In every culture around the world, festivals and events have a greater resemblance of impact on children’s growth and significance. It teaches the child the importance of community, a sense of belonging and Joys of being together. Much inspired by the Great educator Jean Jacques Rousseau’s way of learning, the learning beyond classroom, we questioned ourselves of "How and Where' is that we have a subtle start which will create experiences and platform for these children to practice their skills to promote their character development and build a reservoir of strength that they can draw on throughout their lives.
And right then we saw an opportunity coming. On 27th July “Sahid Diwas” (local Holiday), a day to remember the ones who gave their lives for the love of land, a perfect day to start with the children's activity. So with not much planning we jumped on to do a small interactive session to start with senior students of the village. With them we formed a leadership group named “Pragati Yodhas”, with the mission of inculcating leadership qualities in them and for them to organise further events and also guide the juniors. At this meeting we gave them the responsibility to organise the upcoming cultural event and a small Art and essay writing competition for the junior students of the village.
And as rightly said “When life opens up opportunities to you and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them”, these young worriers weren’t afraid to prove themselves. This was the first ever event they had ever managed to organise and they left no stone unturned to make it a successful one. The competition had all junior students of the village participate and majority of village people come to witness the cultural aspect of the program and the prize distribution. All smiles were evident to show how happy and proud these simple humans of humble village were. These Kids were happy Motivated and sure enough confident with the experience they had and for sure have more for them in store.
As for us this was just a slightest portion of our cake of success in our mission, and for now, we can still celebrate this one with a hot cup of tea. Until then, keep calm and take one step at a time.
This article is written by our program manager, Nicholas