Final Examinations

Come March and it is time for the children to get busy studying day and night for their final school examinations. To get our children prepared in advance for the exams, we conducted an internal final examination at end of February and also had some volunteers take up doubt classes. 

We are glad to inform you that all children have performed well and got promoted to new classes. Congratulations to all the children and volunteers!

English Learning Classes

Our experience with Jaagriti introduced us to a side of Delhi that we knew existed, but never had a chance to interact with.  Our group of friends spent over a month trying to teach a class of underprivileged children English. The class was an assortment of children between the ages of 8 and 15. The classes took place in a room in one of the student's house, with no fans. The hot Delhi summer made it harder for the students to concentrate and so we had to make our classes really interactive to keep the students engaged.

The 7 week long program began with a test to assess the students' proficiency in the language, so that we could proceed in a structured manner. Teaching them English was not as easy as we expected it to be, in order to help them learn we decided to make worksheets for them. This kept us on our heels because we had to do a lot of reading ourselves so that we could make worksheets that helped them strengthen their flaws, while at the same time could be solved easily with a little deliberation.

No matter how difficult it got at times, the enthusiasm displayed by the students for learning a new language and the happiness we experienced when they conversed with us in good English, kept us going and made the 7 weeks at Jaagriti a memorable experience. 

- Abhishek and Sakshi

Life Skills Workshop by LFT

Over the years we have felt a strong need to go beyond the classroom education and provide the children with certain “life skills” which can help them in dealing with various physical and mental challenges they encounter as they grow into adults. Some of these challenges include low self esteem, lack of confidence, social discrimination, poor communication skills etc. We believe these life skills would help the children to study well, develop their personality, enjoy a better living and plan well for their future.

With this in mind, we collaborated with LEADERS FOR TOMORROW (LFT), a not-for-profit youth leadership movement established mainly in college campuses. LFT conducts LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT programmes, SKILLS development programmes and SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT programmes to create LEADERS FOR TOMORROW…!! IGNITING YOUNG MINDS (IYM) is a LEADERS FOR TOMORROW initiative in which they train volunteers from colleges to be the trainers for SOFT SKILLS. Every weekend, these volunteers devote 2 hours to impart soft skills lessons for underprivileged children.

LFT started its LIFE SKILLS workshop with Jaagriti in February for a period of 6 weeks. A group of volunteers came every Sunday and spent 2 hours doing interactive games and activities. Other activities included storytelling, drawing, colouring, word association and role plays focused on building communication skills, moral and social skills, etiquettes, personal hygiene and general knowledge. ‎All the children seemed very happy and actively took part in the activities. They worked independently and behaved well with the volunteers. As most of the volunteers were first or second year college students and were having their first volunteer experience, they were quite nervous initially but the children made them feel very comfortable and followed their instruction carefully. One of the volunteers remarked – “Working with Jaagriti children was a great experience. We won’t ever forget this in our life, each day we spend with these children was a new lesson of life. Thank you Jaagriti for this opportunity.”

The results of the workshop have been very encouraging. The children now exchange pleasant greetings with each other, treat their elders with respect, wash their hands properly before and after every meal, have their nails trimmed, know the meaning of the traffic lights and are also aware of many morals and virtues by way of stories. We can proudly say that these children along with many others like them are on their way to become well mannered and responsible young citizens.

- Bhawana Rana 

Case Study - Sangeeta

Sangeeta is one of the most hardworking and dedicated students at Jaagriti. She has been associated with us for last 3 years and has recently appeared for her Class 10th board exams. Her father works as a rickshaw puller while her mother is a housemaid.

Inspired by our Master Ji, she wants to become a teacher in future. We have seen she has a great potential to become a good teacher. She has a good rapport with all the children, who listen to her carefully. Sometime she also helps Master Ji in taking classes and teaching the primary school kids.

We have made her a promise - Jaagriti will provide her all the necessary support and financial resources to help her become a qualified teacher. Not only this, her first job as a teacher will be with Jaagriti. Wish you ALL THE BEST Sangeeta!

4th Birthday Celebrations

February 10th and it was time for the 4th Birthday Celebrations of Jaagriti. What started with a group of just 10 children and 2 volunteers in 2009, has now made a positive impact in the lives of over 200 children from 5 communities and over 150 families. To celebrate the day, we decided to get together all the volunteers at the project, cut cake with the children and organize a good feast for them. All the children enjoyed very much and ate lots of cake and aloo poori. :)

Financial Literacy Workshop

FLAY organized an interactive workshop on financial literacy for Jaagriti children on February 24^th 2013. Around fifty students from different age group participated in the workshop. The aim of the workshop was to teach the students some basics about finance, why it is important to save money and how to save money and role played by banks. We believe this would help the children in better planning of their future and careers. Specifically, following topics were covered -

·         History of money

·         Inspirational life story of Warren Buffet

·         Workings of a Bank

·         Important concepts such as Savings, Deposits, Loans, Interest rates, Collateral

·         Business Structures - proprietorship, partnership and corporation

·         Inflation and introduction to time value of money

·         Towards the end we showed them a video clip from the movie Guru explaining basics of stock market operations.

All the students enjoyed the session. It was a learning experience for them as well as for the FLAY team since the kids are really smart and astute. We hope to do more such interactive workshops with the Jaagriti children in future.

About FLAY

Financial Literacy Among Youth (FLAY) is an initiative by MBA college students to spread financial literacy and make the young generation of India aware about the money market. Our team believes that "It's not your salary that makes you rich, but your spending and investing habits".

Our idea is to make students well equipped in this financial world, so that they are able to interpret the various financial happenings around them and are informed of the changes taking place in this dynamic economy.

FLAY conducts workshops for school students under which there are four different modules. We also conduct workshops in NGO’s wherein we focus more on delivering the absolute basic knowledge which will prove helpful for the students throughout.

- Kanika Mahendru (FLAY Team)

Republic Day Celebrations

In association with the Sparsh club of Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management (LBSIM), Dwarka, Republic Day was celebrated at our project. Several management students from LBSIM volunteered to organize the event. The children were very enthusiastic and prepared various songs, dances and play for everyone. Many of them recited wonderful and patriotic poems in English as well as Hindi. Some of them delivered amazing patriotic essays as well. Once they were through with the poems and essays, they went on to enact a play for us wherein they portrayed the importance of right to information for people. Also they tried to show the plight of the people living in the rural areas in relation to the presence of the faulty police structure and problems faced due to it. This was followed by a patriotic dance performance by beautiful girls of Jaagriti. On demand of the children, the volunteers also joined them in singing and dancing.

Prizes were given by Master Ji to the students who stood first and second in their respective classes. This was followed by giving away of refreshments to the students by the volunteers. Overall it was a wonderful experience. The students are very intelligent and responsive and it was great to spend time with them. I would like to thank Jaagriti for giving us this wonderful opportunity and hope for many more such opportunities in the future as well.

- Kanika Mahendru (LBSIM)