By Inish Merchant | Director - Fundraising
I remember when I was a kid in school. Each year, there was one day when I wouldn’t groan when the alarm bell rang in the morning to wake me up. One day, when instead of burying my head deep in my bed, I would spring out of it, ready to catch the early morning school bus to the nearest hill station, or lake with my school friends. For me, Camps were when I was free. Free from the daily routine of chalkboards and dusters. Free from assignments and homework. Freedom!
As we grow, all of us somehow pine for the same excitement and joy that camps brought with them. For most of us, they are a fading sepia Polaroid with grinning faces, lost in time never to return. For most of us, they are the stuff of dreams. But for us at MAD, it is something that we relive once again. Run in the green grass and laugh unencumbered with our children. Learn new things and bask in the sun. For us, camps are where dreams come true!
Welcome to Dream Camps - where life lessons are accompanied with scraped knees from the park slides, twinkling eyes and a lot of energy. It is an end of the year project, which MAD’s Discover Team undertakes, that helps our children explore several possibilities, overcome their weaknesses, work on challenges, participate in adventure sports and then some more. Every volunteer works to make sure that their children experience the best days of their life there.
"Dream Catchers are made of twigs, sinew and feathers woven together. They were woven by grandfathers and grandmothers and hung over the children's bed to give them peaceful, beautiful dreams.” says a volunteer to a wide eyed Kalavathi in the Bangalore Dream Camp.
"Good dreams get through the maze of feathers and twigs whereas bad dreams get stuck only to be evaporated like the morning dew."
Very slowly, comes the reply,"Akka (elder sister), I am already living in a beautiful dream for the past two days. Nothing bad can happen to me."
Day. Made.
Camps often bring the children and the volunteers closer. For those three days, the volunteer becomes the children's family. They eat together, play together and learn together. For Naina, the realization that family is thicker than blood came on the last day of the Nagpur Dream Camp when she was cutting up fruits for her children for a fruit salad.
“Let us do it too.” a child offers to help.
She declines and tells him how they might get hurt in the process. To which the child replies: "Didi hume lag sakta hai toh aapko bhi lag sakta hai, aap bhi nahi karoge (Didi, if we can get hurt, so can you. You’re not doing it either." He promptly proceeded to take the knife from her hand and kept it away. Touched and moved beyond words, she just smiled and stared.
Dream Camp memories are the ones that last a lifetime and more. Srujana's children relived it in the best way possible. A week after the Dream Camp, when the volunteers were leaving after conducting their class on a Sunday, the children re-enacted the red carpet welcome that the volunteers had done for the children at the camp. Gushing and grinning, volunteers left the room flanked on both sides by cheering and clapping children. High fives and invitation to play 'Holi' were given out and taken like hot cakes.
"I had become a part of my kids’ weekends; now I was a part of their life." says Srujana. "We are others’ students and each others’ teachers; we are each others’ friends and family. We are each others’ celebrities."
Indeed.
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