Republic Day Celebrations

Date - 26th January, 2007

Location - Kakaguda Govt. School, Secunderabad.

Team ~Pankhudi - A total of 26 members for 26th Jan Event



Enthusiastic about flag hoisting, excited with a flag pinned up ontheir dress, getting game for the cultural events- this is how therepublic day celebrations started off at govt. primary school,Kakaguda, Secunderabad. It was the volunteers day as well as therewas good attendance of volunteers. So, may be that also added up tothe excitement of the kids in the school.
Flag hoisting was the first event wherein pankhudians helped theteachers of the school arranging the flag and hence hoisting itsuccessfully. It was great to be there at a school as a serviceactivity with a patriotic feel within. Well I am sure all volunteersmust have been nostalgic about good old school days and then the JanaGana Mana..woow that was awesome. I am sure it was worth waking up alittle early compared to other days and rushing to the school.



Dandia, group songs and not to forget the thing “Burra Katha” (whichwas a wonderful performance by one of the students) were allmemorable performances. Cheers to all the volunteers who were thereto get the kids together for practice sessions and made it a greatexperience altogether. The main round of applause goes to Pattu (Mr.Monterio), whois associated with the school and has helped us associate ourselveswith the school, and had given us the pleasure of serving the school.

After the cultural event, our volunteers distributedchocolates; and the kids were game for the sports events. With alittle time gap, we started the sports by dividing the kids intogroups.We had lemon and spoon race, running race and three leggedrace. The competitive spirit in the kids was appreciable, aseverybody was vieing to win when we announced prizes forthe winners. All the Volunteers really need a goodround of applause for the successful completion of the sports events. All of them were key participants in arranging the events.

On an Concluding note, the winners were given away the prizes and the rest were motivated to be more sportive for the coming events.
Putting it in nutshell, it was a great and memorable republicday, cherishable for a long time.Hope to have more of such events ahead and see more active participation of ourvolunteers.

Cheers…

~Pankhudi Team Hyderabad

Visit to St.Teresa’s Tender Loving Care!

Place: St.Teresa’s Tender Loving Care

Date: 18th December, 2005

Team ~Pankhudi : Adept (Praveen), Klueless (Krishnakanth), Sumanth, Shilpa, Divya, Ramesh, Rachna, Nitin & Harini.

This Sunday was our first visit to an orphanage as Team ~Pankhudi…

We arrived at the orphanage, just when the kids were getting ready for their bath. So we were asked by the sister in charge of the place, Sister Teresa, to come over and take a look at the backgrounds of the children in the home.
As the horrific stories of abandonment and bureaucratic battles unfolded…we couldn’t help but feel very sad for the plight of these young and beautiful children. Sister Teresa showed us snaps of kids they had found abandoned in dustbins, empty street ways and desolate corners and told us stories about the long standing battles between the government and the couples willing to adopt. The sad state of affairs really brought tears to our eyes.
Finally after an hour of listening to sister’s heart rending stories we were allowed to meet the children…

We were led into a room full of about smiling and welcoming faces…the average age of the children there was about 5…
It was wonderful to get introduced to all the adorable little kids…they were so excited to introduce themselves to us and so were we. We had taken along chocolates, biscuits and sum toys with us.

There were about 30+ kids in the orphanage…and ironically all were girls. Being a large group we could easily go around and mingle with all the kids…the kids were so excited about telling us their names…they were thrilled when one of us distributed the chocolates to them…each of them tried to get our attention in their own endearing way. It was such a treat to watch them recite A, B, C, D’s and numbers which they had learnt from the sisters. They wanted to play with our watches & mobiles…and told us about what they had done earlier in the day. Soon it was time for their lunch and we had to leave but before that the children sang songs for us.
It was very touching to watch them sing…



Finally it was time to say our good byes and the kids questioned us if we would come and meet them again, some of them even suggested that we come and …it felt really sad to leave them and go meet them the next day home…as for the little time that we were with the kids we had grown as attached to them as they had to us. We promised the kids that we would come back again the next weekend. It’ll be a joy to meet them all again.

Cheers…Team Hyderabad

Krushi Homes - January 1st `07

Attendees- Surya, Sunil, Karthik, Ramesh with 15 of his friends, Vasanth, Prabhanjan, Jyotsna, Revathi, Sadhana and two of her friends.

To start the New Year in style, we visited Krushi homes on January 1st. The start of the year was marked with excitement and celebration, for the kids as well as our team. Reminding us of a previous meet, this time too there were equal number of volunteers as the kids. There were 30 kids and 26 volunteers were inn for the day. We had taken some Stationary like Books, Pens, Pencils, Erasers and Sharpners, Rulers etc. We had also taken some pairs of clothing to distribute among the boys there. Though we got both boys and girls apparel from the drive, we had to sort boy’s clothes here as it was a Home for Boys.

We had four new members from GNITS, the college where we had given a presentation last week. And also, around 15 students, mostly Ramesh’s friends, had turned up from Srinidhi College; the college where we had recently started our Donation Drive. The girls from GNITS had got a cake along with them. This had served a dual purpose for the occassion. It was also one of the boy’s Birthday there, and we could add to his happiness by having a Cake cutting celebration. Also, we gifted him a a car with some special feature of emitting smoke while it drove.. Technology you see.

As known, there was no way we could miss a dance session at Krushi. And this time around, the guys were equipped with a Public Audio System, to satiate their urge for a Dolby effect. To add up some spice, Vasant had given some warm up for his muscles. The kids loved his performance, and some of us actually envied him too..

Tired by the long dancing session, the kids took a break to grab some chocolates and a couple of cake pieces. Rejuvenated soon, they then took onto some Gaming session. As evident to their obsession to music, they choose to play Musical Chairs. Yielding to their pleasing request, we played the game with some volunteers also taking part to test their might with the kids. But as always, the kids proved their upper hand. The Winner and the Runner up were given a Video Game and a Bike as Prizes. The next game was “Dog and the Bone”. The two teams choose their names and the game went on for more than an hour, when we had to conclude the game abruptly and declare both the teams as Winners, as it was getting too late for their lunch.

We then gave the clothes we took and asked the Warden to distribute them according to the sizes. Done with it, we bid Adieu to the kids. The kids invited us to celebrate the coming Sankranthi festival with them with some Kite flying masti sessions. Sure to get back, we left them into their lunch session and made our way back with the Joy of starting the New Year on such a Pleasant note..

To View the pictures, check out http://ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/pankhudi_hyd/photos/browse/94d6

Cheers
Team Hyderabad.

Our Christmas Visit

“Coming together is the beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success”——Henry Ford.

Place 1: Missionaries of Charity.

Date: 25th December 2005

Team Pankhudi: Adept (Praveen),KK (Klueless), Sumanth, Ramesh,Shilpa, Pranathi, Soumya, Bindu, Shailaja, Sandeep.

We the team Pankhudi , reached Missionary Charity by 9:30 am today. We were welcomed into the portals by parrots with red beaks……haan many cute little kids who had their lip-stick session 5 min back. We found children of all age groups here, from kids below 1 year to 15 years. They are altogether 55 in number. They were of all kinds but, basically orphans. Some were mentally retarded ,physically defected and even normal kids as well.The kids are being sent to 3 schools,one St.Andrew’s and two other telugu medium schools.We greeted Merry Christmas and distributed chocolates. Music was being played and 2-3 girls were dancing, adding color to The Missionary Charity on this auspicious Christmas Eve.

The children seemed to be mal-nourished and the orphanage conditions are unhygienic. Now the tragic stories…………..

A 1 ½ year old kid Anish was laying on the bed.The sad part of it is this Anish, has some problem with the spinal chord and has to permanently lay on the bed, can’t sit, stand or play around like other kids. He is’nt having proper senses and even defected eyes.We tried feeding him with bits of chocolate but all went in vain as we were told later that he is given only horlics everyday .God!!! How is he surviving only on horlics in that gloomy dark room on a tiny bed??? My friend Soumya brought him out and we could a little smiling Anish. He was realizing that he’s been brought out.

A kid was sitting on the floor to one corner of the door, with all his fingers in his mouth …I noticed that he was sitting in the same posture for the 2 hrs that we’ve been there.He is utterly mal-nutritioned ,seemed to be a bag of bones. Even he seemed to be mentally retarded. The happy part was he ate the chocolate we gave him when feeded by one of his friend there at the orphanage.

The most horrible part was, a girl child of the age of 6-7 years with some skin allergy and having wounds bleeding on her face. I couldn’t just stand that but geared up myself saying “looking at her seems so awkward to me, how is that girl surviving with such an allergy?”Anyway when working for a social cause we should have the mettle to bear anything and everything. Its been told that she is been brought from a dustbin in a place, Guntoor and she has that skin allergy by birth. But, I feel if attended by doctors properly she would have been alright by now. One kid was mentally retarded. He was craving for touch. So, we fondled him.

These kids will be given breakfast (idli, dosa etc.) and lunch. We’ve seen the orphanage kitchen. It seemed very insalubrious. Some kids of 1-2 years age group were just playing around. Today being Christmas I think they are well-dressed. Two other visitors came and distributed apples and books. There are not many nurses but, orphans of the agegroup of 12-15 years are taking care of small kids. Unlike St.Theresa’s kids these kids seemed ignorant and illiterate.They were not asking us when we’ll come next. On the whole I can say they are happy with the chocolates that we gave them.

Chat with the sister……….

They don’t Allow adoption and people keep coming on special occasions and sponsor lunch or dinner for kids.They contribute soaps, hair oils etc. The doctors visit this place as if on government duty. We couldn’t leave poor Anish out there…….Overall very bad state.

Our voices…….

How can we help them? How do we improve the conditions there? Are theseconditions indomitable??? What can we contribute there?
Thanks to holy Mother Teresa for providing asylum to such poor babies.We need to visit that place once again .

Place 2: St.Teresa’s Tender Loving Care

Team Pankhudi : Same team members.

To keep up with the word we have given to St.Teresa’s kids we visited that place around 12 am.The children there entertained us and we reciprocated as well.We had the Christmas cake and then departed,saying “Bye Bye Doctors, Bye Bye Doctors,Just now”:)

Cheers…
Team Hyderabad

Visit to Subhodaya School

Date : 9th December `06

Place: Vidyarthi Subhodaya School,Yellareddy Guda,Ameerpet. Time: 10:45 am.

Team Pankhudi : Surya, Sunil, Abhishek, Jyotsna, Padma, Krishna & Preetam.

We gathered at the school by 10:45 am. We had a caring welcome from the kids and we could clearly see the excitement by every child’s expression. We started the day by a customary interactive introduction session and despite the fact that most of the kids were from the local slum, the surprising element was they were able to comprehend and reciprocate in decent English. Students were divided into four groups explicitly- Red, Blue, Yellow and Green.

We saw healthy competition among them when we carried out events like Singing, Dancing and Pictionary during the earlier part of the day. We had good number of kids turning up by taking the initiative to demonstrate their flair with interest. The lunch break was at 12:15 and kids from 1st std. to 4th left homes while the others stayed back. We guys finished our brunch around 1:15 and resumed the sitting at 1:30. During the later part of the day, we conducted Quiz among the high school students for which the response was not up to the mark and we personally felt that, given proper guidance along with sufficient resources they would shine well. After the quiz we conducted Antakshari and Role-plays.

The response for Role-plays was very captivating and every guy out there enjoyed it. Couple of students also enacted like their teachers which was quite interesting. End of the day, we handed over the education material to the Library and informed the students to collect it whenever required. The students thanked and expressed their gratitude. We promised the students a very soon come back and our best efforts to cater with all the basic requests.

The major requirements what the school needs is good Teaching faculty and Infrastructure. Even with very low resources, students were very enthusiastic and bright. Given proper supplies and guidance, we are sure even they can make a difference.
And with our dedication and their cooperation, we are sure to see the School achieve much better standards in the course of our Association.

Cheers…
~Pankhudi Team Hyderabad

Weekend Visits to Govt. School, N.B.T. Nagar

Date: 4th November 2006

Place: N.B.T Nagar Government School, Banjara Hills.

Time : 10: 30 am

Team Pankhudi : Surya, Kranthi, Mrs.Montero (Pattu), Ruchira, Sunil.



We had gone to the School to finalise the number of kids who are going to take part in the Drawing Competitions on 5th, i.e. the next day. The headmistress there had already selected 8 from among the kids, who were good at drawing.

Initially, we had some interaction with all the kids regarding their performance in the previous exams. As we could see, the kids were faring well, raising the school’s grade from C+ to B this year. We felt happy for the development and applauded the children.
Today, We tried teaching those kids for the first time. The response was really good as the children were very co-operative and excited seeing us teach, out of their routine. Me and Sunil taught Mathematics to class 1. One problem we faced was that we weren’t able to de-code the Telugu technical terms in their text books, but managed with the help of teachers there. We felt it would be really good if we can take some classes during weekends .Some of the teachers there were not even aware of the basics of math. Probably, we might include teaching in our Schedule from next month.

Later, we sent a formal request to the parents of all those 8 kids, whom we were taking for the competition. It was necessary to have a letter of consent from their parents. We got positive responses from all of them, and in fact, some came to the school personally and thanked us for it. Once done with it, we asked those kids to practice some drawing. We gave them some sheets and asked them to draw anything they felt like. While these kids were busy doing this, Mrs. Pattu was busy telling stories to all the other kids. They were totally immersed in the stories; some even related to themselves and enacted. Next we engaged them in some games. I apologise for not knowing the name of the game as it is in some local terminology . All the kids enjoyed the session thoroughly and so did we. With the close of the game, we wound up our day and asked the respected kids taking part in the competition to assemble the next day at 7 30 am.

Sunday 5th November

We assembled at the school by 7 30 am. Vasanth and Jyotsna had joined us today. Also, one of their teachers took interest in coming along with us. We waited for all the kids to come. At 8, when everyone was there, we started off to the Venue of the competition- B.M.Birla Science Centre.

It was a huge turnout for the competition. There were around 250 kids from various schools taking part. We were keen on the participation of these kids, than actually winning prizes. We wanted to develop an exposure in them first. The kids enjoyed the outing, as they are not used to such trips. They scanned the whole of the surroundings and made themselves comfortable moving around there.

The competition started at 9 am and was of one hour. As the kids went inside, we sat outside and had some discussions about our activities and functioning. Thanks to the kids, we got time to do this physically, after many days of postponement .

At 10 am, the competition was over and the kids came zooming out of the halls. They were all to excited with their performance and each of them were claiming a first prize for themselves . Some were too modest in saying they were happy with the Pencil Boxes and Crayon Sets, which they got as gifts and those were no less than Prizes. We had then got them some tiffin, and they recharged themselves for the next lap. It was actually a sudden plan that we take those kids to the Planetarium, for some knowledge and thrill about our Universe. As there was a show scheduled for then, we booked tickets for all those kids and took them in. There was mixed gossip from the kids during the show and even after about it. Some were fascinated by it and for some it was just another fun activity.

It was 12 30 pm when the show ended. As we promised their parents to get them back by lunch, we had no other choice than to call it a day and drop them back homes. With all the fun and excitement, the kids were looking forward to share all that with their teachers and friends, in school the next day. I am sure the other kids will envy these guys . They thanked us in their trademark style and bid adieu after we left them at their place.
With two days of solid fun and satisfaction, we were very happy that the kids had enjoyed it thoroughly. Hoping to see them enjoy the children’s day activity much more……


Cheers…
~Pankhudi Team Hyderabad

Diwali at Krushi Homes

Date : 21st October 2006.

Place : Krushi Homes, Medchal.

Team Pankhudi : Kranthi, Harini, Jyotsna, Vasanth, Lakshman,Prabhakar and Me.

The Festival of Lights this year was Glowing Brilliant in Hyderabad. Team Hyderabad had Spent its Diwali with the kids at Krushi Homes. It was a Bright and Sunny start of the day while Team Hyderabad ventured on the Long Drive to Krushi Homes. It being a Festival, not many could make it there. But it was not the Quantity, but the Quality that really matters. With the wishes of all the other team members, seven of us had made it. We could reach the Place at around 9 am, by when the kids had just finished their Breakfast. Vasanth had the Privilege; rather the kids were privileged to have their Breakfast with Vasanth. He reached a bit early as he was on his Yamaha R1 . Since they were energised with the Breakfast, they were too Jubiliant for our first session. Now that we share a very good Rapport with the kids there, we really didnt need any Ice-Breaking session.

We had taken some Diyas with us. So we gave one to each and asked them to light them, to mark the Begining of the Festival. They did so, and as u can see in the album, they were too creative and made different shapes, out of which one or two are seen in the Album. We asked all of them to sit with their Diyas for some pics. A they were stable and Quite (which is rarely seen), We started telling them about the Festival, its Resemblance and Significance in today’s lives. The kids, i think, found it Boring at first, but then they were Interested when I actually told them the Whole story which was the Reason for celebration. They were eager to share the things they knew. And we found some really great Questions like “If Krishna was residing in India, why cant we see their houses now” etc. etc. Vasanth very patiently answered all of them.

They then were eager for their usual Dance session. (Now that Vasanth has joined Shamak’s classes, we Hope we have another Puneet with us [:D] ). While they were on the Dance session, we Distributed sweets to all the Kids and Faculty. We were actually lucky to meet the Management Members who had just dropped in to wish the Children and Brought along some sweets and Crackers as well. We had an oppurtunity to talk to the Management and we shared our Learning Experiences with them. The kids were too close to the Management, they couldnt resist dancing along with the Kids. As we knew the Dance would go on and on and on, we thought we would move onto the Most Awaited and Interesting part : The Cracker Bonanza.

We gave them our gift-wrapped kit of all the Ammunition. (It was a tragic scene when the kids tore open the Wrapper in seconds, which i took some Half an hour to pack [:(] ).The Management also Joined them for sometime. As expected, the kids were more keen on the Bombs than any other items. We didnt want to restrict them, and hence had to put mine and Naval’s principles aside for them [:(] . The kids enjoyed this for Around, say, two hours. They wanted more and more of it. But we were Philosophical that everything is limited in this World [;)] .

After that, we had an Oppurtunity to talk to the Management there about our plans with them. They were too happy to listen to what we were planning and said we would always be welcome to conduct any program with them. Our Boss (Read- Kranthi) has discussed the possible timing for Conducting some Workshops at their Splendid Campus. They were ready for it and they gave us many Useful tips for Progress. As it was already noon, and we needed to have Attendance at Home as well, we started off around 12 30 pm. The kids thanked us for making it upon their request, and we too had a lot of fun with them. I take the side of the whole of Hyderabad Team to say that it was Great Fun and it was one of the Best Diwali we had. Thanks to the Kids……

Cheers..
~Pankhudi Team Hyderabad