Support a home for disadvantaged children in India

Every February, at the start of the year, we get some additional smiles on our faces when we celebrate Karm Marg’s Founders Day on 7^th Feb. While celebrating this day, we slow down and analyse how far we have reached and from here where do we want to go. We look at our successes and failures and do some extra planning to be able to provide a better life to the many kids here at KM. We celebrate this day heartily with our friends and our supporters every year.

On 7^th Feb 2018, we completed 21 years of Karm Marg’s journey and celebrated this day with our long term supporters and well-wishers. Our dear friend Steve from Scomi came to spend this day with us from Amsterdam. Mahima, Geetanjali, Meeta and Preeti also joined us. Our youngsters prepared a small performance on old classic songs which made the day truly memorable for us. Jana and Melanie, our volunteers from Germany, baked a special cake for all of us.

We sincerely thank everyone who has supported us in this long journey. It would be difficult to name everyone, but without their constant support and trust none of this would be possible. We are so lucky to have people that have placed their trust in us and have provided us with constant support, resources and financial aid.

Main Highlight
As you all know we, at Karm Marg, have been very concerned about environmental issues from the very beginning.  In this quarter we hosted a three day residential workshop, in collaboration with Creativity adda, shikshantar.org/innovations-shiksha/creativity-adda (alternative learning project) on the concept of waste management. Three main issues that were our primary focus were discussed with the kids.
1. Zero waste living - How to live life without generating any waste.
2. Minimising waste generation.
3. Waste recycle and product making.

So the idea behind the Jugaad meet was to spread awareness amongst the younger generation about waste management and how we can practice reducing waste by recycling and re-using it. We worked with waste materials like old clothes, rags, plastic bottles, glass bottles, rubber tires and tried to recycle them and make them useful in one way or another. We also conducted workshops on composting, vertical gardens, jewellery designing out of waste cloths, smokeless chulha (Clay stove) making and shared creative ideas on how to turn waste materials into a product that is saleable.

Supporter
Heartfelt thanks to everyone for supporting us in this quarter. Every single penny and the tiniest bit of help makes a big change in the lives of the children at Karm Marg..

Thanks to Taj Vivanta for arranging a special meal for our kids on the occasion of New Year.
Thanks a lot Anshika, Dipti , Dr.Shweta, Dr.Sagar Gupta, Mr. Mohan and Mr.Krishan for donating soaps, stationary, shoes and dry rations.

And thanks a lot to One World Association, Nidhi Chopra, Vasudha Dalmai, Simon Chambers, Damandeep Ahluwalia, Jaideep Mehta, Dr. Sweta Gupta, Indu Mittal, Rajiv Lal, Inder Raj Sehgal and Promila Sharma for supporting us financially.

Volunteer’s
Two girls from Germany, Jana and Melanie came to KM as volunteers. They stayed with us for 3 months and did a lot of fruitful work with the children. They designed different activities and games for the kids to enhance their knowledge and abilities and also helped the kids pick up basic English and computer skills. At the end of their volunteering they were almost a part of the Karm Marg family. Both their moms also took the time to come visit KM and really loved it and felt proud of their daughter’s hard work.

Please find their report in the link here - C:\Users\PC\Desktop\Report 2018.docx

We had one more volunteer, Lucy, from England who came through Art Reach India www.artreachindia.org/ and being an art student she completed a wall art painting with the kids at KM.

Exchange Program
In the month of January, Partishtha (a non-government organization) from Dehradun (Uttarakhand) visited KM along with their students and mentor. This ngo works with kids from the slums in Dehradun and helps them in their studies and conducts an after school program. They wanted to visit KM to learn how to live responsibly in a community and learn ways with which you can take care of the environment. They stayed with us for 5 days. They also participated in our skill training project Jugaad and learned how to design products using waste as material.

Festival Celebration
Holi is the most loved festival at KM, All the alumni and friends come together to celebrate Holi at our campus. This time we celebrated Holi in a different manner by making our own colours using dried flowers and natural pigments. We also cooked sweets at Karm Marg itself rather than buying them from shops.

Our dance group prepared a beautiful performance on save the environment and presented it at Pravah Music for Harmony programme at Dilli Haat and received lots of praise. https://www.eventshigh.com › Delhi › Arts and culture › Music for Harmony 2018

Visitors Jugaad
David and Christian from Shared Earth, a UK based fair trade organization, https://www.sharedearth.co.uk/ which has been working with us and purchasing Jugaad products to sell in UK for over a decade now, visited Jugaad on how to further develop KM and made plans on how they can support the kids home. They planned to order more products to sell and are going to write a special article about Jugaad and KM in their catalogue so people know about us and purchase more Jugaad products to support the cause. They also joined us for the festivities of Holi and celebrated the day with us.

Peter Eicher, a long time buyer of the Jugaad newspaper bags also visited us with his son Lukas and celebrated Holi with us.

On 15th January Somar, a regular buyer of Jugaad products visited KM along with his family. He sells Jugaad News paper bags in Australia.

Jugaad also participated in the Jaipur literature festival in the month of January to show case and sell our products