Visit to Vatsalya Sindhu

Place: Vatsalya Sindhu
Date: 7th January 2006
Team Pankhudi : Sumanth, Ramesh, Klueless, Sandeep, Adept.

We the team Pankhudi, reached Vatsalya Sindhu by 11:00 am. It reminded us of our ancient “gurukul” system of education. The lush green plants, the cattle ,the children, lured us to such an extent that we couldn’t just come off that place and make it to the technical conference at 11 am:(The place was altogether a mini-village. When we were in school most of our mother’s used to call “Wake up! Wake up! Its already 7′o clock you will get late to school”.But, these children seem to be astounding.

They wake up at 5 in the morning, go for a jog and exercise till 6 ,then do their daily chores like washing their own clothes, gardening, taking care of cattle.( They do all of their work by themselves.) They go for a bath and offer `suryanamaskar’, have their breakfast and be to school by bus or auto. There are totally 22 children all boys (there is a separate home for girls too).Of these 22, 18 of them be to school. Most of them are orphans but, some of them have parents.They go to a Telugu medium school “saraswathi sishu bhavan”.Coming home they play around for sometime and study till night. These kids are taken care off by a couple.RSS also helps the home.

The kids introduced themselves and answered to our queries regarding their schooling and daily routine. We changed our `mantra’ this time…we distributed fruits A doctor visits the home once a week and the children are spruce and healthy. They entertained us with their melodious songs and even gave greeting cards on the occasion of`sankranti(pongal)’ festival which is round the corner. Now they remember our names too. This home is well-funded. They get funding from private organizations. After completion of their schooling I think we can sponser them for higher education or some sort of training like that given at `seva sadan’ at Bangalore. This reminds me of a famous quote..

“If you give a man a fish, you give him food for a day.If you give a man a fishing rod, you give him food for life.”

Visit - 31st December ‘05

Place 1: Missionary Charity.

Date: 31st December 2005

Team Pankhudi : Adept, Sumanth, Ramesh, Nithin, Harini, Sailaja, Shilpa.

We the team Pankhudi , reached Missionaries Of Charity by 10:00 am. This time the place seemed to be a bit deserted. All the kids were busy watching movie “sye”(even I glued to it for a minute or so:D), some kids were off to school. But, still little Anish was lying on the bed, same allergic kid(she seemed to be a little better this time)and small 1 year old kids just playing around. Again we were into our routine `mantra’, distributing chocolates. Harini took the snaps of the interiors of the orphanage. There were some 4-5 foreign visitors who were sponsoring lunch. Even these people were playing with thekids, they seemed to be very generous and kind hearted (it seems they have donated 1000-2000$ that day to Missionaries Of Charity). I’ve heard from harini that MoC is the most funded place, don’t know why such conditions prevail over there.We spent some 1hr with the kids, we then approached sister.

The chat with the sister was disheartening though, let me put the actual conversation here…

Team Pankudi: How can we help these kids here?

Sister: People like you donate clothes, soaps, hair oils, shampoos, funds etc.These institutions do not get any funding from government.

Team Pankhudi : Don’t you get funding from private organizations?

Sister: Yaa we get, vistors who come here also donate things.

Team Pankhudi : How frequently do the doctors visit?

Sister: The doctor comes her regularly, once a week.In between also if there are any kids sick he comes immediately.

Team Pankhudi : Is he a govt. doctor?

Sister: No, he is a private practioner. He is coming here since the past 25 years. He knows every child here, their health conditions etc. He treats well.

Team Pankhudi : Can we hire a private doctor to get that allergic kid treated?

Sister: That child is allergic by birth,she is being medicated from the day she’s been brought to this home. Alopathy medicines dint work out well, she is into homeopathy now. She is improving now. She cant be cured completely as she is allergic by birth.

Team Pankhudi : What about that kid Anish?

Sister: That child is having problem with the spinal cord and he is mentally and physically disabled. He is also being taken care.

Team Pankhudi : What about that child sitting at the door?

Sister: That girl is also mentally retarded and blind.
Team Pankhudi : She seems to be mal-nourished?

Sister: She doesn’t take in food properly, her senses are also notproper.Still we try to feed her to the maximum.

Sister: …we change the bed sheets etc very regularly as small kids are there here.

Team Pankhudi : Thank you sister, we’ll visit this place again.

Overall I can say, sister was always ready with a convincing,plausible reply to whatever we’ve asked. I feel there is anembezzlement of funds. Only one doctor attending the kids for the past 25 years????? Anyway I think we can just donate things here, nothing else can be done. We students can’t get into issues as such, legally. We shall not question the Organisation, but try and bring a change by exposing such places to Organisations which can take Initatives on big fronts and also deal legally if needed.

Place 2: Devnar Blind School

Date: 31st December 2005

Team Pankhudi: Adept, Sumanth, Ramesh,Nithin, Harini.

We reached Devnar Blind School at 12:30 am. We talked to the principal, he said their school is the “Best Blind School” in India. This place is well funded. It being a school, there are children of all age groups. There are about 255 students and 37 teachers. There is a well-furnished computer lab. They wanted us to guide the students in learning the computer basics. We can help them I believe. This was a brief visit; we’ll be visiting the place again after their vacation (16th Jan)