes peeled. However if you fancy helping us to get trending on Twitter ask us about #first50!

So, that is this year. What about next year? And the year after that? Well, it is our hope to continue to expand what we do as a charity, and as discussed in the Future Forecasting blog, to begin to look at how we can more effectively support people here in the UK – the people who join our team. We challenge all our team members to raise a minimum of £1500 in order to come to India with us. It’s not cheap to get there, and we want to be able to financially support projects like the Fort rebuild or the provision of a new toilet at the community centres. However we recognise that sometimes the people who would most benefit from the project simply do not have the resources or the support to raise that sort of cash. We have been discussing how to tackle this as it is so important for us that noone is excluded from being able to attend due to money. Our two pronged approach to this is to investigate running a project with year 11s or 6th Formers in schools where they might be able to afford a little bit more. The project will have a profound impact on the young people we take from these schools, and if we are able to ask them to raise closer to £2000 each we could use the excess funds to subsidise places for those less able to raise the funds. Of course this is early days, and we don’t have solid plans yet, but we are in the process of thinking further into this idea.

I have also recently met with London based charity Only Connect. Only Connect are a charity that work with offenders and ex-offenders to try to build their confidence and rehabilitate them through social interaction and development projects. Again nothing is confirmed, but we are really excited about the prospect of building a relationship with them and maybe taking some of their members to India. This is another way that we hope to develop the services we offer to people in the UK.

Obviously we are still passionate about the YMCA and Oasis and the incredible poverty relief and community development projects they run. We are still passionate about Chennai and its people. And we’re still excited about visiting our friends in South India. But to begin to see a bigger, more strategic future for our little charity is thrilling, and I pray that we will continue to be led by compassion and love as we take these first steps towards growth.

In order to assist with this growth we will obviously need more people to help us along the way. Are you interested in being a trustee? Do you think you have the skills to help deliver one of our projects as a Project Leader? In 2014 we will be taking a team of people who are interested in joining us as Project Leaders on future projects. If you’re interested just drop us a line. I fact if you want to get more involved or find out more about anything else we’re doing get in touch. You can go via the Contact Us page, or just send us an email direct to projectleaders@chennaichallenge.com.

What’s in it for me?

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For a lot of people, motivation is hard to come by. In order for them to do something, anything, there has to be a very obvious benefit or reward for them, or why bother? As a society we try to use rewards and punishments to keep our society working as we what it to, in order to have people behaving in a way we see as correct.

A school is a microcosm of this. There are clear rules to follow, and if you break those rules then you are punished in some way.This might be a severe talking to,  being kept behind at the end of  the lesson, writing lines or something else.  However if you behave in the correct way, doing your work, being polite or helpful, you get a reward. it may be a simple well done or acknowledgement from the teacher, a sticker, a merit or even a certificate! This works really in well in many schools, and generally speaking primary schools are much better at giving rewards than secondary schools. Sixth form colleges are worse than secondary schools. There are very few people studying their A-levels who will ever get merit for doing good work.

I am sure that teachers are not trying to be discouraging, but the rewards are starting to change as people mature. Once students start GCSE or A-level courses, then the reward they are working toward in a good grade, and surely they don’t need those silly little rewards for doing the simple things we all expect? the one problem with this is that the reward can seem so far away, a two year course feels like a life time to a 15 year old. It is easy to lose motivation, and forget the reward that you are working towards.

In a similar fashion the punishment can seem much further away as well. Whereas a primary school student may be scared stiff about breaking the rules, a sixth former may be more relaxed about it and not really fear the repercussions. The motivation to behave well, or to fit in with the rules can fade away, especially if you can see other people getting away with things.

Trying to keep young people motivated and engaged in education can be difficult, in a country such as the UK many young people will lose motivation and rely on help from the benefits system, taking advantage of the welfare state. The young people that Chennai Challenge works with in Chennai do not have the back up plan of unemployment benefits. Many can struggle with confidence, feeling that they will be destined to live a life of poverty or seek relief through drink and drugs. This is why we are so happy to work with Madras YMCA and Oasis India.

Both of these charities are working in Chennai all the time and helping young people to have the chance of success. The YMCA runs two schools offering a free education for over 1500 slum children. They house a small number of boys who don’t have anyone else to look after them properly. Oasis run a number of programs, working in schools and communities which have previously had poor reputations.

When a team from Chennai Challenge visits it can be a motivation for the young people and encouragement for the staff who are working there. The money we raise and spend goes towards trying to help people see the rewards they can get, and to help them achieve success. That is what we are trying to do, why not help us?

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Future Forecasting

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A few weeks ago the Project Leaders of Chennai Challenge gathered at the YMCA Indian Student Hostel in London to talk over the future of the charity. In 2009 we created a “brand key” identifying who we are as a charity and helping us to have a recognisable character as well as clear objectives. Each of our individual situations have now changed and with the growth of Chennai Challenge we have to think about what we want to do moving forward. What can we achieve and what do we want to achieve.

It really got us thinking about the reasons we had for starting Chennai Challenge. I know that each of us fell in love with India and specifically with the capital of Tamil Nadu, Chennai. For each of us (Rob, Cathy, Emma and myself) our passion for the people we met there and the belief that God wanted us to do something there led to a change in each of our lives. Our experiences in Chennai and the journey of the charity being born has shaped nearly a decade of each of our lives (5 years in Emma’s case). But at this meeting we found there was something else behind Chennai Challenge. Something about the people we take on project.

We have always believed that the development of the individuals on team is as strong a motive for doing what we do as the small impact we make on poverty relief. But it seems like this is becoming more important for us. I suppose it is unsurprising considering that 2 of us are teachers and 1 of us is a full time youth worker, but we are passionate about personal and social development, growing life skills and education through experience.

So here we are. At the beginning of 2013 and ready to say we’re making some big decisions and we want to do more. I can’t say too much, but we made a very interesting 5 year plan that we got really excited about.

But for now, the question on everybody’s lips: What is the #First50?

6 Projects and counting…

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Every year when we visit Chennai we challenge our team to think about what the new things that they have experienced. Whilst in India over August 2012 we even had a “first times” board on the wall in our meeting room. As people did something for the first time they wrote it up on the wall so that we had a list of first time experiences as long as your arm at the end of the project.

As a project leader I have now been to India with Chennai Challenge 6 times. In total I have visited Chennai 9 times. One would maybe think that my contribution to the first time board was therefore lacking. I can tell you this is far from true.

One of the amazing things about visiting India with Chennai Challenge has been the vast number of new experiences that I have had. Yes, we do a lot of the same things year on year. Every year since 2008 we have visited Yellagiri campsite and run an activity holiday. Every year we have gone to the Independence Day celebrations run by the YMCA around the city. Every year we eat at many of the same restaurants. And yet, every year I find myself amazed by the number of new things I have done and by how different each project is from the year before.

But what really makes each project special and different is the people we take on team. It is a wonderful privilege, and one of my favourite things about being project leader to be able to take people out to Chennai. People who have never been before. One of my most vivid memories of India was when I first walked up Purasavalkam High Road. This road is the route to many of the restaurants that we eat in and is the main road in the area that we stay in. I remember it’s dustiness. I remember the old man with leprosy sitting on the corner of the street. I remember the sounds of honking horns of autorickshaws and motorbikes. I remember the smells of petrol, rotten food and spices from freshly cooked food. I remember the sense of feeling comfortable in spite of how alien it all was.

I can never have that experience again. Not for the first time. But what I have had the honour of doing in the last 6 years is taking new people up that road for breakfast. Every year is a slightly different team, and therein lies the real first time for me each year. I so enjoy watching people react for the first time to the city I love. When we get to move on to visiting Oasis football projects; Blue Edge English Lessons; and of course the YMCA Boy’s Town it becomes even more special.

Each project we run is so enormously different because each team we take is made up of different constituents. Of course, this does mean that when we come home each year we know that that project will never happen again. That combination of personalities and relationships will never be repeated. It can be sad, but mostly I find it exciting. Our shared experience will remain in our memories, and next year perhaps we can share another experience. A new one, with new relationships and new memories.

This goes for the relationships out in India as well. The people who access Oasis’s services and who live at the Boy’s Town. The workers at both charities. Sometimes we get to see old friends, and sometimes they have moved on. The building of new relationships is at the centre of what we do and what we believe, and it is one of the things that makes Chennai Challenge so special.

So thank you to everyone who has ever come on a project with us. You are one of the major reasons that I love this charity. Anyone want to come again?

Order, order

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I do like to be organised. Not that I always am, but it always helps to have a system. The lovely feeling of having things in order, under control and organised is great. I don’t think that I am alone in liking a nice, ordered way of things, the  Dewey decimal system helps with organising non-fiction books, each week there is the Top 40 to let us know which singles have sold best, there are rules for driving so we know that people on the left have priority at roundabouts, league tables tell us which sports teams are best, and very little about how good a school is. We like order. We like control.

Can we always have order though? Or are we always going to have systems that will let us down Are we going to have to accept that we are not in full control. One story about control is that of King Canute

The story is that Canute ordered his chair to be taken to the beach, sat there and ordered the waves not to break on the shore. Which of course they did, and he ended up with wet feet. There is a bit of debate about whether he was trying to prove he could command the sea to do his bidding, or whether he was deliberately showing that he could not. Whatever his motivation, he showed that there are some things that you cannot control.

So what do we do when we have so many things that are out of our control? We can’t stop the tide from coming in, so where does this leave us? This brings me to another beach side story, a story is of starfish, adapted from Star Thrower by Loren C. Eiseley.

A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her with amusement.

She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish. You can’t begin to make a difference!”
The girl seemed crushed, suddenly deflated. But after a few moments, she bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied,
“Well, I made a difference to that one!”
We may not be able to control the tide, but we can try and help those it affects, just like the girl throwing starfish back in the sea. She could not stop them from being washed up, but could help at least some of them.
We cannot stop all poverty and suffering on our own. However, we can make a difference to someone. Chennai Challenge aims to alleviate poverty in Chennai, reaching out to some of the most disadvantaged. We may not help everyone, but we can make a difference to those we do help. You can help us make a difference. You can make a difference. We may not have the ability to control the tides, but we can help at leastone starfish.
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