By Preeti Agarwal Mehta | Project Director
This quarter was a busy one, with many activities, exposure visits, workshops and community outreach programs.
Success Story
*Chutki, our newest resident is a 4 year old fun loving girl who likes to dance and laugh. She also has Down syndrome. She has won everyone’s heart with her charm and her unbarred display of affection. But she was not like this when she was brought to us 3 months ago, along with her elder sister. She was sad, withdrawn and cried often. She barely spoke, smiled or responded. She always needed assistance for her personal work. It took us almost one month to get her to open her up. With positive reinforcement and unconditional love form everyone around, she soon got comfortable at KM. She’s developed a lovely bond with Raju, our older young adult with Down syndrome. Always smiling, dancing and ready to throw flying kisses at you, she communicates whatever she wants easily. She has become the heart throb of our home.
Here are the highlights of this quarter:
Exposure visit and workshop
Visit to Swaraj University, Udaipur was organised for our young adults. Swaraj University’s focus is self-designed learning and social entrepreneurship, including programmes to strengthen local culture and ecology. They do not have any course or syllabus. Each student is given an opportunity to design a course and syllabus for himself. Our youngsters spent a whole week there exploring and understanding the program structure and the process of applying to it.
Feedback: They found it an amazing place to learn because they learnt through self exploration and from nature. Even the location was beautifully situated amidst hills.
Our older children were taken to Ranikhet (uttarakhand) to participate in a fun camp organized by Pravah for 5 days. It was a workshop based fun camp along with 5 other NGOs, where children were made aware on issues like leadership, gender and life skills. They also organized adventure activities for kids like river crossing, village visit and trekking.
Feedback: Kids had a lot of fun and learnt a variety of things because there was no pressure to learn all the time.
On 3 and 4th May, Volunteer Sidhartha(self-taught artist) from the NGO Manzil and Deepak, our KM alumni conducted an Art workshop at the Primary Government School in Khedi village as part of our library project. Approximately 200 children participated and had a lot of fun.
Two-day Life Skills workshop was held at the Government Senior Secondary School for class 9thChildren. 80 children participated in this workshop which was a joint program by our partners Modicare and us. The workshop was to raise awareness and give tips for handling issues of life skills, peer pressure, gender, HIV/AIDS.
Feedback: In the past one year we have done 5 to 6 workshop in this school with different classes. Slowly but steadily our aim to sensitise children regarding these issues seems to be bearing fruit. Children are quite aware now and it has brought about a positive change as reported by their teachers. We need to work on boys more because they tend to pay much less attention towards these issues.
Ajay attended a one month documentary making workshop during summer vacation at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi. He also received a certificate of participation. During this workshop he learnt camera operation, editing and photography.
On 16th and 17th June , our young adults with special needs, attended an art workshop at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi. They had lots of fun during the workshop and received certificate of participation.
Abdul our 14 year old was sent to Shikshantar in Udaipur for training.He hated school and showed a lot of interest in repairing electrical things and other creative pursuits. Shikshantar runs a Resource Center for homeschooling, un-schooling, Gap Year, Walkouts and Self-Designed Learners. Abdul is very happy there and has been exploring many options. Abdul’s mentors are very happy with his ideas and progress.
News from our Beautiful Home
In this quarter we took a decision that every Sunday we will sit together with kids and have a discussion on various topics like current affairs, social issues or other issues that the children want to talk about. This will help raise awareness and they can improve their communication skills too.
We harvested a lot of fruit this time. Banana, Mango, Cheeku and Mulberry. There’s nothing better than eating home-grown fruits. The children had so much fun plucking them from trees and eating them. The taste and freshness of these organically grown fruits also helped them understand the harmful effects of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and additives. They also observed the whole process of the growing of fruits, how to take care of the trees and recipes to make things like jam etc from extra or overripe fruits.
During the summer vacation children attended a Theatre Workshop conducted by Srikant. Srikant is an 18 year old aspiring theatre professional from the NGO Manzil. He shared his skills and prepared a play with beautiful props and use of music etc. A dance workshop was also conducted in-house by Rihana & Sonu at KM. Both, the Skit and Dance were performed in the month of July for the children and the board members who really appreciated the talent and effort.
On 29th June, the younger kids went to a Water Park near Ballabhgarh to beat the summer heat. It was an unforgettable day full of fun, food and ride.
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