Prayas Update: September and October

Curiosity: Next visit to International Book Fair
After selva had taken 8 kids to Pragati Maidaan for book fair, other elder kids were amazed to see the colorful collection of books, they also expressed the interest to check out the book fair. On the last day of the fair, Gaurav came as a savior, he took the kids, Asmina, Poonam, Kiran, Reena, Danishta etc..to the fair, Raj and Linkan accompanied them. It was another adventurous trip for the kids that involved a fun driving, lots of learning, struggling with the crowd, curiosity, overeating, vomiting, speeding, chalan :P etc...all in all kids were happy, excited and occupied with lots of bits and pieces of happenings around.


Multiple wishes: 5th September
Prayas had lots of reasons to celebrate the day. One cake said – Happy Teacher's Day and the other one – Happy B'day Darshan Sir. To add to the day we celebrated BaalSabha on the same day becasue kids were ready with their small creative formulations, you should have seen the beautiful B'day cards they made. Kids acted like teachers and repeatedly sang Happy B'day :)) Most interesting thing was to see the urgency in every one's eyes while they gave last minute touch ups to their cards. The evening was very loud, colorful and cake filled :)

Moving Ahead: New Kids Admission to Govt. School
This is how we start, segregate eligible and willing kids from community and get them first admitted to Government. School. Mid September, we got around 20 new kids admitted to Govt. School. All the parents were quite supportive, all the volunteers were quite punctual. With the team effort the start looks good. We hope to see the day when all the parents would take their kids by themselves for admission to different schools the moment their kids turn to 4.


Seviyan: Eid Celebration
21st september, Eid. We reached the community center slightly late with the gifts and sweets. It was true festive there, all kids and parents super dressed up in line at the class door to put their own plate of seviyan at the center of a huge plate. They had organized it all for us, everybody looked so happy and we were overwhelmed to be a part of their happiness. After overeating the sweets, we started the distribution of gifts, Rajiv had decided to do it quickly and rush back to office. As we entered the first house, the parents hosted us with one more plate of seviyan and a bottle of cold drinks, after a mild insistence we ate them being absolutely unaware of the conspiracy that it will be repeated at every house. As we finished distributing gifts to 10th house, we were half dead!

Fear Section :Eureka kids result
Eureka kids who are going to Nayi Disha in classes Nursery and KG, cleared their exams with flying colors. Most of them scored good marks in their terminals apart from Sonu (Shahid's Brother). He failed in English, yet the school teachers said that there has been a little improvement in him and if he works hard, he can also score good marks. Other than that, the School Principal was very happy and said that all the kids from Sec 16 are good. The remarkable thing is that Seefat and Parveena have stood first in their class. So kudos to all the kids :) - These are the words of Charu on the Eureka kids result. Charu didi ki jai :)


Improvement: October BaalSabha
The best BaalSabha till now. Kids were much more prepared, clean and confident. They showcased some very good performances this time. Starting from regular group song and poem recitation to a real soothing song from a shy kid and a different cheeni bhai play from the enthusiastic ones. The day involved everything. At the end there was a fun event for volunteers which fully solved its purpose. The kids were very good, still, the best performance award goes to Prasad Haridas for his unmatchable imitation of veeru – Mausiiiiiiii jiiiii...:D It was a prefect BaalSabha, hope to see many more such events in coming days.

Bal Sabha & The Collective Cleanliness !!

I was very much enthusiastic about the term called "Bal Sabha" .I think Vijay Bhaiya introduced this to me about one and half year back and I wanted this to be replicated here in AID-Prayas as well ."Bal Sabha" is a regular monthly meet where all the volunteers and kids meet and perform something,It is a platform where kids get a chance to leave the academics and showcase their talent .

We tried to start it before as well but could not succeed thinking that it has a lower priority than teaching kids .Somehow there was a mix feeling few month back when it has been observed that now we have a good number of volunteers (Approx. 20) devoted to take care of all the activities at Prayas but we all are not able to meet together. Each and every volunteer is working with different set of kids at different time(weekened,evening or night).Different set of kids has increased our strength to more than 55-60 kids.

So my long waited desire came up with the intention, that Starting "Bal Sabha" now will definitely help us in building good relationship among us and it will strengthen Prayas family ( that constitutes volunteers and kids ).
Initial two "Bal Sabha" were not that much prepared enough but we had "masti" sessions with kids and we could find some real good talent among kids in terms of dancers and singers .

Yesterdays "Bal Sabha" was special for me ,The reason is the "Collective cleanliness in all the kids" . In my opinion, I can say that "I have never seen that level of cleanliness in each & every kid of Prayas before "

I don't wanna give credit of it to any single person but this "Change" is a collective success & it has increased my faith on the tag line we as an AIDer follow ।

" Be The Change You Wish To See "

Observing these small improvements or changes in kids like "cleanliness,confidence, leadership & discipline a bit though" is enlightening to see !!

"Great job by every member of Prayas family for taking it forward .."

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Darshan Mehra