At Aim Abroad, we would like to wish everyone a very happy new year, or, "Naayee saal kee mubaarak baar!" ("Happy New Year" in Hindi), or simply "shubh kaamnaayein" ("congratulations" in Hindi)! At our projects in Delhi NCR, we have been quite busy during the holiday season! The children at the orphanage have had holidays from school, so we have been spending all of our time with the children, when they would normally have school hours. The children have also received their grades from school, and most of the children did extremely well! Muskan, the oldest child, came in first in her entire year in the school! Brij Mohan and Rajat, two of the elder boys in the orphanage, also received the highest marks out of all of the children in their year! Anish did very well in his class, and Sonu received decent marks, however, Manish was not able to receive passing marks in school.
We were very sad about the news regarding Manish's results from school, as we have spent every day working with Manish and helping him; but the language barrier, since Hindi is a foreign language to this five year-old, is simply too large an obstacle for him at the moment. Though he has improved immensely, we truly struggle with his inability to communicate or understand Hindi that is not extremely basic, and we especially struggle with his attention and focus issues, in conjunction with his hyperactivity. We are really searching for any volunteers who have special experience working with children in his shoes, either incapable of complex communication, or with hyperactive and attention disorders. Though the news was difficult for us, we are doing our very best, and seeing the progress of the other children has motivated us that it is possible to help Manish, and he will one day reach a level of success, if we persevere! Attached, I included a photo of Manish on his birthday, just a few weeks ago!
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http://www.aimabroad.org
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It's sad to hear about Manish. I would try elementary language books that are available online.
ReplyDeleteWhat is Manish's native tongue?
ReplyDeleteAnish's native tongue is Oriya, spoken mostly in the state of Orissa in India, on the eastern coast of the country. We were very thankful to have a caretaker who understood Bengali, which is a very similar language to Oriya. She was able to understand Manish very well, and we were able to help Manish transition into Hindi as much as possible. He still speaks a little bit of Oriya mixed into his Hindi, and the only person who understands his language very well now is his older brother. Surprisingly, his older brother has adjusted to Hindi very easily, and speaks it very well (though he does have some issues with gender in his grammar, but he is improving). We are optimistic that Manish's Hindi will come to a level of fluency in a few years, while hopefully he can retain his mother tongue and culture too. As of yet though, even with Manish's very big steps to speak Hindi well, there is still a communication barrier between all of us and Manish.
ReplyDelete