Educate 25000 Children through Volunteers in India

Believe you can and you’re half way there!

The Present Scenario and Need:

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought in drastic changes in everyone’s routine and lifestyle causing distress/anxiety in most cases. Children especially, are affected due to school closures and not being able to connect with their circle of friends. Through this daunting situation, engaging in an any form of art helps a child to be hopeful, positive and stay connected with their inner-self.

Dance is a powerful ally for instilling many of the attributes of a growing child. It is a well-known fact that Dance has a multitude of core developments such as sensory, musicality, which aims to enhance creativity, coordination, perseverance, self-motivation, self-expression, concentration etc.

Bhumi’s Wings to Children’s Talents:

Bhumi’s prime focus has always been providing a platform for children to indulge in their holistic development through arts, sports and dance apart from quality education. Nakshatra Online 2020 – Bhumi’s Inter-Shelter Home Talent Fest is conducted nationally for children to showcase their non-scholastic flairs and increase their confidence plus compete against other children in a healthy competition.

Nakshatra's Rock 'n' Roll, an event organized by Bhumi Volunteers on 30^thof August was a nationwide online dance competition exclusively for the children from shelter homes across the country. The preliminary rounds were conducted over a period of two months where 350 children from 250 shelter homes of all 29 states of India participated. The major dance styles performed by children were Kathak, Hip-hop, Contemporary, Bollywood, Jazz Funk, Bharatanatyam, Lavni, Rajasthani Folk etc. It was impressive to witness the passion of these children and most importantly, majority of them were self-taught.

The children were judged based on the dance videos sent and top 42 were selected to compete in the final round. The selected finalists were mentored and trained for the final round by Bhumi’s in-house dance team (Project de-Step) for a period of two weeks. 

The finalists were exhilarated to perform in front of famous choreographers like Terence Lewis, Salman Yusuff Khan, Kruti Mahesh, Jyothi D Tommaar, Vaibhav Ghuge, R.Rajarajan, Harry and Vijay Varman. The children expressed such poise, rhythm and confidence that blew the judges away! The judges were so warm and welcoming towards the children, encouraging and inspiring them towards their forte.

The famous dancer Shakti Mohan (and winner of Dance India Dance season 2) gave everyone a surprise by joining the event for a while to share her best wishes.

The Winners:

The final winners of Teen Feet category (age group of 12 – 18 years) were Subhu from Jaly Girls Home, Chaitra L from Prasanna Jyothi Home and Naveen from Shelter Trust. A big shout out was given to the winners of the Tiny Toes category (Age group of 6 – 11 years) namely, Palak from Prasanna Jyothi Home, Rekha Ravi from SOSCV and Manisha from Apne Sapne Welfare Society for showcasing their dancing skills at such a young age.

Certificates and Medals were couriered to the respective Homes for the Winners.Bhumi’s volunteers and team strive to believe in our ethos and provide children the opportunity to learn, grow and excel in what they do best – in this case, Dance!

According to news18, the government's helpline for children (1098) received 4.6 lakh calls during the first phase of the nationwide lockdown, 30% of which required COVID-19 related interventions,were simply pleas for food. A report published by the Medical Education and Drugs Department (MEDD) on 12th May states that 770 kids below the age of 10 have the coronavirus.

India, with a population of 1.3 billion people, faces the highest percentage of undernourishment and food insecurity. COVID-19 may just add on to the woes by putting both lives and livelihoods at risk.

With the vulnerable communities at large in India, the lockdown has led to children being bereft of grocery support, making them the silent victims of the pandemic. While the Government relief is making a difference amongst many low-income families and in mitigating the pandemic, it is important to practice solidarity, either through volunteering or by demonstrating other ways to combat the pandemic universally.

Hence, there is a pressing need to support children at shelter homes with necessary groceries and medicines to tackle and cope with the current situation, and help them build their immunity. Until July 25, 2020, Bhumi volunteers with support from donors like you have supported 6,193 children in 117 shelter homes across India with ~US$ 25,000 worth of groceries.

Bhumi is associated with around 200 orphanages, and the children in these orphanages are facing the brunt of this lockdown more than any of us. Mainly dependent on in-kind donations, these homes are now struggling to provide the basic three meals to the children living under their roof. Thus, Bhumi’s COVID project on grocery support to shelter homes aims to provide basic groceries such as rice, grains, pulses, vegetables, oil etc., along with medicines and toiletries such as soaps etc. to these homes. We have a strong team of volunteers who will call and assess the needs of these homes periodically. 

Our strong volunteer network has come together to aid through the pandemic and has built a crisis effective model to ensure that the needs of these homes are being met and tracked periodically.

Methodology:

• Bhumi's volunteer coordinators call the respective shelter homes in their cities
• The requirement by the homes formonth is recorded
• The volunteers validate the needs with the number of children/staffs in these homes
• A local grocery supplier/vendor is identified who delivers the supplies/medicines and the funds are transferred directly to the vendor

As Nelson Mandela once said “there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats its children.”

Links:

• Bhumi's COVID page