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| Albaro (center) with Madam Sindhu, Director of VIIS, and GH student Azael. |
My name is Albaro Tutasig and I am a current senior in the
ILR School. This past summer I spent six weeks in Karnataka, India as part of
the Cornell in India Global Service Learning program. As part of the program, I
spent the first two weeks taking courses on gender, Kannada (Karnataka’s
official language), labor and economics in the context of India. Besides formal
classes, my colleagues and I had the opportunity to travel to a few landmarks
of Karnataka. Traveling to these heritage sites allowed us to get a better
understanding of South Indian culture, and what sort of practices and customs made
the region unique to India.
Upon completing our first two weeks, we were all sent to our
distinct project sites to begin our work. I had the distinguished opportunity
to work at the Viveka Tribal Centre for Learning (VTCL) in Hosahalli, India.
VTCL is part of an education initiative made possible by the Swami Vivekananda
Youth Movement (SVYM). VTCL is a school with a mission to provide children from
tribal communities with a formal education. I was in charge of updating a
database that consisted of the students’ demographics (age, gender, caste, and
where they come from). This kind of information is crucial for the development
of the school because it gives administrators some insight of how to approach
recruitment for the upcoming years. If one region of the zone is lacking
student attendance, then the school’s administration would know to allocate
more resources to make sure said struggling region is getting the help it
needs.
Few experiences have had such a profound impact on the way I
perceive things such as education, culture, and traditions. The goal of VTCL is
to educate children from tribal communities, but to also celebrate their own
traditions and to guide them down a sustainable path that could be achieved
through education.
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Alvaro ILR'17 gives his final presentation at VTCL in Hosahalli, India.
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| Alvaro and the ILR team with the mentors at the Hosahalli Tribal School. |
