Rajat expresses his awe at Prayas' position today :)

Rajat Maheshwari is one of the founders of AID's Prayas initiative. He works with ST Microelectronics currently and due to his tough work schedule has not been able to make it to Prayas regularly nowadays. To his surprise things have in the course of past two years changes a lot. Here are his comments:

I am very poor in writing...but Darshan is asking from long time to write something...so please tolerate....

Darshan already mentioned, it was like one family on picnic :)....Children's enjoyed and all of us also....and frankly speaking was trying to extend the picnic time also :D.....thanks a lot to everybody for making the event a BIG SUCCESS....

And let me phrase a small incident...may be around 3 weeks ago, was sitting in one of the night class and Darshan wrote some sentence in Hindi on board and asked the children's for English translation....I was not focusing on what he wrote actually...suddenly I heard Sona speaking something in English....in fact that was the exact translation of what Darshan wrote in Hindi with all tense and grammar correct.....was shocked...I kept smiling all the time in the class without any reason ( for me the reason was their )....Sona was the same student we use to teach "ABCD" when we started Prayas...not only Sona, mostly all the children's in the class were able to translate....it's a very small thing which gave me the feeling what really we have achieved...."HATS OFF TO ALL OF YOU"....... I am sometimes coming to evening classes and can see "Prayas family" putting heart to teach children's....everybody is contributing in someway....

Anyways let's continue our efforts and hope we can get many of our children's admitted in Nai Disha....

And, so today together we stand to bring hope and happiness to the lives of the children and families associated with Prayas.

A thought to remember....:)

It was another bright afternoon when I was planning for an evening movie, a friend called up and asked me to accompany for Prayas class instead. Walking along a path way approximately twice as wide as I am, I entered a small room that had just enough accessories to make it look like a classroom:) Somebody was teaching a set of kids that mostly consisted girls. After creating a mild happening I settled down to be a pseudo student for another half an hour. Then promoted as a teacher again a pseudo one I continued with that maths class. Kids had monotonous expression to everything I said, just a plain simple smile, no matter if its a instruction, a formula or a question thrown to them. I seriously had no clue if anything I said made sense to them or not, so, mostly my reaction was also just the same. The class ended just like that, all I could conclude was they all have a smiling face:)

Further classes were much more expressive, I see eclectic minds converging at Prayas. Few kids enjoy studying, few others enjoy the gathering, overall most of them find a reason to come. We are happy to see them inclined towards studies, they think themselves to be better than other community kids that don't come to the classes, they know its good to bath daily, they feel its good to know things around, they like to be aware and we relish all these feelings vicariously.

We plan to move ahead and set up a small arena to make it more look like a proper school. In the process, whole arrangement, architecture, color choices, I enjoyed watching people turn to interior designers:) A happy incidence I remember, Yesterday, 1st Jan 09 , got call from kids, Poonam shouted on phone and wished Didi Happy Diwali:) Mann! it was awesome....sorry sorry didi...Happy new year:) All in all its been good. With consequent classes I tried perceiving their level of understanding and requirements and more or less am still doing the same:) Lets just hope our effort help the kids understand their capability and will and make their living meaningful.