Wednesday, June 27, 2007

when old meets young...

Hey,

Well it all started with my and Yshesha visit to old age home (Anandaashram)... and then Reema's idea that why dont we have some sort of combined thing between orphanges and old age homes... and then pritesh on his bday introduced us to this wonderful school for street children called Annanya.... and the final thing when Shashi aunty (who runs Annanya, will write about her sometime really an inspiring story) was all enthu about it.

So we set on mission to get old people and kids together. After running around here and there to get the necessary permissions, last saturday we were finally all ready to go.

There are about 26 inmates of Anand Aashram. Most of them above 70, they have been living there for varied of reasons. (Am not going to write their stories here, some of them are really depressing, and further to do any justice to that there has to be one full blog post on that.) So at 10 in morning we reached there with the army of nine kids. And we were not sure what we going to do there. We did not organize any games, any music nothing. Just went there and then asked the kids that they have to go and talk to atleast one inmate for one hour and then come back. And thats it kids were on the job, some in chairs in corridor, some in dining hall, some in their quarters, talking, interacting, smiling. I dont want to write more about this, I think the following picture tells the story better. (Picture Courtesy Alice)


At the end we asked the kids if they would want to come back to this place and the answer was YES in unison. And as to why they wanted to come here, they have variety of ideas...

"We want to take them out for a walk"
"We want to sit and do drawing together"
"We want to come and study"

So I hope the enthusiasm does not end here... Finally we want to make it a weekly affair, every saturday we want kids to go to Anandaashram and spend time there. We also thinking that once kids get more used to the people there and develop some kind of rapport, we would try to do specific activities like teaching, drawing and so on. Well things are not this flowery flowery also, some of the people there are really depressed, and I guess it would take quite a task to get them out of their shell. So I guess still there are lots of things to do and lot to learn.

But we do think that this kind of interaction would be beneficial for both kids and the inmates of the old age home. Atleast last saturday we felt like that. So will see how it goes...

Thanks to all who made it happen, starting from Shashi Aunty, Pritesh, Alice, Maddy, Manish, Ananwita, Dhruv and to everyone else whose names I could not mention here.

I do hope that the enthu does not die...

This is just the beginning....
--
Goli

PS: We have asked all the kids to write an essay on what they saw and what they perceived. So will post that.
PS: somehow I managed to delete this post and I dont know how.. and am reposting it again... and I lost the comments... :(

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oi, achei teu blog pelo google tá bem interessante gostei desse post. Quando der dá uma passada pelo meu blog, é sobre camisetas personalizadas, mostra passo a passo como criar uma camiseta personalizada bem maneira.(If you speak English can see the version in English of the Camiseta Personalizada. Thanks for the attention, bye). Até mais.

Ree said...

kiddo, u rock. n u know wot...the comments dont matter. wot u did was amazing. keep up the enthu. n keep takin the kids back whenever u can until they are capable of going themselves

Vaidehi Dongre said...

great work! u guys rock!!

Chander Dogra said...

great work ...awesome ..
you really made a difference.

Chander Dogra said...

what happened your laptop not working these days/

Anonymous said...

This was really touching. Did you arrange another meeting after that? Lemme know if you are planning something similar again :)

Anonymous said...

Goli I'm really touched by this gesture.. i'm sure all of you were involved must have loved it.. and its a brilliant idea to arrange for their regular meets.. guess i too can implement it somewhere..
Thanks for sharing:)