Expedition Trip of Calcutta Boys School at EMA Development Centre.
School Name: Calcutta Boys (Main Branch)
Total No of Students: 150
Standard: 8
Faculties & other Staffs: 6 (4 Faculties and 2 instructors and administrators).
Date of Visit: 7th Nov 2017
Venue: EMA Factory.
Purpose and experience in Details:
The Purpose of this Trip was to introduce, Experience and inspire our Future Generation to this outer world.
Providing a basic knowledge about Handicraft business to the Students, so that they can get new ideas and think in a wider way.
As all we know that memories of school educational trips are the most prominent experience to all of us, because it is a process of break in the routine life both for the students and the teachers, and also to the place and people where they are visiting.
The purpose is essentially to educate the students; it is a fun bonding experience for everyone involved.
This kind of trip strengthens what a teacher has been instructing in class about a subject and help the students to understand the topic better.
Teachers were instructing the students to collect data, then quizzing them and assigning a project based on what they learned during this outing.
The students were experiencing a new environment and enjoying the idea of travelling in a group and grabbing the knowledge outside their classroom.
Pupils get visited to a place to which they have never been before. This can be particularly advantageous to students who are less fortunate and don't have the opportunity to travel.
The students and teachers are together outside the classroom, as EMA is located in a remote village with a greenery location, which is very unusual for them as they belongs to very Urban class of our society, so they are getting the opportunity to observe many things that are not available at school premises and their surrounding locality, like the exotic greenery location, where they experience wide variety of plant species.
At first our General Manager gave a small speech about our Organisation, like how old it is, what kind of set up, our product lines, working process, and of course our Fair Trade concept in a very brief manner, our Fair-trade Reference person explain this whole idea of Fair Trade in detail, special emphasis to the environment point.
The entire group visited to all of our production units, our staffs explaining them the working procedure, they were observing & gathering data’s, chatting and learning with each others, but they are extremely excited about the candle Department, which is entirely managed by the differently abled people, so for them it’s the best experience for them in this entire tour, here both the urbanised and rural people meet each other and exchange their thoughts, views and experience.
Through this trip the students got the idea how a fair trade product is actually made and how it is different from other non fair trade items, how much effort is involve , it’s all about improving lives of people but of course not through charity (Fair Trade is the believer of Trade not on Aid) .
Students were very much in fun, as their minds were relaxed. They aren't worried about the competitive classroom settings.
This Exposure Trip was also a small refreshing visit for these students.
For us this is a means by which we are promoting the concept of FAIR Trade and advocacy to the common people, who might be our future consumers.
So in this way directly or indirectly we are developing jobs and business for our poor producers and benefitting them by a guaranteed Fair price, a premium to invest in community development, access of advanced payments to cover the production cost and of course assuring them a consistency of order throughout the year.
It was really a wonderful experience both for them and for us.
Nestled in the sylvan surroundings of Village Uttarbhag, in South Ramnagar, Baruipur is EMA Development Centre. That is some 40 km from central Kolkata, West Bengal.
The campus is sprawled over a 7-acre area, and stands with a quiet pride as a symbol of creative talent and dignity of labour.