Spirit of Independence Day

"Prizes are given to you as a recognition of the commitment and hard work. If you do not drop out of school and work harder, you can enjoy still better fruits. So, please do not discontinue the studies and also give us information about the out-of-school children in your area. We should bring them all to school. Let this Independence Day give all of us the spirit to do this!!!!!"



This is the message conveyed by teachers and Sugathi volunteers to the children at Jeevanahalli and N.S.Palya Government schools during the 63rd Independence Day celebrations on 15th August 2009. Programmes at both the schools were a big success.



Pavan, Srinivas, Taranath, Kishore and Venkat took part in the programme at N.S.Palya. Sameer, Ramana, Sandilya , Aparna and Srinath formed another team and participated in the celebration at Jeevanahalli. The celebrations included flag hoisting followed by singing, recital of poems by the children. At the end, prizes were distributed to winners in the painting and singing competitions held by us.



The kids involved themselves in the celebration with great deal of enthusiasm and the it was a treat to eyes to watch them. We are sure, you are going to feel the same after watching these pictures.






Link Jeevanahalli school pics:

http://picasaweb.google.com/sugathi4all
/63rdIndependenceDayAtJeevanahalli
GovtTeluguSchool#



Link to N.S.Palya pics:

http://picasaweb.google.com/sugathi4all
/63rdIndependenceDayAtNSPalyaGovtSchool#

Independence Day'09 activities and lot more

Experience and maturity will be recognized when things are done at a larger scale and in a better way. As mentioned in our previous post, the time has come for us to spread out and reach more children. Our programmes should be able to bring difference in their lives and make them part of the social developmental process. Then we can articulate that our motto is "Social Development through Child Education".

As far as Government schools are concerned, we are already working with Jeevanhalli school, Bangalore. Now, another school is identified in Bangalore to work with. It is the Government Kannada School, N.S.Palya, J.P.Nagar. There are around 130 children studying in classes from 1st standard to 7th standard. There are 4 teachers, including HM. The school has many constraints like teacher shortage, insufficient space, no playground etc. We may not and sometimes should not address all the problems because any work done by us should not completely relieve the Government from its responsibilties. So, let us work out and extend all the support possible.

We can volunteer to teach the classes that face teacher shortage. Children can be encouraged to showcase their talent by conducting extra curricular activities,competitions and distributing prizes. We can closely work with the school management in reducing the number of children dropping out of the school. To say it in one line, we can follow our Jeevanhalli school model here too.

Activities at N.S.Palya school have already started. As part of our Independence Day'09 activities we conducted a painting competition yesterday at N.S.Palya school. We also conducted painting and poems competitions at Jeevananalli school also. Two seperate teams took care of the activities at each school.

We will be taking part in the Independence Day celebrations at both the schools on 15th August. Prizes will be distributed to the winners from our competitions on that ocassion. We request you to join us and make the programme a big success.

Our activities at both the schools demand volunteers in big number. We need volunteers who can teach English, Maths, Hindi. Familiarity in Kannada or Telugu will be helpful. So, before we close, an earnest appeal to all those who read this post. Please come forward to volunteer and also kindly spread the word about Sugathi among your circles and help us in getting more volunteers.

Those interested in joining the Independence Day celebrations, please conatct Srinath @ 9886777878 or Pavan @ 9980199133.

Sugathi - What's the plan?

Summer vacation is over and the children are back in schools. Though we already interacted with the children at Jeevanahalli School last month, a formal start to our activities is yet to be done. We plan to do it on this weekend. In this academic year, we are going to cover Mathematics, Sciences, English and Social studies for the 5th, 6th and 7th standard children. Besides academics, we will conduct extra curricular activities and fun based learning activities to all the children from 1st standard to 7th standard. These are going to be done weekly.

Four subjects, fifty children and weekly activities! This is indeed a challenging task but becomes easy if we have volunteers in sufficient number. We require two groups of volunteers, of 3 members each. One group goes to the school on 1st and 3rd Saturdays to cover two subjects and the group goes on 2nd and 4th Saturdays to cover the other two.

Please mark one Saturday pre-lunch session for these activities and we are sure you will continue coming to the school later on. Those interested, please contact Srinath @ 9886777878 or Ranjith @9980627550.

Everybody agrees that we had a nice experience working with Ananya, Samskar , Jeevanahalli school and Anatha Shishu Sevashrama and we learnt a lot from this experience. Our knowledge and experience should be put to effective use by expanding our activities to other schools, orphanages and NGOs. Who is going to give information on these institutes? Yes, it is we, all of us.

We request you to pass any information you have on schools, orphanages and child development NGOs which deserve help from us. It will be of great help. Only thing to be kept in mind is that voluntary activities can be organized only in Bangalore and Hyderabad. But financial and infrastructural support can be done to institutes at any place, provided they desperately need our assistance.

The most exciting part of the post is that our logo is ready. But, you have to wait for a few more days to see it!!! Website is under construction and the initial version can be ready by this month end.

The next post will be talking about our vision statement, long term plans and registration objectives. Keep checking the blog!

Sugathi spreads out with Samskar programme

When determination, commitment and pleasure become one and you reach that deep well where passion lives, nothing stops you. Neither the scorching heat nor the cold winter.



You would definitely feel this if you participated in the 1 day Sugathi programme at Samskar Ashrama Pathsala, Varni, Andhra Pradesh on 28th April'09. Not just the children, but the volunteers and staff members also enjoyed the day to the fullest. For the children, every activity was educative, playful and exciting and finally every moment was memorable.

To begin with, here is a brief geographical description of Varni. Varni is a village located at a distance of 35 Km from Nizamabad, A.P. (Nizamabad is 170 Km away from Hyderabad and it takes 3-4 hours to reach from Hyderabad).

A team of 7 Sugathi volunteers viz.,Pavan, Venkat, Srinath, Wazeed, Samar, Shabana and Satish reached Samskar campus on 27th April night. Accommodation was arranged on the campus itself for the night stay. After having lengthy but exciting discussions till the midnight, we have chalked out the detailed plan for the activities.

Next day morning around 8:45 AM, we reached Hostel Mess to take breakfast with children. When warmth and affection are reciprocated, how much time will take for people to get closer? So, by the time we finished breakfast, the children became very good friends to us. When, we promised them a very exciting day with lot of fun and learning, they were on cloud nine. But their only apprehension was whether their HM would cancel the regular classes or not :)

After finishing the breakfast, we joined Dr. Kompalli HSS Sundar, Program director, Samskar for a discussion. He gave a brief introduction to the history of Samskar, its past achievements and future plans. Then he introduced us to Ms. Anila Kumari, HM. She took us to 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th standards to give our introduction to kids. Finally, when she came to know that we both knew each another, she was pleasantly surprised. When she announced that Sugathi activity would start after sometime, the children were literally shouting out joy with sparkling eyes.

The activities planned for the day were general quiz, drawing, cultural activities, treasure hunt and games. The children were around 90 in number and were made into two groups. Children from 6th and 7th standards formed one group (around 40 children) and those from 8th and 9th standards formed the other one. (Around 50 children)



Srinath, Pavan and Satish undertook the quiz competition for children from 8th and 9th standards. There were 9 teams in the quiz. Questions covering general science, geography, GK and sports were asked. The competition was very stiff and all the teams performed very well. Samar, Shabana, Venkat and Wazeed parallelly ran drawing activity for 6th and 7th std children. The theme given was "My world". One thing is obvious. Every child has subtler observation and better artistic eye than we have. These kids are no exception.So, naturally, the final outcome of the drawing activity was wonderful. You can see the pics of some those drawings yourself in our Picasa web album.



With this we finished our activities for the first session and got ready for lunch by 12:30 AM. The children were very eager to know the activities planned for the post-lunch session. We assured them more fun filled activities in the next session. While taking lunch, Wazeed, Venkat and Samar started discussion on treasure hunt. Venkat with the help of Mr.Madhu and Mr.Siddeshwar, drew the campus layout on paper. Then Wazeed, Venkat and Samar went ahead to have a look at the places to keep the clues. In the mean time, Srinath and Satish started the drawing activity for the 8th and 9th standard children. 8th standard children were given the theme “Environmental Protection”. Before the activity was started, we had an interactive session with them covering the same topic. The theme given to the 9th standard children was “How do you visualize your village after 10 years?” There was an interactive session on this topic too. We also asked the children from both the standards to list a few points explaining the theme and their work.

While this activity was on its way, Pavan and Shabana grouped 6th and 7th standard children for singing. Children enjoyed this part very well. Then Pavan planned some team games for them. This went on till 3:30 PM. By that time, Venkat and Co were ready to start Treasure Hunt. They explained the 6th and 7th standard children the rules of the game. As soon as they finished the explanation, children were on the run. The drawing activity got over by 4:00 PM. These elder kids displayed maturity by bringing their social consciousness into the drawings. Some of the 9th standard children visualized Concrete- Cement roads, rain water harvesting methods, better drainage, bus shelters and parks with fountains. Some drew zoo, boating parks too. 8th standard children were equally good showing air pollution, water pollution and conservation of trees etc in the drawings. Their explanations were also quite meaningful and relevant.



After this activity, all the children were assembled in the playground for some more games. By 5 PM we were done with all activities and the children took the resting position. Then we invited Dr. Sundar and other Samskar staff for the closing ceremony. Srinath initiated the discussion on the daylong events, learnings from each activity. He asked one child from each class to come forward to share his/her feelings. The children were very happy as they have learnt many new things and many games to play. We have given a complimentary gift to all the children present on that day. We have winded up the day with photo sessions with all the children and Samskar staff. It was 6.30 PM and we packed our bags. As our vehicle started to move out of the campus many children were running behind the vehicle waving at us.

Though our stay was for a few hours we feel that Sugathi has found a special place in the children’s hearts. We bagged some wonderful and cherishable moments though it was hard to say goodbye to them.

This is the first programme conducted by Sugathi outside Bangalore. We are proud to say that it is a moment of triumph. We are sure this success inspires Sugathi to spread out.

Side lights:

- We all wore T-shirts bearing the name Sugathi, caption “Welfare Through Education” and blog address.



- Dr. Sundar presented books authored by Sri.Lavanam as well as himself to all the volunteers.

- An interesting thing was that though we took nearly 2 hours to “design” the clues and routes for the treasure hunt, the children could crack it in less than 15 mins !!! It was their campus and they were the numero uno.

Update on Jeevanahalli school

Our weekly Saturday classes at the school are going on. The children have annual exams starting sometime in the last week of March. So, we will be helping the teachers in revision. Those interested to go to Jeevanhalli school, contact Pardha @ 9886412174.

After the exams, they have summer vacation from the end of April'09 till June'09. Our activities will be starting again in June after the vacation.

Sugathi's plan to visit to Samskar

Sugathi always believed in the philosophy "Giving time to someone is as important as giving money". Though Samskar is the organization we have been supporting right from the beginning, we could not do any voluntary activities there. There are a couple of reasons behind this. Samskar is located in a remote place called Varni and needs 5 hours travel from Hyderabad. Moreover, we have only a few volunteers in Hyderabad and it is practically difficult for the volunteers from other places to visit Samskar often.

Going to Varni very often may be difficult but visiting once or twice in an year may not be. So we planned for one full day Sugathi programme at Samskar. We have a long weekend during Ugadi in March. (Ugadi falls on 27th March, Friday). Here is the itinerary.

Outstation members can reach HYD on 27th Mar - Friday, morning and leave for Varni on the same day evening. HYD based members join us in the journey. We will conduct the activities on 28th Mar until the evening and shall try to reach HYD by midnight. If we cant come back to HYD on that day, we will start early in the morning on the next day i.e, 29th Mar, Sunday. Members will plan journeys from HYD to their respective places as they wish. Feel free to contact Srinath @ 9886777878 or Pavan @ 9980199133 in case of any doubts.

Republic Day Acitivties - 09

Sugathi has planned to conduct Quiz Programme on 24Th-January at Jeevanahalli School for 4th,5th,6th and 7th Class students and Painting competetion for 1st,2nd and 3rd Classes. Sugathi will be conductiong another acitvity at Anatha Shishu Sevashram on Sunday-25Th-January.

We are attending the Flag Hoisting Ceremony at Jeevanahalli School On Republic day.

Our original plan was to take all the children of Classes 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th to Nehru Planetarium and Visweswraya Meseum in Bangalore after the flag hoisting. As Planetarium has weekly off on Mondays this programme has been postponed to a later date. Please keep checking the blog for updates.

Republic day events

Sugathi is planning activities for the children at Jeevanahalli Govt. School and Anatha Shishu Sevashrama on account of Republic Day.

Blog will be soon updated with more details. Keep checking !!

Wish you a very happy new year

Wish you all a very happy new year !!!! Suagthi steps into the new year with doubled energy and enthusiasm to reach more children. We have started the new year by celebrating the new year at Anatha Shishu Sevashrama. Let us move on with the same spirit !!