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English and the Environment

Posted by Katrina Lee 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.

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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Categories: Community Outreach, Interns, Internships, News, Social Responsibility | Tags: Bangladesh, Bangladesh Resort, Community Outreach, Cornell, English Lessons, International Internship, Interns, Photos, Summer Internship | Comments: Be the first to comment..

Design Charette

Posted by Kristin Boekhoff on July 7th, 2010

Charette participants took a walk around the project site for inspiration.

The French word, “charrette” means “cart” and is often used to describe the
final, intense work effort expended by art and architecture students to meet a
project deadline. This use of the term is said to originate from the École des
Beaux Arts in Paris during the 19th century, where proctors circulated a cart,
or “charrette”, to collect final drawings while students frantically put
finishing touches on their work.

An Envisioning Charrette is an intensive brainstorming workshop that
brings people from different disciplines and backgrounds together to explore
conceptualization ideas for a particular development project in relation to a
specific site.

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Categories: Alternative Energy, Community Outreach, Construction, News, Responsible Hospitality, Social Responsibility, Sustainable Design | Tags: Bangladesh, Bangladesh Resort, Biogas, Community Outreach, Eco Resort, Green Development, Hospitality, Mud Architecture, Photos, Resort Site, Responsible Hospitality, Site Photos, Social Entrepreneurship, Solar Power, Sustainable Development | Comments: 2

Panigram English Classes Grow Exponentially

Posted by Katrina Lee 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!

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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Categories: Community Outreach, Interns, Internships, Social Responsibility | Tags: Bangladesh, Bangladesh Resort, Community Outreach, Cornell, English Lessons, International Internship, Interns, Photos, Summer Internship | Comments: Be the first to comment..

Surveying Our Villages

Posted by Timothy Chen 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.

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Categories: Community Outreach, Construction, Interns, Internships, News, Responsible Hospitality, Social Responsibility, Sustainable Design, Uncategorized | Tags: Bangladesh, Community Outreach, Developing Country, Interns, Responsible Hospitality, Sustainable Development | Comments: Be the first to comment..

Health, Hygiene, and Hysteria

Posted by Katrina Lee on June 28th, 2010

Health and Hygiene was the topic of this week’s “Friday English Lessons”. In preparation for the lesson, we purchased about thirty toothbrushes, toothpaste packages, and mini soap bars. Caio drew a Leonardo di Vinci Vitruvius man -inspired human body with different body parts labeled in English. It turned out to look more like a cartoon version of the Vitruvius man, but it worked. I took my try at drawing and labeling a face, but it turned out a bit creepy. I had the demonstrations all planned. With the gifts and teaching aids in hand, I thought we were fully prepared for the lesson.

Katrina and Caio teach the children names of parts of the body in English.

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Categories: Community Outreach, Interns, Internships, News, Photos, Social Responsibility | Tags: Bangladesh, Bangladesh Resort, Community Outreach, Cornell, International Internship, Interns, Photos, Responsible Hospitality, Social Entrepreneurship, Summer Internship, Sustainable Development | Comments: 1

Connecting with the Community: Friday English Lessons

Posted by Katrina Lee on June 23rd, 2010

Children from the village came to the project site for English lessons.

Last Friday marked the first of Panigram’s weekly English sessions for the kids of the village. The plan was to teach and review the English alphabet, numbers, and basic greetings. As usual, we didn’t need to tell the kids to come to Panigram; at 3’oclock there was a group of twenty-four kids, aged four to twelve, hanging around the pavilion. Read the rest of this entry »

Categories: Community Outreach, Interns, Internships, Social Responsibility | Tags: Bangladesh, Community Outreach, Cornell, Interns, Photos, Responsible Hospitality, Social Entrepreneurship, Summer Internship, Sustainable Development | Comments: 8

Molly Johnson: Wow... I'm not sure if he remembers, but David was in my Cri...
Mekhola: How can I be a part of this project!! Would love to be a par...
Mikey Leung: Very cool meeting of minds. With you in spirit, Kristin!...
Imrul: Seems really interesting development. Wish If I can manage s...
Dennis Boekhoff: Great job guys ! And such a creative way to teach about ger...
Pedro: To all the Panigram Interns and Contributors What a wonde...