EA – final reflection

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Working with Arju foundation gave me an insight of what struggles do the people from the transgender community face. Initially starting with a  very little idea and knowledge about their life, working with the NGO helped me to understand the community better. If I had to sum up my EA in three words it would be :

  1. Uncomfortable: It was kind of uncomfortable as I was surrounded by people from the hijra or the transgender community. In order to understand them, I had to spend time with them and know about their life. In the process, there were situations where I needed to be prepared to listen to emotional stories, get familiar with terms that they used or they talking about prostitution or the injustice story.
  2. Insightful: I interviewed people, was part of the discussion and wrote reports on the kind of support the NGO offered the community which helped me know more about the community and not limit my ideas to the previous knowledge I had
  3. Challenging: I would say it was not only challenging in terms of respecting and understanding the community but also the time limit I was there in the NGO. 10 days of volunteering compromised of a lot of engagement but I still in order to know more I needed more time to work in the NGO.

One very important part of my engagement would be working and staying in the environment in which the community works. I could observe the harsh inequality faced by the NGO in terms of where their office was located, how did people around them interacted with them and thus how do the problems faced by them cause them to feel not inclusive in the society. Though initially I was not satisfied with my engagement but now reflecting on the kind of engagements I did or observation I made, helped me to understand the issues faced by the community.

Reflection 2 – working with the NGO

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For my glopo EA, I choose the issues of LBTQ community in India. For that purpose, I decided to volunteer with an NGO called Aarju in Mumbai. The organization aims to improve the quality of life of people living with HIV/AIDS and sexual minorities. I will be volunteering with the NGO from the 18th of July to the 31st of July. During my volunteering period, I will be involved in their office to write reports, Developing Annual Reports, writing a proposal, visiting the field with our staff for sensitization and networking programme and Assisting Programme Manager for reporting.
I have been working with the NGO for the past five days. In these days. I have been involved in some of the work like translating interviews from Hindi to English and writing proposals for them. While doing so I came across a common problem that peoples from the community face. Few of them are
1. Gender sensitisation
2. Social discrimination/ stigma discrimination
3. Lack of awareness about health
4. Spread of HIV in the community.
Therefore now, I will be more focusing on the condition of the Hijra community in Mumbai. I would be considering to interview a few of my colleagues with who belongs to the community. I would be trying to narrow down to one major issue and do my research ahead.

Plan for next year

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The major challenges that I faced this year were organising and managing time. Also submitting things on time as I procrastinate a lot.  So the next year I will be focusing on managing time. Working towards the goals that I make. I will also be focusing on making new friends and expanding my friend’s circle. A lot of things are going to line up like EE, US application, ib exams I need to focus on what I am going to priotize and work towards. I want to work towards making my existing relationships stronger. I will make sure  I do a lot of community engagement stuff and do things I could not do in my first year because maybe I was scared of things I did not have time too.

I am looking for the upcoming year and will make sure everything is done properly.

EE Reflective conversation 2

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In reflective conversation 2, I discussed the structure of my essay and went over things I need to do over the break. After the conversation, we decided on things I need to do over the book first read the two books by the first two books during the break and make notes of thing I feel are important, the second plan the structure of the essay and then go ahead with writing. I also need to do some research and go through the sample essay in order to understand how my essays need to be. We also discussed how I need to have subtopics and decided on which one should I included which is relevant to the research question. I feel reflective conversation before the break was very helpful for me as before the whole essay writing process we are guided towards a direction and I feel confident enough to go ahead before the process.

Second reflection project week

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First day at Project week:

The first day of the project week was pretty relaxing. We met our tour guide at the airport and we were eagerly waiting to explore the city of Laos. As we didn’t have any activities planned, we had time to explore Laos un the evening. In the evening we tried local food and drinks in Laos. I was really amazed to see the countries similarity to Thailand. The beautiful mountains and the welcoming people. I was looking forward to exploring Laos and start our activities tomorrow.

EE day reflection

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In today’s post, I will be talking about EE day and include the following  points:

    • one thing I’ve learned
    • what I’m proud of
    • what I’ll be doing next

Today was EE day and I had to spend my day with my supervisor and try to understand the format of a Hindi EE. Today I focused on narrowing down my research question. Then after talking to my supervisor, my research question was ‘ To what extent do the writers in Bengal help in women empowerment during British rule?’   I read the sample EEs from a past year and tries to get what my EE needs to compromise of. My supervisor explained the structure and how I need to write my EE. What I found challenging was that the format as I needed to have subtopics so that I can my essay more explicit and relevant to my topic. To do so I needed to know the book completely and as I have not read both the books I could not complete that part. So my next part would be to read both the books and completely understand them, make notes and do more research about Kolkata during the British rule as the plot of both the novel is based in Kolkata. What  I am proud of is that I did some research and started writing my introduction and I wrote around 400 words. So I am half to complete one thousand words. What I am concerned about is finish reading both the books in one week as I have to submit my thousand words in two weeks. I am equally nervous and excited as this process is difficult but I feel it’s going to be fun because all hard work would pay off.  I am really excited to write my EE in Hindi and see my first 1000 words.

#EEday