I dream a lot but for the first time I sincerely woke up to feel the happiness when a dream comes true. The first ever successful venture of sans and her good-hearted friends left them with immense satisfaction and zeal to dream more and more. I’m talking about the five-day rehabilitation workshop organized at Santhi ashram, Visakhapatnam from 22nd to 26th October, 2008. I’ve been dreaming about this workshop for so many months. For a month I worked on it and in just 5 days I made my dream-come-true.
It started when I woke from day dreaming and realized that my longtime dream can be made true with some efforts. I’ve put forward my idea of the workshop, in front of my friends. Everyone is really interested but no one knows how to proceed. I’m always ready to take the initiative in doing something good. I’ve asked my friends to go to ashram to take the permission from the management and to know the timings when the children will be free. I’ve listed out some important points that I wanted to convey through the workshop to the kids as well as to the volunteers. At the beginning I was told that there are a fair number of 25 volunteers who are interested in taking an active part in the workshop which made me go above the ground, flying (’aye udi udi..aye aye udi udi..’).
Then I’ve designed a schedule leaving not even a single minute to go waste. Time factor is a major hindrance. Children hardly had two hours of free time after their academic hours. So I’ve to train my friends 1 hour before hand and then work with children. On the first day I’ve given a powerpoint presentation in my department (in the university). I found many of them eagerly waiting to start the work after each slide was getting over and but for one boy it was a mere lullaby. He went into deep sleep that caught my attention which made me deviate the topic and make the presentation more interactive by asking questions to the listeners and ask for some doubts. I really had a great time in this episode.
Then started the time to work. We’ve started the first day off by making children write the copy writing books (both in English and Telugu) fine-motor and oro-motor exercises. Children felt so happy and excited to use all these thingies. On the day 2 we’ve conducted competition in drawing and painting. Even it worked out very well. In addition to this some special activity based classes were taken for few kids who were found dyslexic from the handwriting copies of previous day activity. On day3 we had activity time. Mask making for junior children and SUPW for seniors. The funniest thing was in masking. I drew the basic picture, my friend Ammu helped children colored it and Srinivas helped in cutting it into a mask shape. I was then drawing Spiderman, Batman and other famous cartoon faces. On one of the masks I drew a king’s face with long big mustaches. Children liked it so much that they all wanted for a second mask. They took so many photographs with those masks. Omg! They liked it so much that some of them wanted mustaches to be added on Spiderman’s mask also. Well on day-4 it was a little serious work. We’ve taken activity based classes on GK, math, science, clock, health and nutrition etc. On day-5 we have made children draw the do’s and don’ts chart for the Diwali that was just nearby 2 days. That day children actually wanted to repeat us the previous day placards as they enjoyed it a lot. Each and every one of us had wet eyes when those children tried to produce sounds while teaching. One sign of fruition was clearly visible.
Then we have distributed chocolates and pencil pouches. It was really silent when we were leaving the ashram after finishing the five-day workshop. So gloomy to see standing at the ashram gate and give a longing look to see us back soon.
In any way I can’t express my gratitude to all my friends and juniors who volunteered for the workshop. Some came down from Anakapalli everyday, some from Vijayawada, some from Hyderabad and some used to take permission from their workplace for 2hrs and volunteer. 1 sub junior and 15 juniors inspite of final exams came to attend the day-1 activity. My special thanks to
1) Rohi and Chaitu for giving such good name to the workshop ‘Hithakarini..the benefactor’.
2) Srinivas and Karthik in designing the logo and the certificates.
3) All the 25 volunteers who took active part inspite of their own busy schedules.
The moment I boarded the train to leave back to my home was really hard, felt like continuing the workshop for some more days. But time really played a critical role. One of my dreams came true, in fact I worked to make it come true. So many factors tried to pull me back, to withdraw my idea of workshop. But my desire to see it happen drove me till I finish successfully. End of that day made a start to new dreams in my life.
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