And the senior batch stands suspended

Jaanbaaz, Guddu, and Umesh, boys from the senior batch; all boarded the local bus to school but did not attend the class that day. Instead they bunked the school for a day and went loafing. As expected a note arrived from their school teachers at their houses, through other students. These young boys got a good thrashing from parents, which obviously is to no avail most of the times. The volunteer body of AID-Noida was also informed of the mischief. Finally boys took one hour, in the meeting of students and volunteers, and managed to convince everybody that they had bunked classes to watch the movie “Ra One”. Linkan, Darshan, Anand, Soumitro, volleys present, approached the situation in a light manner, recollecting their teenage days of mischief. Darshan personally believes that parenting, is an art, and one should be fully aware of the circumstances when you have to acknowledge the high maturity level of your ward, and give respect to the young souls which they usually crave for. He candidly suggested boys to go for a show having economical rates on weekends, instead of wasting so much money on a weekday show!
But it was soon apparent that these boys were fooling with the volunteer body, and hadn’t watched the movie at all. Guddu’s mother updated that he was in a town called Haldwani, whereas Jaanbaaz and Umesh were loitering somewhere else. It was disheartening for all volunteers. Linkan says “We have not imparted them these values. At AID-Noida we follow zero tolerance policy towards physical violence against children. We have always made us available in any circumstances. Now we discover that our children are not comfortable with us, and are trying to hide the truth .I am disappointed here, and still trying to figure out where it went wrong!”
Reviewing the entire scenario the volunteer body at AID-Noida has decided to suspend the entire senior batch for a month. Students have been asked to go home and discuss amongst themselves the right and wrong in the situation and come up with a solution which they think might restore the volunteer body’s faith in their conduct.
Anand gupta, a veteran comments, “We have observed certain pattern of change in behavior of our eldest batch. This can certainly be attributed to their teenage. This is a very tender age, and needs extra thoughtfulness. It’s important to maintain the decorum and tell students where a line needs to be drawn. A stick has never helped and never will, as students might rebel and question the authority. It’s important that we challenge their morality. The only method to instill discipline would be to make students realize its importance.”
Jaanbaaz’s father, when asked to speak on the situation disclosed one of his well guarded fears. “One wise old man in my village advised me never to educate my children. He warned that my children would stop respecting me once they are highly educated and maybe even refuse to recognize me. I think he was right, I am sad at the conduct of my ward”. It is not a startling revelation that Jaanbaaz’s father is harboring such fears. It is a usual insecurity which any parent might face considering he is illiterate. But this often leaves one wondering, that education which should empower a society, actually infuses fear of disrespect. Or probably we need to understand and implement the difference between simple literacy and education.
Fretting over student’s progress and doting on them is essential part of mentoring. As one of the volunteers at AID-Noida mentioned, mentoring any child is like part time parenting. But it has its own set of perplexing challenges. While dealing with the hot blood of teenage, a mentor needs to carefully strike a balance between chumminess and strictness. Maybe a strict step would sort out the difficulties which are being faced by volunteers at AID-Noida.


Anvita Shukla

15 August, this year...

Happiness has two faces, one which brings smile on your face and second which brings smile on other's face, eventually reflecting on your own. Friends, you all might have experienced the former quiet frequently, but the latter is indeed pretty rare and the one I had at the Independence Day celebrations at AID-Noida was a perfect match.
It was an eventful day. It rained quite heavily the other night, but that did no harm to the enthusiasm of the kids or the volunteers, not a bit. The only fear we all had was a leaky tent over our heads, as it drizzled prior to the performance and after the performance, but the program went far smoother than any of us had expected.
Children and volunteers were full of enthusiasm and I could see a dream floating in their eyes. The dream to do something big, for themselves, for their country. The performance presented by the kids did more than proving me right.
The confidence demonstrated by children like Jaabaaz, Kiran, Aamir, Juleikha, Gulaabi, Sajjad,Ajay ,and others, in each of the events like speech, skit dance or event management is really commendable. They could easily speak/perform in front of a crowd of 100+ people which was by no means an easy task.
The entire program was perfectly balanced in terms of content and duration. Every performance was targeted to impart some meaning to the audience. There were a couple of group songs, a couple of dance performances, a couple of plays and a couple of speech by the kids.
The one I liked personally was the play by means of which children were trying to make people aware that this is our country, it is our responsibility to take proper care of public resources and assist the government in every possible way. It was great to see such small kids understanding and communicating these values, who knows it might have changed many minds. It was written by our own volunteer Anvita and directed by our senior batch student Juleikha.
The other play, written by Soumitro and team, enacted by senior batch children, reiterated the importance of national unity over communal differences. The kids performed very well despite of the very little practice we had.
The climax was even better. The penultimate performance was presented by two little girls, both of them reading a poem each, describing a kid's perspective of education before and after having access to books, school and teachers. The poem written by Darshan was indeed very touching, left me thinking that we need such initiatives in every part of the country where education is not much valued.
The last performance was a group dance, which was more than being cherry on the pie. The dance, performed by Shaahid, Shahbaaz, Jaanbaaz, and our volunteer Linkan, was a call to the other kids and parents in the community to wake up and realize that education is our birthright and we all must get the opportunity to fulfill our dreams.
We also gave out small tokes on appreciations for children who have been consistently performing well in academics and have been regular to school. Children like Anju, Nisrat, Usha, Jiya, Dolly, Kiran and many others were awarded for their good performance.
Our teachers Jyoti ma’am and Kulvinder ma’am also came on stage to talk some wisdom for children. It was not just the kids and teachers, but parents also showed equal enthusiasm. Some of them even came out and spoke on the need of increased awareness and enthusiasms from the community.We were also lucky to have Mr Sanjeev, MD Calypto, present throughout the celebration. He appreciated our efforts and promised us for all possible support from his end for our organization

All in all, it was a memorable experience. I had a very nice time with the kids preparing for a skit that was presented on that day. The kids are good learners, friendly and it’s fun to be with them. I look forward to have more days like this at AID-Noida.

Neeraj