The news letter

Jobs & Careers
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“The news letter” is for periodic distribution among children who’ve been rescued from child labour and are with MV Foundations. The letter needs to be educative and entertaining. We need ideas and contributions for the same. A few ideas propose…

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"The news letter" is for periodic distribution among children who've been rescued from child labour and are with MV Foundations. The letter needs to be educative and entertaining. We need ideas and contributions for the same. A few ideas proposed are :

1. Career column - that'ld speak about one line of career in each issue.
2. A story or arnd 400-500 words
3. Riddles
4. Math puzzles

Please come up with more ideas to start with on the thread "The news letter". Please note that this is not just for people in Hyd. This is a good way for ppl anywhere to take part in the community consiousness campaign.
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Yes. After I move to Bangalore and DeepT moves to Delhi, we still plan to continue with this. I have already talked to my colleagues who speak telugu, and they said they would contribute articles as long as we tell them what age group it is meant for.

Deepthi, although MVF said, we need 4 issues in hand before they print it, lets try and negotiate with them tomorrrow for 2 issues - we need to see effect of our work too, right ?


5. cartooons !!!!!
6. popular science !!!!!
7. simple magic tricks
8. general knowledge .. in a very very simplified fashion. maybe write about the concluded elections , just explaining the concept how u wud do to a 10 yr old kid

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arboreal_tarantula Says
I have already talked to my colleagues who speak telugu, and they said they would contribute articles as long as we tell them what age group it is meant for.

It would be 6-14 age group.

Deepthi, although MVF said, we need 4 issues in hand before they print it, lets try and negotiate with them tomorrrow for 2 issues - we need to see effect of our work too, right ?

Sure thing.
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Just a confusion....

I guess the newsletter will be in telugu, right ??

We could also keep

Colour black and white cartoon figures
Join the numbers to form a figure (i used to love this when i was a child, infact still do )

Nice initiative deepti....

Well i think we can get zillion pages on net related to kids stuff...so how exactly you need the help....i mean does sending the links will do or post a zip file comprising of
stuffs....

Sorry i won't be able to join u for the meeting...good luck...

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Yeah. It would be in telugu. But you can contru in English. We have tranlators. More tranlators are welcome.

U can contibute in any form - links would be neat though. We need help with ideas and actual material once the ideas are freezed - O'course more ideas can keep comin' in.

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hey.this is a real cool link for info on certain kinda jobs the young passouts can do.check it out for further info.
http://www.srishtiblr.org

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Deepthi,

Talked to Stuti - who runs the newsletter effort for Pratham's gujarat effort.

This is how things work there :

newsletter monthly. second friday of each month publishing date.

current circulation = 10000

started with 4 pages. now 6 pages. full colour.
cost of production - around 3.5 bucks, but thats MVF's domain. we just do the content for now.

size = a little larger than the average textbook, but smaller than the mid day newspaper size.

each issue has one animal story ( panchatantra types ) . the kids just love animal stories. they target the newsletter at kids aged 6 to 10 .. we shud do it for 6 - 14 .

2 stories each issue .. one animal story .. one on any subject. typical length of a story .. max of 200 words.

till now, they have been using non copyrighted ( old stuff for which copyrights have expired ) stuff. we shud look at old telugu childrens literature too. then they take out difficult words . shorten the lenght etc. we shud be doing it like that too.

3-4 jokes in each issue. refer to chandamama jokes 😛 - not P + Ij s

each newsletter is based on a theme, for example - summer vacations, or diwali, or cricket. there is a small and sweet editorial .. ( something like say .. uncle samosa says hi! )

4-5 games in each issue. stuff in which kids use pencils and scribble on the newsletter. these are the things they have ( and here non telugu ppl can contribute bigtime )

1. join the dots ( teaches kids numbering too )
2. jumbled words to identify pix.
3. arrange the pix in a correct order
4. find differences between pix
5. given the pix .. tell a story for it
6. find 5 items in the pix related to the theme


when we distribute the newsletter , we shud also attach a feedback form for the teachers, who can tell us how to improve it.


so .. .there .. we have some structure to go by .. lets get started . please please please !

deepT .... next time we meet .. u shud get urself a team for the newsletter !!!!!!! :)

cheers
shameeQ

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OK. some consensus reached on the newsletter.

Name : Velugu ( means "light" in telugu, and when villagers are asked "why education?", this is an oft heard one word answer from them )

Layout : Uday is going to handle this. he has had experience with this. size - shoot for double A4 folded in the middle. so we basically have to find content to fill 4 sides of an A4

Editorial team : Aparna and Deepthi have volunteered for this

Translation : Aparna is going to have a go at this, so any of you who wants to get an article in, get it to her, and she will see if translation cud be a possibility. others are welcome to chip in.

First issue, we need to get it to MVF ASAP.

One story : Shameek/Aparna
Word games/pictorial games : amit has volunteered. need more folks to chip in
career : we will showcase "pilots" as the first career option
At least one english word game - really simple
jokes : ??
first newsletter theme : summer vacations
one editorial : editors of course :D


guys from other cities . pls volunteer . just send in any kid's stuff u cud have :), or if u are interested in participating in this, just post here !

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Just a thot that came to me:

in the NL, can we give a series of pictures (say 3-4), and ask the kids to write a small story abt what the pics depict? Probably the teacher can take this up as a class exercise, and then ask each kid to narrate his/her story.

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http://www.pitara.com/
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exactly ! @ uday.
the pratham folks do this, but apparently sometimes the balsakhis take the exercise a bit too far, and narrate a story which all the kids then jot down :P


anyways, one more idea for the archives. for later issues, we could have a section where we have kids from hyderabad schools write for these kids too !

i think that wud be wonderful.

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I have a confusion...

We are not supposed to print anything which comes under proprietor ownership, right ???

I subscribed myself to a site called www.chandamama.org

It sends u a story a day and has huge collection of stories in various indian languages including telugu...

Now the big question is can we use them or make modifications (like i used to make my assignments in college) and print them

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if its copyrighted, we can talk to them for reprint permissions. if its not copyrighted, we can go ahead and print it in toto - with abridged versions if necessary.

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Hey folks, any ideas about which software we can use to design the layout of the newsletter.

I was thinking of using Adobe Pagemaker...

It will be a lot more cleaner like that, rather than doing a cut-paste thingy on paper...

Ideas?

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Do you have access to Pagemaker ? We definitely should go for a software. if u dont have pagemaker, but have a home pc u can use, let me know - i'll see if i can get hold of a licensed pagemaker

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gr8 to cya folks starting off with the newsletter..... 😃 as for me....can add a few cartoons....no dont be worried !! they ain't gonna be my own creations have a close relation that runs a telugu comic mag.....prolly can get loadsa comic stuff and cartoons et al with most *prolly* no CR issues..... have to talk to him though once i get back to hyd......in the meantime...keep up the good work folks....and yes...ppl in other places too. u r most welcome to contribute.......this is gonna be an effort spanning cities rather than only from the hyd chapter....

shameek.....err.....licensed software!!! oxymoron hai nahi india mein

Cheers

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hey arbo, i got a pc at home, so c if u can get a 'licensed' copy of page maker.

and yes, urmad is right! other city folks, pitch in!!! 😁

here r some of the links for puzzles, word games etc...

http://www.whatdotheydo.com/
http://mathforum.org/k12/k12puzzles/join.dots.html
http://www.cfhs.ca/Kids/AE2003/alphabat.htm
http://www.fastq.com/~jbpratt/education/links/dottodotmaze.html

A small exercise involving animals - cut and paste the names: http://www.billybear4kids.com/animal/whose-toes/worksheets/animals.html

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At least one english word game - really simple


Instead of english word games,how abt introducing words to them? The letter will be translated into Telugu,I doubt if kiddos can solve these word games.Let's introduce 3-4 words to them in every nl.
With age group of 6-14,words like "Artist","Anger" etc..or better let's start alphabetically...

And I have 2 stories ready...who do I send them to? Deepti or Aparna?
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wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. u have stories ready already ????? this is awesome ... totally awesome 😃 .. u have soft copies of the stories ? in telugu ?