“We worked hard to recruit 100 children for this camp”, said Manju Tiwari, asst. director of the Startalk program. “We pooled resources from our local network of volunteers and business owners to prepare for the camp. All students were fully engaged in cultural and language learning through a variety of activities”, she said. The camp was organized by Yuva Hindi Sansthan, a New Jersey based educational and cultural organization.

The participants took a virtual trip to India. They were introduced to India's geography, diversity, history and culture. The program aimed at making the students aware about the diversity of India and importance of Hindi as a link language. After ten days of total immersion into language learning and cultural practices, they were able to read and write simple Hindi texts and communicate in Hindi using formulaic expressions.

The camp incorporated indoor and outdoor activities designed to provide social and cultural contexts for learning. Every morning students practiced yoga under the guidance of Anamika Dwivedi, a professional yoga instructor. The participants enjoyed food that represented various regions of India. They sat on the floor to eat their food on the day they studied Indian village culture.

The participants were taken on a field trip on the seventh day of the camp. The visited places of religious, cultural, and commercial importance. They learned about Indian values at the Swami Narayan Temple and learned about parallels between Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. at  the King Memorial. They had opportunities to interact with shopkeepers and buy things at a real Indian Bazaar that was organized  as a part of the program.

“We aimed at informing our students about India in a deep immersion of linguistic and cultural environment. A treasure of authentic material was used to meet our objective. The participants quickly learned about India, its major cities and villages with the help of pictures, movie clips, music, dance , food and yoga practices. With the deployment of research-supported principles of second language acquisition, we were able to generate their interest in language learning and knowing more about Bharat”, informed Dr. Surendra Gambhir, a former professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who directed the program.

Dr. Herman Van Olphen, former professor of Hindi at University of Texas, Austin was very impressed by the education model followed at the program. He said, “I am very pleased to observe that young students are fully engaged in the curriculum. They have a lot of opportunities to express themselves in Hindi, through pictures, art work, singing and role playing.”

 

                                                           About Yuva Hindi Sansthan

Yuva Hindi Sansthan (YHS), a non-profit educational and cultural organization incorporated in New Jersey is engaged in preservation, education and promotion of our heritage language Hindi in USA. We are a group of teachers, researchers and community activists who have a long experience in Hindi pedagogy through the use of technology and multi-intelligence techniques of language learning. YHS realizes the importance of heritage languages in the appreciation and understanding of the heritage culture and wants to do everything possible to promote its knowledge, retention and usage in diasporic contexts, especially at a time when the US federal government has publicly announced the intention of including Hindi in the public (government) school curriculum all over the country.

For further information, please contact:
Ashok Ojha, President, 4 Melville Road, Edison, NJ 08817, Tel. 732-339-9099
Dolly Chatterjee, Secretary, 217 Windsor Drive, Swedesboro, NJ 08085, Tel. 856-241-7382