3rd week of assignment in Ludhiana, Punjab- India

That was our 3rd week in Ludhiana  and I cannot explain you in written words how many things has happened to me, so let me share with you some of them.

According to our Project with Ludhiana Steel Rolling Mills with my 2 team members (Anneliese&Lukas) we believe that for the next week we will be ready as the end of the 4th week we are committed to deliver a Program Documentation and of course a Final Presentation with our recommendations. They should see what they need to cover in the coming months/year during their pilot/phase 1.

On 26th Feb we had the first meeting with the Potential Committee Members (GM, Managers, Sales, Hr and Employees from various levels)

We show to them according to our surveys, questionnaires and focus group studies what they should focus and how they should build up the tasks within their LSRM Girl  Education Program.

Based on our suggestions those are the main activities they should follow:

1. Establish a pre-screening activity. At that stage they should visit all of their employees who have at least 1 girl child. 

2. LSRM Committee task to select the girl children based on some requirements which we come up: 

• Committee will meet to select beneficiaries based on scores from home visit (pre-screening activity ad /or evaluation form)
• Selected girl children beneficiaries will be selected based on total score from Household Assessment and Girl Child Interview.
• Committee will determine level of support for both girl children and mothers via the “menu” of options.

3. Committee members should attend in weekly program meetings and they should facilitate program monitoring and evaluation like hold monthly committee meeting to review evaluations and any health issues the girl children face.

4. A part of a PR activity they should arrange how to get involved with social change initiatives like Corporate Social Responsibility for LSRM and spread awareness on issues facing girl’s education

We will provide for them a Monitoring and Evaluation tracker which will help them to supervise not only those girl children& mothers progress who will be involved in this Girl Child Education CSR program, but to monitor cost and budget.

We visited 1 home again, but now not at Ludhiana but at Sirhind, Punjab and ask about them how much a family spend on education in general.

Based on this we can put this information to the LSRM Program "menu" and the committee will than select which will be the company's best option how to support each families selected girl child(children).

We had than a good surprise as based on a suggestion  - coming from Rajeev and from the Employee-  we went to a famous Gurdwara, which is called: Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib

We came back to Ludhiana and the day was not over, we went directly to Shri Krishna Mandir which is a very famous & biggest temple of Ludhiana in Model Town Extension, Ludhiana where we live currently.
What Rajeev mentioned to me this temple is one of the newest beautifully furnished temples constructed on 500 Sq. yards with more than 520 statues have been established in this temple, but the main attraction is the 37 feet high statue of Lord Hanuman.
Janam Ashtami, Dushera, & Shivaratri are three festivals celebrated with great fervor, enthusiasm & glory at Krishna Mandir.
A large number of devotees, use to recite bhajans and shlokas & Devotees kept pouring on this temples during the whole day.

And to finish this day (and almost the whole week) on Thursday near 21.30 it started to rain really heavily and than it started hailing as well, see the pictures below. You can see a "little" dismay in my face.

Next blog will follows tomorrow, as we participate in an IBM -NGO Volunteer Day in Ludhiana at one of Swabhimaan's school, post you soon.

#ibmcsc india22