Notes from meeting of 20 December 2009

Dear All

Some of us met on 20 December to try and firm up plans. After a lot of discussion that went round in circles, we were able to make what we think is real progress! Here are the notes from the meeting.

We do look forward to more participation from all of you. If we don't get moving, 6 January 2011 will be upon us, and none of the initiatives will have taken off!

We hope that this post on the blogspot will encourage and enable greater participation and involvement than we've seen...!

Alumni Foundation Meeting: 20 December 2009

Persons present

Shanta Rameshwar Rao

G Vijay Kumar

Mr Narayana

Asha Bhide

Veena Rani

Nanda

Vaneeta

Ayesha

Naval

Divya

Nandini

Mohammad

Sushil

Bharadwaj

Nitin Shah

Rasna

Vidyaranya Alumni Foundation

Foundation’s Bank Account has been created. (SB Acc no. 053310100005862) Andhra Bank, Saifabad Branch, Hyderabad (PAN no AABTV1815D).

Vidyaranya Virasat

Discussed Nitin Shah’s proposal called Vidyaranya Virasat, which is an active museum of memories and a live heritage laboratory. Talked about how this needed to be integrated into the school’s curricular activity as well as the need to start immediately as this is necessarily an ongoing programme. Explored how theatre, art, crafts etc could enhance and involve academic study and then also how the Virasat project could produce material from within the school that would become part of the 50^th anniversary celebration. Looked at bringing in expertise in various areas from alumni as well as non-alumni to lead/guide Virasat projects, both short as well as longer workshops.

Anniversary

6, 7 and 8 January 2011 decided as celebration dates.

Tentative Programme:

6 January 2010, Thursday:

 Start 9 am with morning assembly conducted by ex-students the way assemblies used to be in the 1960s and ’70s. Followed by Shantatamma’s talk to the assembly. Singing of shlokas and songs.

After the main assembly meeting, perhaps a separate one for junior students

Alumni:

Book launch and screening of Vidyaranya film

Perhaps, some in-house programmes for the school organised by teachers and students, something like an annual day celebration. Shantatamma suggested the making and wearing of costumes for the plays as costumes are not noramally used in Vidyaranya School days. Alternatively, classes can proceed as usual without disturbance by Alumni. Or alumni put up a play for the present students and staff.

Evening: Music or dance programme (Indian music/dance)

7 January 2010, Friday:

Morning: Screening of film for school students and staff—if staff and students are interested in seeing the film.

Followed by a half-day seminar on education. Classes for current students not to be disturbed.

Evening: Theatre (Anu Kapur of Director, National School of Drama?)

8 January 2010, Saturday

Morning: Basketball games and other sports.

Afternoon: ‘Climb the hill’

Evening: Music—Shantatamma suggested an evening of Jazz music

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Budgeting:

(i) The following guesstimates were arrived at to enable people to start collecting funds;

(ii) the Foundation has applied for a tax exemption certificate and it is expected to come through in March 2010;

(iii) Funds are also required, separately for the three-day function; budgets for the events have not yet been drawn up.

a. Retired Teacher’s Health Fund: 5 crore established as the corpus amount needed (on the assumptions that (i) a target of 5 crore will bring in about 2 crore  (ii) the fund will be put into fixed deposits that will earn an interest of about 7% per annum (iii) about four by-pass surgeries, plus other minor surgeries, plus some amount for medicines etc could be covered).

b. Film on Education at Vidyaranya: 5 lakh at the outside

c. Book on Vidyaranya: 2 lakh

d. Estimates for enhancement (acoustics and air conditioning) of the halls and labs yet to be arrived at with inputs from school. Vaneeta is to bring a specialist to check the halls; the specialist will give us a quote. However, 50 lakh is put up as a working figure.

e. Estimates for building of books and music library yet to be arrived at with input from school. It was decided that we could start off with a figure of about 2 lakh.

f. Estimates required for the maintenance of the Teacher’s Club on the school premises. A working figure of 1 lakh a year could be taken as average—this would therefore require a corpus of about 15 lakh in FDs to generate an interest of 1 lakh pa.

Total: 5.74 crore (rounded off to 6 crore). This target should bring us about 3–3.5 crore

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The school offered the Foundation the use of one of the cottages in the school compound as it’s office.

Vidyaranya is going to turn 50 in 2011 and some of us felt we needed to do something to commemorate the event and started discussing the project(s) seriously. Basically, we started thinking about this for two reasons--one, we felt the school's fiftieth anniversary in 2011 ought to be marked in some way; and two, we felt we needed to get together a corpus fund to take care of retired teachers--their health, or pensions or whatever. This is primarily because last year, Mr Madan and Miss Viduraj, both fell down, broke bones and needed looking after. Also, although the fiftieth year is 2011, we felt we need to start planning now because we will need that kind of time to get something together. The teachers who taught in the 1960s and 1970s are not getting any younger and they should be very much a part of the celebrations.
Apart from the corpus fund for the health care of retired teachers, the other suggestions that have come up in the weeks we've been discussing this are: (a) a scholarship fund for students who can't afford the fees (of course) (b) a lecture series by alumni who've done good, interesting, different things (c) a mural painting (d) a book with Amma on education and complemented with stuff by some ex-students (including, we guess, photos) (e) a documentary film about the school, its philosphy etc (Anand Kamalakar, an old student, is a documentary film maker and works freelance for National Geographic; he has very kindly said he'd be willing to do this film for school. His note on this is attached.) (f) a fund to update the library Except for (b), (e) and (f) above, we may run into problems with all the others above, but we need to discuss all possible suggestions and take a decision about which we want to follow through. Do you have other ideas/suggestions?
In order to take discussions forward, we thought it best to meet and form a core group that will do a lot of the organising. We have zeroed in on meeting in Hyderabad on Saturday 18 July 2009 and are currently trying to arrange a meeting room as well as dinner or lunch. Do let me know whether the above ideas appeal to you and whether you'd be able to join us at the meeting. (Venue: School; time: 6 pm.) We thought that on the 18th, there will be a lot of excitement, but are not sure how much serious discussion will get done, so please keep the mid-morning of 19 July free as well, to enable us to continue the "serious" aspects!
To make it all more relevant, we thought it essential to also involve parents of children currently in school. Without all of you, it would become an exercise in nostalgia--which is not the point of it! Some of the teachers who are there today will also be joining us.
We look forward to hearing from you and hope very much that you will join us on 18 July.
Best,
Aasheesh Pittie, Ajay Shrivastava, Rasna Bhushan, Vaneeta (Bhargava) Bhattacharyya, Hajera Abbasi, Mohammad Jung, Zayn Khan and others
(ICSE batch of 1977, ISC batch of 1975, '76 and others)

Vidyaranya will be fifty in 2011

Some of us old students from Vidyaranya have been talking about getting together and doing something useful to mark the fifty-year milestone. Suggestions to vidyaranya.school@gmail.com would be most welcome.

Vidyaranya was started with the objective of making school a happy place, and learning, a happy experience. Learning is a natural process and happens best when the learner is eager to learn. It comes about in an atmosphere of love, good relationship and friendliness and only when both the teacher and the taught have open and receptive minds. Learning based on fear and coercion is not real learning and respect extracted through such fear, again, is not real respect at all. Fear and other inhibitions as well as authoritarian attitudes build walls of resistance between students and teachers. Vidyaranya was started in the hope that teachers, parents and children would come together in a spirit of friendliness, love, and freedom from fear.