By Sudhir Aggarwal | board member
The last quarter of 2012 has seen Karm Marg in a phase of transition. As mentioned in the last newsletter we will not bring in any new children till we have constructed a new living quarter for the boys. The construction finally got underway on the 5th of December and once it is complete we will reapply for a license and take in new children. The new living arrangements will mean that the quality of life will improve and we wil be able to accommodate a significantly larger number of children than ever before.
At present we have 17 Boys 3 of them are special children and 12 girls two of whom are special children.
As ususal there have been a number of acivities and an even larger number of comings and goings.
Sangeeta was rehablited and has now settled back with her mother.
Saurabh was rehablited at Naz Foundation East of Kailash, Delhi after he got a job in a well know company in Okhla. It was very difficult for him to commute every day from Faridabad to Okhla.
The child protection committee in Faridabad has seen a resurgence and they now visit all the children’s homes in their area once every two months on unannounced inspection visits. They came to karm Marg on the 18th of October, followed by another visit on the 3rd December 2012.
October is the month of festivals and this year Dushehra fell on the 24th. The children had a great time celebrating the victory of good over evil with the help of sweets and music from the latest bollywood offerings. This was followed by Diwali on the 13th of November. The children made their own candles to beautifully light up the entire campus.
We had a visit from our Spanish friends and long term volunteer Maggi as well as a visitor from Mukti foundation Rathurlan over Christmas. They brought many gifts for all the children. Everyone had lots of cake and sweets and danced late into the night. This year we also had a christmas tree. All of us had a great time decorating it with trinkets made out of waste materials.
We have always had a children group to deal with child related issues, but this time we formalised it according to the laws and called it the Child Pretection Committee. The names of the committee members are registered with the district child protection officer in Faridabad.
A storytelling workshop was conducted by Bollywood lyric writers Anurag Gupta and Varun Grover on the 3rd December. Saira, Shama, Rahul(B) Rahul(S) Govinda, Tara, Vipin, Bably, Vikranta, Iqbal and Rukshar participated in the work shop. The group wrote the lyrics for a musical play which they are planning to perform on Km founding day, 7th Feb.
We were joined by two voluteers from Germany in November.
Health
Only tow special children were sick during this time. Raju had under taken a complete diagnostic test and the the doctos found that he had problems with his thyroid. He is now dilligently taking his dose of Thyroxin first thing every morning.
Manu was suffering from high fever and his haemoglobin was very low. As he needs special care, we had admitted him at the Naz Foundation. He is much better now and taking regular medicine.
Education
Our staff has been in close contact with the school teachers over each child’s progress the last months. This effort has begun to bear furit and all the children showed a marked improvement in their test results.
Five of our children needed extra help on some subjects so we organised extra tuition classes for them.
Our special need children are doing very well, they are participated in the Ramlila and Mahua played the role of Ravana, Anmika played Sita and Raju became Hanumaan.
They learnt new skills like candle and greeting card making on Diwali and Christmas and also start working on block printing, paper mache and book marks out of kite paper work.
Saira’s model of a water treatment plant was selected for the science exhibition at govt Girls Sr. Sec, School Ballab Garh organised by the district education center.
We had the PVR group come and conduct a road safety workshop for our kids on 2nd October 2012 . All the children participated and learnt many new things.
Five of our kids, Kusum, Rahul Abdul, Anmol and Sagar in the age group 10 -14, took part in an art workshop organised by Art Escape between the 7th and 18th of October on the wekends. A first of its kind, the objective of the workshop was to take the children to a historical monumnet, narrate to them the history of Delhi and the tell them about the importance of preserving our heritage. The children then made a huge combined art work based on what they had learnt. They used various methods, like painting on stones, photography, and collage making.
On 9th October, all the Children’s had an outing to the local cinema to watch the film “Oh my God”. A comedy that had valuable lessons to learn about our superstition and belief.
Ten children participated in a road safety workshop from the 17thto 21st December. As a part of this workshop they learnt filmmaking and had a great time playing with cameras and computers.
Vocational training
This year we have had career counselling to find out what skills and interest youngsters might have outside of what Karm Marg usually does. Given the current economic state of affairs, we now need to be able to come up with different product lines which can generate better income opportunities for them.
Skill training is now compulsory for alll the children after the age of 14. We also started a system of participatory report writing with the children. Updated on a weekly basis, in future these reports will be used as a baseline for follow up actions.
The beginning of October saw two children go for vocational training at the Aurobindo Ashram. Ruby trained in screen printing while Basant trained in baking and food processing skills.
Amrendra our new manager and Pooja held a career planning and future building workshop on the 27th of October. Govinda, Rahul(B) shyara, Shama , Vipin, Rajkumar, Vikranta,Tara and Rukshar attended the workshop and had a chance to discuss some of their aspirations for the future. There will be a follow up session with our career counsellor Navneet in the coming weeks.
Staff
Ms. Indu joined Karm Marg as a designer as also to teach children various forms of art and craft.
Ms. Guneet our wonderful and energetic designer and production-in-charge has left us to be with her family. She has left a huge gap that will be difficult to fill and we miss her very much.
Our staff and children attended a human rights work shop held by ICDS on the 10th December the International Human Rights Day, at Aggarwal Public School, Faridabad.
Jugaad
The festival season is a very busy time for Jugaad. The demand for our prodcuts has increased and there was a lot of pressure on us to complete the orders and have everything ready for the various exhibitions we participated in.
The Nature Bazaar organised by Dastkar took place in November. This is one of our biggest supports and we show case all our new products there.
We have started our online shop with the collaboration of itokri - http://www.itokri.com/collections/jugaad-all-products. Our sales have been picking up slowly and steadily.
We have also started working with a travel agency. We are make bags which the travel agency buys from us to give to each of their European clients. They also collect donations for us. This helps in creating more awareness about Karm Marg and generates more relationships, support, income and funds.
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