Hooooooreeey!!!!!

Shahrukh is back in school!!!....

Moreover, Laxman's parents have agreed to send him to school.

Hip hip hooorey....

Attrition at School

This weekend we were quite disappointed to learn that a couple of the kids have dropped out of school and have started working at the shops in the slum; one of them being Shahrukh Khan.

It seems that the kids themselves would rather go to school than work, but their parents insist that they do otherwise. These kids earn anywhere b/w 400 and 800 rupees a month working at these places, which is not a very small amount of money for these guys.

The teachers at MC said that they will speak to their parents; if they fail to make an impact then we may have to step in. I’m quite appalled that it’s so terribly difficult for parents to understand that their kids tomorrow is more important that the extra money today.

Do people have suggestions on how we should try and tackle this issue? Swapna suggested that we try and teach then crafts which can be sold to generate money for these kids.

Like to go for Partying...

This time i'm not going to write what we did last Saturday, i'm going to show you. Let me take you through the world full of life:

Here is Prafulla teaching kids (Ooops... higher mathematics), but I guess kids were smarter than us, they started playing game (magic of numbers) with us and could guess any number that we think in our mind... (i was impressed)



While Ruchi was busy with small kids...



Saurabh was teaching the other group...



Now look at Prafulla and me, I guess instead of teching them we have learnt their way of greeting Doh!!.. Salaaaaaam Namaaaaste



Last time we taught all kids how to write their name in english. I was not sure if they would still remember but to my surprize when i told everyone to write their name they started laughing at me (one kid said "are bhiayaa aap bhi kyaa choti choti cheeze poochte ho.. ye lo..") and they all wrote their name correctly..

Now comes the twist, I guess everybody remember Shahrukh Khan, yes our own Shahrukh Khan. He stood up and asked me to write my name on his slate, well at that point of time I was clueless... but later I observed that he was trying to learn how to write our names. He wrote my name (frankly speaking his writing was much better than me, i think my school teachers were right, I need to improve my handwriting ...lol...) then it was turn of Prafulla and now look Shahrukh's concentration...



Here is our group



Oh i forgot, this time we had Dr. Rahul Verma and his wife Dr. Sumedha in Mobile Creches. They had a talk with MC coordinater Asha and discussed about the health of children. Now they would be visiting MC every week (Kudos for both of them). Asha was so hapy to see Doc that she couldn't stop herself thanking our group. I think we all should thank Dr. Rahul and his wife (three cheers for both of them).

Hey wait wait, can you guess who clicked all of these pictures..

I can bet you could not..


Kids of Mobile Creches :)

I never knew... Sun can be Blue!!

This weekend only three of us were there. Sapna was ready with some A4 sheets, Prashant brought some candies and I was entering there with "no ideas what to do" in my mind. But once you are in, you really don’t need any idea. Refreshing smiles, curious faces, "namaste bhaiya" sound in the air...and you are totally into a new world.

Our "A for apple" team was busy doing some hard-code math this time:-). Moment I think of teaching something, very next moment they make me realize that they already know much more and I can really learn a lot from them. I sat in the middle and they were jumping over me.."bhaiya meri book dekho..bhaiya meri book dekho". I took one of the notebook in hand.. "2+3=5" was first entry on it. I remembered the day when, to add 2 and 3, I used to draw two bars...and a circle and three bars and count them all together. From counting..to sums..I thought to teach them some tables. I asked.."2 ka pahada kisko kisko aata hai" and there was Lalit (he is really good at many things) behind "bhaiya mujhe 20 tak aate hai".. I said "kyaaaa????" and thought.."graduation ho gaya par aaj tak mujhe 20 tak pahade yaad nahi hue"... It was so much fun teaching them some math tricks. They loved the one..using which you can generate (without remembering) the table of 9 just by writing 0 to 9 forward and backward.

At the other end, where Prshant was busy with camera session with kids, Sapna was enjoying drawing classes with them. I sat with one group and asked one of them make my sketch. If you dont care about the ratio of my head to my tummy...I was looking
cool:) with 5-5 fingers in both my hands. I would really recommend all the advertisement agencies to meet such creative minds. Looking at many concentric circles on a paper.. I asked "ye kya hai".. and he replied in a soft voice "ghar". Who knows he might be the first in future to make circular pyramids with top views as concentric circles? There were multicolored Indian flags, orange stars, triangular kites, one wheel car.. I was really lost into those colors. When I came out... the sun was really blue!!!

Fund's (Bizarre idea)

Hey friends,

Till now Deepak has summed up most of the ideas for ‘fund generation’. (Just to add, please read comments to Deepak’s fund raising post, Nishtha has provided some excellent thoughts on elimination of ‘adsense’).
I also thought about this fund raising campaign. However, was not able to think on lines of fund generation using Internet = ( I have different approach. Let me take all of you through my approach.
What we need is some cash so that we can buy relevant things for children of ‘Mobile crèches’. Now, I feel that people are hesitant about giving cash (I know we can convince some for cash). So, what can people give? Clothes? (Na…. bad idea), Food? (Worse idea).
Hmmm…. After much thought I came to conclusion that there must be something that is basically rag to people, yet it has some cash value. I guess its old newspapers. (What…. Am I sounding crazy????????). Actually I have made some analysis for this too.

Assumptions:
A typical housing society (carlton/weelington/maple heights…e.t.c.) has 15 floors, 6 towers, 6 houses per floor. This gives me 5*5*15 = 540 houses per society.
1/3rd of people will be interested in contributing.
Study:
We will approach all the 540 houses and ask them to provide us with the bundle of old new papers (Obviously, we will give them details that why we are doing so).
180 people (1/3rd) will respond. On an average they will sell 5 kg’s of rag. This comes out to be 900 Kg’s. Now comes the cost per kg. I guess its 4.50 INR per kg. So it comes out to be 4050 INR. (Sounds like easy way of getting funds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Now comes the best part. Considering that all my assumptions and study has one or the other flaw (some may think its total crap), but I still feel that we can at least raise somewhere around 1000-1500 INR per society by just asking for old newspapers (their way for contributing money) and selling them.
Hope that my crazy idea makes some sense.

The trouble with life is, by the time you can read a girl like a book, its time to wake up

Yesterday (sunday) was great!!

I saw "Love Story" in the morning. She didn't look like the heroine of the movie, but I don't know but the movie reminded me so much of her. Whatever, last few hours were simply great. I would have spend my whole life for those few hours, guess what spent my whole evening with her. It started with a cheeze tomato onion Pizza and what could be the best thing to have and that too with her. She loooks like any other girl, and yeah loves to talk and shop as other girls do (I think they are born with these skills). Whenever i'm with her i just don't waste time looking at anything else Doh!!. May be i'm foolish or better to say addicted. I think the whole credit goes to Hindi Movies. These things are expected to happen in these romantic movies where a boy in his 20s gets in love with with a girl in her early 20s. Whatever, we still know that silly movies like Niel and Nikki are still being made, promoting the multiplex chaap girl who wears a three year old's bathing suit to parties, drinks, smokes, uses foul words and calls herself independent.

Anyway, dream ended and i woke up in bed. Open my eyes in this hard real world. I am still thinking, if this is life or that was. Ok Ok i accept i'm an engineer, these things are not for me.

I am still in my bed and already late for office. Typing this stuff for last 20 minutes and still thinking when i should get up from bed. Now i should get up and brush my teeth. Oh that reminds me of our group. Last visit to Mobile creches was awesome. I was the first one to reach Mobile Creches. Rest of the group was a bit late. This time there were so many volenteers that it was hard for kids to choose which didi or bhiaya should be given the opportunity to pick them in their lap. You will soon be reading someone describing the whole story minute by minute.

Well i forgot what i was thinking to write and wrote all this silly stuff. Anyway, guyz what have you thought about fund raising activity. Ok let me summarize for all of you and you can put your thoughts here. The options we have:

1. Putting adsense on the blog.

2. Hosting a website where we can sell the products such as cards made by children.

3. Generating funds from corporates.

Please feel free to add more in case I missed any. Yesterday i came across one more idea for fund raising, what do you think about this.

Oh damn i have to go to office, i need to shut up and go and brush my teeth.

“Something” turned out to be much more..

Hey people,

After lots of efforts and dishum dishum with blogger for the day, Ajay was not able to log on and finally he has to use my ID.

Ajay's experience of his first visit to Mobile Creches:

Deepak asked me “Are you coming to Mobile Crèches this Saturday” and without thinking much I said yes, may be will do something rather than sitting idle at home and watching TV. But “something” turned out to be much more than what I had thought of.

The plan was to meet in front of Cyber Park building at 10:00 am. I was a little late and reached there around 10:08. I found no familiar face and thought that it may be because I am late. But it turned out to be other way round. Anyways, all the people who planned to go to MC that day reached the Cyber Park building around 10:30. After everybody was there we (Deepak, Saurabh, Priyanka, Sapna and I) left for MC. One thing worth mentioning, as Deepak has already included in one of his previous mails to AID Gurgaon, that Sapna was well on time.

When we reached the gate of MC we could clearly hear the voices of the kids. As this was my first visit, I saw in one corner kids were studying, while in other, kids from one to three years of age were crying while some were busy in their own world. When they saw us they started shouting namaste didi and sometimes in between namaste bhaiya could also be heard :((. Some came running towards Saurabh expecting him to lift them over his shoulders and after that what could have happened you know, he could not have let their expectations down. Deepak also got busy with kids and Priyanka and Sapna started playing with small (one to three year old) kids. After namastes (milna milana) was over Saurabh started teaching them how to make frog (Origamy), while rest of us joined the kids. It was great fun throughout the time we were busy learning how to make a frog. Ooops, I forgot to mention about Neha, who also joined us a few minutes after we reached there. Well, it seemed she was really good and experienced at spending times with kids.

After the frog was made, one more thing was left to be done and that thing was teaching kids about computers. That required a lot of efforts and who other than Deepak (Masters in khidki, Certified by Bill Gates institute) could have done it better. All the kids were excited and surrounded Deepak, sitting with Laptop in his lap, and we could not see and hear what happened after that.
It was their lunch time and time for us to leave, guess what; again a lot of didi was heard with some bhaiya in between. When we were coming out I heard one of the kids asking when are you going to come back? And we all know the answer to this question we will be going this Saturday and will be a part of their sports day.

See everybody there…

Disclaimer: The information and thoughts in this post is the property of Ajay Panwar. I am no where involved. Though i wanted to make some modifications but i'm going to do them in comments. (I will see you Ajay)