NATAK KE NAKHRE

By Abhishek Kukreja

For years theatre has been the best form of an art to spread messages & ideas which have time and again been able to revolutionalise the society. Apart from being a medium to communicate, the art of theatre helps its participants to discover himself/herself, it makes him/her realise his/her infinite capabilities & unleash the enormous potential, which I believe God has packed in all of us. What would it be like if this powerful tool reaches to every oppressed personality, how would be if it reaches every being whom society considers inferior. JUST IMAGINE!! This is what I imagined and grabbed the opportunity when Anchit in one of the regular meets of Jaagriti, told us about the event which AID Delhi was planning to organise with RBS. As he expressed the desire that kids of Jaagriti must perform at this event, immediately I had decided that this was it. And next morning I was there at the site making dance and drama team.

For kids of Jaagriti this new experience was pretty exciting. Infact the first day was quite peaceful and easy going, giving high hopes for a positive result. But let me clearly state that this first day, definitely wasn't an apt trailer of the film, that lay ahead. After my successful day I was firm that I would go ahead and get these kids on stage. I had myself anticipated a lot of obstacles coming our way but somehow my instincts gave me a green signal to go ahead. But the road ahead was way tougher than I had expected. Problems kept creeping in from every direction. Yet our determination stayed for the fact that we saw them being sorted out someway or the other. Room and music system was our first difficulty but then Pragati Public School came to our rescue. Then the next difficulty was choreographing over 20 students. Again one of my friends from dance society of my college was the one who steered us through. Similarly no costumes, kids dropping out at the last moment (as they had to get back to their village), timing problems, kids falling ill, we being unable to handle children etc. Things kept going wrong yet after sometime everything was back on track. But this one big speed breaker had almost finished everything. As we were midway to completion we got to know that planned event had been called off.

But all of us at Jaagriti had seen the amount of hard work these kids had put in and we knew this news would shatter the morale of kids. Thus we decided that we won't let their efforts go in vain so we decided to put up our own show, where every volunteer would get their friends and family as audience.

So, finally after a tiring jostling with the situations, came the BIG DAY. The day of the event and I must mention that it was this day that I learnt that all hurdles we faced were the tests that God had put to us, just to see how desperately we wanted what we wanted and I think we faired pretty well, as finally the show was highly appreciated. For the first time in my life I saw people of a so called higher level of society not only coming forward to watch the show of a class inferior to them, but also rising to give a standing ovation for the spectacular performance. I was shocked to see this heartwarming response, my vision blurred because of tears that had surfaced in my eyes. The miracle wasn't only the fact that the audience enjoyed the performance but the bigger miracle was that the kids had pulled off their act amazingly well. They were attempting a mature script, a script asking spectators to introspect and fight the devil within.

The successful completion of the venture compelled me to review the past month - this is what I realised that it wasn't me or any of us at Jaagriti who were doing this show but it was actually that divine superpower who was doing it through us. We in this case were a mere instrument to his plans. Today every human being needs to be awaken and for all of us be it volunteers, kids or the audience present that day it was God's plan to awaken us, it was God's call to bring us to the state of JAAGRITI.

Event Pictures

-- I am really sorry for the bad image quality but there was some problem with the camera.

Thanks

Health Check Up @ JAAGRITI

Dear All,

The health check up camp organised at PROJECT JAAGRITI was a great success today.

1. Total around 40 children were there from both Jaagriti project as well as the ones under SHIKSHA UDAY project of Pragati public school.

2. Proper health record cards have been prepared for each child where detail of every health check up will be recorded. (Sample attached).

3. Height and weight measurements were already taken by the nurse over the week.

4. Detailed health checkup was done by the doctor and records have been maintained. She was shared the following general observations with us:

• Almost all children have worm’s problems and need to be given medicine for the same immediately.
• Some of the children are anaemic.
• There is protein deficiency in most of the children.
• The overall condition of the children was much better than she had expected and as it is the case in villages.

Action Points

-- She has prescribed some medicines and has almost promised to provide those medicines as subsidized rates from where doctors generally get.

-- As soon as we get the medicines we will give the prescribed dosage to the children. This is for both treatment of worms as well as anaemia.

-- For proteins she has suggested to include Chana, Gud and Dalia in the diet of the children. We plan to provide the same regularly to children as far as possible.

-- Also we will be interacting with the parents of the children and sharing all the health details with them and motivates them to improve the diets.

Now the most important observations:

Two children(boys) have been identified to have heart problems. There heart beats are not as it should be and they also have complains of problems while running and chest pain. As per doctors observation there could be problem in the closing of their heart valves.

Action Points

- Our immediate task for this is to talk to the parents of these children and get their ECG done.

- We pray to god that nothing serious comes out of it and all goes fine. Our next steps will depend on the results of the test.

We look forward to work on all the above identified actions and will be conducting another heath check up camp in 3 months from now and we really hope that all the above identified problems will be eradicated by then. The doctor Dr. Pooja is now a regular volunteer doctor for the project.

Thanks

Anchit Goel

Founder and Coordinator- PROJECT JAAGRITI

+91-9818115226

Jaagriti Updates

This is just for reference of everyone, about the various activities which are happening at project JAAGRITI.

Regular Activities

1. Education Program (Classes are held 6-7 days a week and 2 hours each day. A teacher has been appointed for the same).

2. Theatre and Dance Classes (Taken up by Abhishek, 5 days a week and 2 hours each day )

Others

1. Drawing and Movie Screening Sessions.
2. Heath awareness camps.
3. Regular Volunteer Interaction and Meets.

Proposed Activities

1. Picnic to Science Museum (June)
2. Computer Literacy Classes (A computer has been received from a donor for the same)
3. Livelihood Generation Program for the mothers of the children.

We look forward for your comments/suggestions and feedback about our work. Do remember to sign our GUEST BOOK. :)

Thanks
Anchit

Drawing Competition and Movie Screening at JAAGRITI

In the last weekend, PROJECT JAAGRITI organized Drawing Competition and Movie Screening for its Children. Both events witnessed participation of around 40 Children from all age groups. It was a great fun-filled session for the young minds as they not only got an opportunity to showcase their talents but also enjoy and have fun along with the volunteers.

Drawing Competition

The Children were divided into two age groups of 8 yrs and above and below 8 yrs. Earlier we used to ask Children to draw whatever they wish too. But this time we gave them specific themes to draw to open their minds and make them think in a different direction. Children were asked to draw the scene of a FAIR (MELA in Hindi) or What they want to become in future ?

Movie Screening

Movie Makadi was shown to the Children.

Thanks

Anurag shares his experience...

My association with Jaagriti is recent. But I must say that Anchit and team have managed to not only impress me, but also motivate me in this very short period of time. Why is that?

All of us "middle class, working" young men / women keep saying that the country is going to the dogs, there is so much poverty and nothing is being done. But none of us does anything.

Like Anchit mentioned in my first Jaagriti meeting, "Raaste mein bheekh maangte huye chote bacche ko dekhoge, to ek minute ke liye taras aayega. Phir 3 minute baad bhool jaoge".

I respect the Jaagriti team for actually moving over from the "just feeling bad" stage to "actively doing something" stage. Also, the idea of helping the impacted children transition from a temporary education system to the formal education system of schools is commendable.


Keep up the good work team. And I am glad to be part of the team.

Anurag Dutta