Amy's Vocational Visit to Bangalore Cheshire Home 09.02.10

My visit to Bangalore Cheshire Home was wonderful, a place where love and joy are in abundance, despite the challenges the residents face on a daily basis. The older girls treated me to uplifting songs and the younger girls were intrigued by my photo album which proved to be a great method of communication.
I was immensely proud to present a cheque for Rs 30,000 (about 400 GBP) and be given a guided tour of the home. I know I'll be staying in touch and coming back to visit as these ladies have a special place in my heart and I will treasure the memories of this visit for the rest of my life.

Mid Day Meal Project

Today I was taken to the Hutting Mid Day Meal Project, which is a project that my Hosts club have been involved in since they came across the school in the middle of this slum area. Initially the school was falling apart and they have rebuilt the original Class room and added four more. The school has increased its attendance from 13 to over 100 and the Rotary club now provides a Mid Day Meal for all the kids Five days a week one of which will contain and Egg, which they certainly would not get if it was not for the Club. The Rotary Club also pays for the children to go to their next school when they reach 12.

Doctor Corke at Work

On Sunday morning on my way to the District Conference i was taken to one of the thousands of vaccination Clinics to see how the National Immunisation day works. Whilst there I was asked to administer two drops to this sweet little child. I am not sure what it had done to deserve having Doctor Corke administer its medicine but at least it did not cry. Once each of the children has been given the vaccine it has its little finger marked with a black marker pen which then enabled the teams to go to the slum areas and find out which children have and have not come forward for immunisation.

Alder's first vocational day

My first vocational day included visits to Bombay Rayon, a textile manufacturing business, and ACE Carbo Nitriders, a heat-treatment and metallurgical services company. Both companies were extremely diverse in both the products they produce and the way the environment is managed. Both have significant demands in terms of energy use, raw materials and in the textile factory, the volumes of water and effluent produced. Both companies had a high level of environmental awareness and what surprised me was the fact that as many materials as possible are reused and recycled.

In Bombay Rayon's case, they even went as far as installing a 3 phase water recycling plant where 85% of the factories liquid effluent, black with synthetic dyes and chemicals, back is cleaned and pumped back in to the factory clean.

Tracey's first vocational day - State Electoral Commission

No photos available for today - the three members of staff I visited requested their images not to be published. Time was made available to me and my host for the day, Mr R Bhaskaran, to talk through the elections system in Bangalore and across the whole of India. They were kind enough to give me a presentation on how each level worked, how voting was conducted and how people could be nominated. I asked lots of questions about equalities issues - representation of women and disabled people amongst the candidates and the system allows anyone to stand, from all classes and abilities either as a member of a recognised party or as an independent. Sometimes upto 30 candidates can stand for a seat and on average, upto 1200 people visit each polling station during its 8 hour opening time - there are queues!! Bearing in mind that just in the Karnataka area there are 60 million people the scale of the operation even for local elections is staggering. Thank you to the Elections staff for their time (and lots of websites to look up in England!), to Mr Bhaskaran for his hospitality and the opportunity to meet his family after the meeting.

Joint Meeting 1, 03.02.10

Our first joint meeting hosted by the President's of Rotary Whitefield, Kalyan, Peeyna, Ramurthynagar, South Parade and Kumarapark, was a great success.

The team received many gifts to take back to our sponsoring clubs and the evening was an opportunity to share food, friendship and fellowship with Rotarians and their families.

Dinner with Outgoing Bangalore Team to UK - as their guests

On the evening of day 3, we were lucky enough to be hosted by Chandru and his team at the Century Club. It was great to meet the team and we had a very enjoyable evening discussing Bangalore and England and tried to point out some of the quirks of English life and what East Anglian is like. Looking forward to seeing them all again at the conference.