Reconstructing traditions and breaking barriers: Cool earthen refrigerator brings communities together
By Benjamin M. on Saturday, 8 September , 2007 - 6:12 pm
Co-written by: Anjou Musafir and Benjamin Mailian. Published in IB World Magazine.
VIDEO INSIDE THIS POST…
The ‘Matka Fridge’ project for the village community
One of our memorable projects was a collaboration between the MYP Year 3 students of MGIS and the 7th Standard students of the Bopal Primary School (BPS), a rural government-run school. It is important to point out that the Bopal Primary School like most Government schools in India cater to the poorest of the poor. In BPS, the student community belongs to the backward castes and scheduled tribes.
While the Indian constitution considers all citizens equal, the caste system is still prevalent and the lower castes are considered untouchables. The average income of these students’ parents is around USD 40 per month.
Photo: MYP Year 3 students explain the earthen fridge to the press and school community during the Eco-Day fundraiser at Mahatma Gandhi International School.
The students collaborated to produce several pieces of the ‘Matka fridge’, a natural refrigeration appliance that would later go into the local villagers’ homes. Matka is Hindi for ‘earthen pot’ and is traditionally used all across the country for storing water.
“ The Matka Fridge is an appliance used in the desert regions in the olden days. It consists of two clay pots. One pot is cut at 60% of its height and the other pot is piled directly onto it. In between these two pots, there exists a small gap that we shall call a water compartment. The two pots are joined with cement, the water compartment is now sealed. A hole, one centimeter in diameter, is made to fill water in this compartment. The top pot is dry from inside and can store eatables. The earthen pot keeps the water cool, and in turn, the water cools the clay of the second pot above that contains eatables,” Explains an MYP year 3 student.
This simple device can store vegetables for upto 10 days in a state where temperatures soar to 45°C.
The ‘Matka Fridge’ however is no longer seen in Indian homes even though it is almost a necessity given the climatic conditions and the economic status of so many Indians. The revival of this device was thus important.
Below is the movie made by the students on their project:
Over the course of 4 months, the students of MGIS overcame cultural barriers to investigate, design, produce, fund and distribute 40 ‘Matka fridge’ pots at a subsidized rate to the local community of the Bopal village where BPS is situated. All through the project MGIS students worked closely with the poor families in Bopal village, whose children go to the BPS.
The idea for this project hatched when MGIS co-founders Anjou Musafir and Pascal Chazot, visited the Bopal Primary School. The teacher Mahesh Thakker explained that the Bopal Primary School was a government school falling in the « Rural Category ». There is a high drop out rate and most students especially girls rarely manage to complete their seventh grade. These students have no interaction with any other schools or communities and the fact that they are backward castes leads to their being completely marginalized. Mahesh had an idea that if the students could be filmed and if they could see themselves on Television, this would incite them to attend school. We decided to keep this in mind.
The students and teachers received Pascal and Anjou very warmly. The teachers initially referred to the students as ‘these poor helpless students’. Pointing out to the BPS teachers that poverty was only an economic indicator, not an intellectual one, Anjou said that such terms should not be used for them in front of the students. The classrooms of this school, like many rural schools were bare, with the occasional neon light hanging from the ceiling, and the thick wooden benches dating back to long before these students were born. “But shining within the room were the excited smiles of the students at the arrival of the visitors. We were determined to find some way of collaborating with this school. But just coming to the school and doing community service wherein the rural school students would remain passive receivers would only reinforce their opinion of themselves as helpless. Moreover, it would defeat the purpose as Community and Service is not synonymous with charity” explains Anjou.
She continues, “As we racked our little grey cells, one of the teachers pointed to a forlorn looking earthen pot in a corner. This, he said proudly, was a model of the Matka fridge for which they had won the first prize in an all-State energy saving science fair. Intrigued, we put our hands in this earthen pot and to our amazement, the vegetables inside were as cool and fresh as in a refrigerator.
This was the catalyst we were looking for. This earthen fridge was an economical and truly eco-friendly appliance!
The Process
The students of MGIS loved the idea of working on this project. Ravinder Kaur, the main MYP Year 3 class teacher coordinated the efforts with the help of another MGIS teacher, Nirali Shah. Over the course of 20 sessions, the matka fridge project became a reality.
The learners were active agents in the construction and progress of this project. The role of the teachers throughout this project was to channelise the students’s energy in working towards goals and to introduce missing pieces into the learning process whenever it was necessary. The MYP Year 3 students suggested and developed activities in subgroups, then came together as a class to finalise the daily action plan. A good deal of planning was done prior to any visit to the rural school.
The students learnt to record the entire process in order to make a documentary. Right from the beginning, every stage was shot and filmed by the MGIS students.
Group work and Energy saving workshops
Photo: Ties between MGIS and BPS students grew out of group formation activities like this one. Here MGIS students initiate an activity where each student says her/his name with an action and other students subsequently repeat the name and action.
The initial sessions consisted of group formation and team building activities that MGIS students developed. Students of MGIS in sub-groups and often individually handled groups of students of BPS. The rather shy and awed students of BPS were encouraged to explain their matka fridge device to MGIS students and then explore the principles of energy saving mechanisms.
This lead to the MGIS students to later conducting what they called an ‘Energy Workshop’ in which the BPS students took part in physical activities seeking to introduce them to different types of energy, they classified different sources of energy and illustrated them in the form of collages. Students also did a preliminary survey of the different energy saving devices used in the village by meeting the local village residents.
Visit to local potter and making the Matka fridge
The next visits consisted of visiting the local potter to see how the Matka fridge could be produced and distributed effectively throughout the rural school community. The first Matka fridge prototype was problematic to assemble. Traditionally, the cutting of the lower clay pot is done once the clay pot is fired in the kiln. As it is brittle, many pots break leading to wastage and higher costs. Students reflected on this and began experimenting. MGIS students then arrived at the conclusion that time and material would be saved if the pot was cut while wet and on the potter’s wheel. Their experiment succeeded and a new technique was born. Students of both the schools then learnt the art of turning the potter’s wheel and making pots.
Survey of needs, determining costs, taking orders
The students went around to villager’s homes and conducted surveys on their food storing habits, on whether they would like to purchase the ‘Matka fridge’ and if yes at what price. Students explained the advantages of the ‘Matka fridge’ and discussed hygiene and health issues. They also succeeded in making the villagers aware of their own traditional techniques and their importance.
The students presented the collected data in tables, they sought to analyse the eating and food-storing habits of the villagers so as to ensure a comprehensive approach to the project. They then determined the costs and arrived at a feasible subsidized price of the ‘Matka fridges’. They then returned to the villagers and took the orders.
Fundraising for the ‘Matka fridges’
Photo: MYP Year 3 students sell their handmade eco-friendly products on Eco-Day. Students organised the Eco-day, a fundraising event to subsidise the Matka Fridges.
The students now organized an eco-day on the MGIS campus, a fundraising day in which students would sell their own handmade eco-friendly products. They worked steadfast to produce an amazing selection of products ranging from herbal face cleansing packs and bead jewelry to simple toys, tablemats, greeting cards and even rice paper lampshades. A great deal of new skills were learnt in this process. For example, students learnt to do electrical wiring and circuits and designed and produced lamp shades with wire frames in original shapes.
The students promoted the event by mobilizing the MGIS school community and at the end of the day, they had raised enough money to subsidise all of the Matka fridge orders. This event was covered by all the press and several television networks that beamed this event across the country.
Film Editing
After the eco-day, the students finalized the script of the film based on the footage on tape. In small subgroups, the students edited 10-minute sequences using the school computers. They learned voiceover techniques, video transitions, inter-group coordination and other useful professional skills associated with video-editing. This film will be screened by the government networks on television thus fulfilling the BPS teacher’s request.
Screening of film and distribution of ‘Matka fridges’
The project culminated in an evening at the Bopal Primary School with both school communities, including parents and faculty, coming together for the formal distribution of the Matka fridges to their righteous owners. The MGIS students performed a promotional song and a live product demonstration. They also projected edited video sequences of the Matka Fridge Project. The Bopal Primary School students were delighted to be onscreen. What will surely remain of this project is a genuine sense of achievement and lasting mutual-respect. Moreover, manual work that has little value in India was given its due importance and dignity. A traditional design was revived and improved upon. People learnt to take pride in their indigenous knowledge. More importantly, the MYP Year 3 students have gained newfound confidence to take up new challenges in the community. Concludes Mahesh Thakker from BPS “ You do not know, but this interaction has been the turning point in the lives of these children. They are transformed by this experience”.
The Areas of Interaction
Photo: At the village potter’s shop, an MGIS student cuts an earthen pot to make the Matka Fridge.
This project covered all of the five Areas of Interaction. Environment was explored through the creation of the non-electric appliance, the use of eco-friendly material both for the fridge and the eco-day
Health and Social Education was explored in the form of standing against social taboos like untouchability. In addition, the learners developed, implemented and reflected upon practices that are conducive to a healthy collaborative environment. They developed a greater understanding of their social responsibilities towards their peers.
Homo faber had the students dwelling into the origins of refrigeration, its need, and the functioning of conventional refrigerators versus the principle behind the Matka Fridge. The revival of an ancient technique, its impact and their own innovation upon it is in the spirit of Homo faber.
Community and Service was taken up through making refrigeration accessible to the Bopal villagers, through the conception and implementation of activities with the students of the Bopal Primary School, and in the fund-raising eco-day event. Awareness of their own traditional and indigenous knowledge was an essential contribution of our students.
Approaches To Learning included event promotion skills, the ability to adjust and function in new environments, the ability to select video footage to communicate a dynamic video presentation, the ability to work with strangers, learning to survey in unfamiliar environments, learning to conduct activities with other students, an awareness of the production process for a traditional home appliance
The subject areas integrated within this project:
Mathematics: Students designed surveys and interacted with the villagers to find out their food storing and eating habits. They collected the data, classified and analysed it using graphs and tabulated formats. They undertook all the costing of the whole project. They made budgets and managed the accounts.
Technology: The students maintained a thorough process journal. The creation of the Matka Fridge took them through the entire design cycle from investigation, to planning, creating and evaluation.
They completed the design cycle for the film project that included investigation, planning, filming, sound recording, getting feedback. In computer technology by learning different techniques of video-editing, using different softwares, do sound recording and editing.
Science: The project led to research into refrigeration and the workings of other cooling systems. The students performed experiments to determine thermal characteristics of various materials.
Humanities: Visiting the village was revelatory to the students, helping them to understand the problems faced by villagers. They studied development plans introduced by the government for rural areas. The students also looked at the social system of Indian society and compared urban with rural set-ups.
Languages: Students learnt the local languages (Gujarati) in the actual contextual situation. (In India, there are several languages and the local language is not always the mother tongue of the student. The national language is Hindi.)
Category: MGIS Insight
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