As a facilitator for the 100^th Monkey programme at Pondicherry, I am delighted to introduce the 2^nd Pilot Phase for the wonderful students of Anbalaya School.

The Pilot Phase 2 was started from June and until now, around 5 sessions are completed. In this Pilot Phase, we have around 42 students participating from 8th & 9th Standards. Each 100^th Monkey session is unique and is designed using Experiential Education methodology for better understanding and knowledge for the students.

For the last 5 sessions we focused on ice-breakers and team building activities to build a good relationship among the children and with the facilitator. During each session the involvement and interest to learn new activity from the students is unbelievable. We also conducted a baseline survey for students to know more about them and to be able to measure the impact of or program at the end of the year.

During the sessions, I am able to see an improvement in the involvement from kids. They are keen to complete the activity even though it is difficult, by finding out the challenges in the group which is stopping them to complete the task. The children are beginning to realise the importance of planning for an activity before doing the activity and the need for group discussions to achieve the task. 

During the Group Drawing session, the students are able to express their ideas through drawing because they feel I am not forcing them to draw what I want. They are very clear that the drawing is a representation of what they want. This is something which I learned from the DEEP course – as a facilitator, we should not enforce our thoughts / ideas upon students.

Each session is always different and presents a new set of challenges. There is always a new learning for me. One of my recent learnings is paying attention to the size of the groups during activities. If we divide the whole group into smaller groups, it is more useful for them to concentrate on the activity and get everyone to be involved.