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English and the Environment

Posted by on July 9th, 2010

Last Friday’s class was the last session of Panigram’s English Lessons for the summer. The pavilion was plentiful with kids, this time about a hundred. When we arrived the kids were already waiting, cross-legged, in rows, chattering about in anticipation. The theme of this session was Plants and Recycling.

Katrina illustrates the different parts of a plant and how it grows.

Katrina illustrates the different parts of a plant and how it grows.

Prior to the class, I wanted to demonstrate how to plant a seed, which required another trip to the crazy Jessore market. Trang and I scurried through damp allies to get to a kiosk selling all kinds of seeds. From pumpkin to mango seeds, the owner’s store was lined with packages of ready-to-grow items. (Except for the expired cabbage seeds he tried to sell me!) In addition to papaya plants, which we heard are fast growing, we also bought four baby ready-to-pot papaya plants.

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Panigram English Classes Grow Exponentially

Posted by on July 2nd, 2010

Over 150 children children attended the third Panigram Resort English lesson, more than double the number of the previous week again!

Over 150 children children attended the third Panigram Resort English lesson, more than double the number of the previous week again!

Our third Friday English Lesson was about geography. In preparation, as usual, we went to the market in search for supplies. We were on a hunt for either a world map or globe, preferably in English. Who knew it would be such a difficult feat just to get a map that wasn’t distorted, inaccurate, or discolored. We finally settled on a decent laminated map in Bengali. We figured we would put labels in English on top of the map.

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Surveying Our Villages

Posted by on July 1st, 2010

The past month of work has been an eye-opening experience for me as I explore Panigram’s surrounding towns with my fellow interns.  My project for this summer is to collect baseline demographic data on these villages in order to better understand the community’s current condition—and its most pressing needs.  Since the Bangladeshi government has no demographic information (and not even any maps of the area), it’s up to us to do what in the United States would include census administration, map-making, and social outreach.  What our team is working on right now is the surveying: we visit villagers’ homes and go through a list of basic questions about household size, income, health, work, and education.  By obtaining a snapshot of the community’s current state, we hope to gauge Panigram’s impact in future years by comparing today’s data to subsequent years’.

Some of the villagers in our host community.

Some of the villagers in our host community.

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