NEWS: Making a positive difference in India 01 Jul 10

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A few months back, Positively MAD was asked to create a bespoke training session for the Right Now Foundation which works with underprivileged and disadvantaged children in slum areas of India.

 One of their chief representatives, Mr Stewart Botting, came over to the Isle of Wight for two days of intensive training, during which he was shown methods and techniques to make learning more fun and enjoyable in a course entitled, “Empowered Learning.” The workshop combined many elements of our successful personalised learning courses.

 Mr Botting then went back to India to train staff and students at schools where the Right Now Foundation operates. The challenge he faced lay in translating the ideas and material into different Indian languages and to transcribe what are essentially Western ideas to particular Indian cultures.

Mr Botting and his team wasted no time in applying the techniques learnt during his Positively MAD training days, and within weeks began to see teachers and pupils attempting some of the different methods.

One such method, Mind Mapping, was such a hit that Stewart wrote to us to tell us how it went and sent us photographs of the slum children holding up their individual mindmaps. “I am now mapping manically,” Stewart reports, adding that the mindmap session with the students was “a great success.”

Using empowered learning techniques is, Stewart admits, “a radical shift” but one which has enabled teachers to feel more enthused.

Stewart will next be travelling to Nellore into the rural district and the children's homes there where he will show them how to mindmap Indian Independence and Ambedkar.

Positively MAD would like to commend Mr Botting and the Right Now Foundation for the excellent work being done to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the slum areas of India. Mr Botting sees his challenge as a tremendous adventure and regards the techniques and methods he learnt with us as “little gems”.  We look forward to hearing more about his successes.