As I entered the class room all the kids shout good morning akka, which brings in great enthusiasm in you and make you to love what you are doing and moreover we got to see three new kids in our paathshaala which was even more motivating, they are mani, maheshwari, pawan and niveditha.
Then me and my other co-mates were in thoughts what should we do, so that these kids enjoy as well as gain knowledge. So we started playing word building where we came to know about these kids knowledge and we were shocked. They were so good at it, and words were at the tip of their tongue.
Then koushik took over the game and coordinated the kids with shroothi for the rest of the day and rest of us got engaged in painting chess board on the floor, about 10 chess boards we scaled and painted them which was a really fun filled job to do for the kids and the same was continued to the next day. We scalled , painted the chess board and then it was continued by smitha another volunteer from Christ , manu chacko and siddharth Coelho from josephs.
While me , Anant mantra, kiran and niranjan left for photography at tilak nagar, to capture some shots against child labour. Over there many shop keepers who had engaged children in child labour didn’t let us take picture’s, so we learnt to manipulate these shop keepers and took the shots, walked through the streets capturing photos, then we returned back to green pastures and joined back rest of them, distributed chips and chocolates to the kids and we got to see huge smiles on their faces which was mind boggling. This leads us to the end of the day 3, with the smiling faces.
4th day, it was the day to interact with many kids who go to school and some who don’t go to school and some who don’t get the opportunity to go to school.
So it was the day to enlighten the kids who stay in small houses in small areas (which is called slum area), we were 20 of us from different backgrounds (some working, studying, and our kids whom we were teaching from day 1 accompanied us for the campaign) joined hands together for the cause. so we all gathered at green pastures school at 5.30 pm and started off at 6.00 pm…we split ourselves in 2 groups (10 in each) and targeted the near slum area which is about 8 acres , went in different direction in-order to cover the complete place and enlighten the parents and kids about the importance of school.
As we went house to house we learnt a lot about these families and their living life style, not all the houses were poverty stricken which was indicated by some of the houses having TV’s, refrigerators, and many more items. But still children were not sent to school because of the reason no money for education. People have money for unnecessary items but not for education?? Then we came across child marriage a girl of about the age 16yrs was married off and had a baby in her hand. Then a girl who seemed really keen in studying but had no money to support her education expenses, so we lead her to the way of our foundation and we hope to see her on Monday to have a new start to fulfill her dreams, some children were dropouts, some dint wanted to study, so we encouraged them, motivated them and our children who had accompanied us for the campaign spoke about schooling and its importance. These were some of the cases we came across while we had the visit in this area.
Since myself Priyanka was handling the camera, took some lovely shots of kids playing, crying and portrayal of their different emotions. On the whole it was a nice experience to be part of this campaign.
At the end of the day we all met up at green pastures school and headed towards the shop for a cup of tea and we exchanged our views about the campaign and that’s how we ended our day.