Alice ends up teaching the teachers!

GRAPHIC designer Alice Roberts spent two weeks volunteering at a slum school in India – and ended up teaching the teachers!
Alice is the graphic designer at Warrington’s Sir Thomas Boteler CE High School and flew out to India to volunteer for Project Why, a non-profit organisation offering education to slum children and
their families.
She worked with children with special education needs and also taught
drawing at the Okhla centre – a school in the slums.
While she was there she designed new flyers to help promote the project, raise awareness and encourage potential new sponsors and supporters.
The Okhla school was a small, open plan brick building with a tin roof and all age groups – primary and secondary – were taught there.
There were no seats or tables and children and teachers would sit
in little clusters cross legged on the floor in various parts of the room.
Alice’s drawing group were very keen to learn and even stayed at the end of their classes and sat with the next class so they could carry on drawing!
At lunch times, the teachers asked to be taught drawing too!
Alice said: “The kids were so happy and down to earth.
“Being in the slums reiterated to me how very privileged we are over here. These children and their whole families would live in a small house that was one room, and there wasn’t really access to clean water or good health care.
“But they were happy, and simply enjoyed talking, playing, learning… it
really made me question how much we seem to believe in the necessity for all of our materialistic extras in our lives – TVs, iPads, designer clothes… these things are not necessities at all, and we should appreciate how very lucky we are.”