Case Study - Priyanka

Priyanka is studying in Class 6 and 15 years old. She has been associated with us since our inception in 2009. Her father works as a construction worker while her mother is a housemaid. Priyanka is very hardworking and good in studies. She is always ready to go the extra mile and put in her best in whatever she does. She enjoys singing and dancing. Priyanka wants to be a doctor in future and we will do our best to support her in whatever way we can. All the best Priyanka!

Science Workshop by NSIT Volunteers

It was summer vacations and we decided to teach the children some science concepts in an interactive manner by demonstrating some live experiments. Students from NSIT joined as volunteers for this 6-week long workshop for the senior children at Jaagriti.

Volunteers focused on teaching the children about life around us, health and hygiene, living organisms, importance of energy, matter, earth and the food chain. For every session, volunteers prepared in advance some charts, puzzles and experiments for demonstrating to the children. It was a great workshop which not only helped the children in learning more about the world but also the volunteers in developing their soft skills. We hope to conduct more such workshops on a regular basis.

Sadbhavana 2013

Continuing with the tradition, we organised our 4^th annual day, Sadbhavana, with Rotaract Club of NSIT Regency. Numerous activities were organised across the day. The whole auditorium was decorates with ribbons and balloons.

The event started with a talent round where small children displayed their talent of dancing, singing and acting in front of such a large crowd. The confidence of these children was unmatched for. The highlight of the session was a comedy act by two children, and a few jokes by others which made the audience laugh out loud! The children were judged by a panel of judges which comprised few 4^th year students and an ex-president of Rotaract of the batch 2010-2011, and prizes were given out to the best performers.

Then an art and craft workshop in association with Canvas was held at the green room. The students were taught to make flowers out of various coloured origami sheets. It was a very difficult task as they had to fold sheets of paper with their little hands and very less experience of origami but the most surprising thing was when everyone completed their jobs and a whole bouquet of flowers was made out of it. It reminded us of the flowers around the campus. Magical!!

After all the hard work, refreshments were distributed and then was the movie time ! Despicable Me!, a cartoon movie was screened for children. Even the volunteers had their share of fun with some phrases like “pinky promise” being relayed all over the auditorium. The cute characters and the sweet dialogues were just loved by everyone. After one and a half hours fun, a small dancing-cum-jam session was also conducted where all the kids danced to the tunes of some popular numbers. The last event was a lemon and spoon race held in the lawns. The competition was tough but we had winners from girls and boys who took away exciting prizes. At the end, tiffin boxes were distributed to all the children as a return gift.

The whole idea of such an event was to bring joy to such underprivileged kids. We all have fests and annual days in our college and schools and therefore it was an initiative to bring such an experience to them also.

Checkout more pictures on our Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/jaagriti

Life Skills Workshop for Girls

A life skills workshop was conducted especially for the girls studying at Jaagriti for a period of 7 weeks. The workshop aimed to empower the underprivileged girls with necessary “life skills” and knowledge, which can help them make better decisions as they become adults and plan for their future. We believe that with these skills girls would be able to protect themselves from being hurt by others, study well, enjoy a better living and plan for their careers in future. Moreover, they will be able to live their lives independently with dignity and not be always dependent on others. The content of the workshop was developed with support from an NGO, Touching Lives, Mumbai.

Every Sunday, a number of exercises and modules were conducted by the volunteers - Rachna, Richa, Anindya and Richa Sharma. To make the workshops both fun & informative, tools like story recital, games, role playing, experience sharing, etc. were used. On a broader note, topics like self awareness, understanding one's emotions & thoughts, anger management, communication skills and value educations were covered.

By the end of the workshop, some small changes like better cooperation among the children and anger management could be noticed. We are planning to these sessions on a regular basis to make a larger impact on the lives of the girls at Jaagriti.

Volunteer Experience Sharing

Teaching students have always been my passion as I personally feel enlightened on teaching someone. This is particularly because I am quite fed up from the system of education that prevails in INDIA, where we are asked to tell students to cramp the writings and not understand its relevance, its importance and very importantly, as to whether is it really needed for us to learn this? Because of these reasons only, I had only bookish knowledge till I cleared 10+2, after which I got to learn life in detail, and got to understand as to how things work in our country and many other things. At JAAGRITI, I got a chance to experiment my theory that says that many things can be learned outside books as used to happen in Ancient INDIA in VEDIC time. Fortunately, working here, it worked out. The kind of response that I received from students made me delighted and I got to learn a lot from them.

Many a times they made me feel that I need to grow up as a human being as I am not even aware about my surroundings, the trees, the kind of effort that goes in making my one day and, thus, I need to work on it to become a good human altogether. This is quite relevant as after having finished the workshops, I have started running in morning hours for about 3-4 Km(s) daily to strengthen my body from inside. Also, I have started to study about plants and their various species available around us especially medicinal plants, so that if I get to do another workshop in future, I will have a rich resource of knowledge to share with these children. Thus, this experience that I had here, made me a new kind of personality all together.

Working with people of different thoughts, different interests, and having different ideologies for life is always difficult. This I realized while working in a group. This experience made me realize the fact as to why companies must be conducting GD’s and Group activities as part of their selection procedure, because, this is a great way to judge a person’s flexibility with different people around him/her. Also working in a group made me realize one more interesting fact that working without a leader is very difficult. Because none of the group member was termed a leader and we had to work out things and content beforehand by mutual interaction, some points or activities remained a part of conflict even on the day of delivery of the workshop. Thus, in many ways these workshops were a tutor of human psychology to me. In all this was a brilliant effort on part of the organisers of the workshop to provide students with something new, and a rich experience that I will personally remember for my life time.

- Aman Gupta, NSIT

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)

Volunteer Experience by Pranjal

It all started with just a casual talk with one of my friends, who volunteers for Jaagriti. She asked me to come along someday, so I did. What I saw was a bunch of adorable and confused children, sitting on the floor, right under the nose of sun. These were not 5-6 children, they were more than 25. Just think about yourself, after a week full of college work and jobs, we just want to sit at home and relax. But these children, some of them go to school and they come for classes even after school and there they are on a Sunday morning, studying again. Never have I seen such dedicated and determined set of children.
I took up Science and General Knowledge, because when I was a kid, my main interest was only in these subjects, I was hooked. Now even after about 10 years, these subjects remain the most interesting to me. I vouched to come thrice a week for an hour or two. My first class had about 20 children, most of them aged more than 10 years and my first topic was Pandit JawaharLal Nehru and these children were listening so intently to every word I said. That was when I knew that I can take this further. So after a week full of boring Gandhis, came India. It was like magic, they wanted to know more and more about india. We did not have maps in the room, but I made them understand about neighboring countries through a very badly drawn Indian Map. Don't worry, we have one now. A good big one.
These children just need a little inspiration to move forward, so Jas and I decided to ask them to make drawings of everything they want to be in future or anything they think of. Come now to the site and you'd see a room full of drawings rather than a dull grey room. One of the children, Usha made solar system only keeping in mind how I drew it on board. Such is the imagination they have. You tell them about something, and it inscribes in their minds instantly. I hope children remain as good as they are and continue to grow. As for me, I have found my calling. All thanks to them!
- Pranjal

Are We the Change We Want?

The words “Be the change you want” seems to have struck very hard to the minds of some. As we see a whooping’ no. of Non Government Organizations (or “NGOs” - for those who can not relate to the expansion) being registered and struggling with a cause, which they believe if eradicated, would make the world a better place to live in. Being blessed (or cursed) with an inquisitive mind, I decided to explore one such NGO & its founder and write it all for you. So if you happen to be one of those who are curious to know about the functioning of these organizations & wonder what exactly goes into the making of the flesh and bones of the people who build these NGOs, I recommend that you bear the next 800 words and figure it out.

The organization I elected for my task is called “Jaagriti”. It has been initiated by a young lad Anchit Goel and operates in the newly developed sub-city Dwarka. Now before I proceed to dissect the mechanism of this setup, here is a brief introduction of this NGO so that we are aware of the subject in discussion. With the intention of assuring the elementary education and basic skills to those unfortunate kids who have been deprived of this basic attention the project “Jaagriti” was launched last year by Anchit, as a chapter of the famous N.G.O called “AID Delhi”. In just a year’s time the project has successfully enrolled over 80 underprivileged kids to regular schools, approached over 150 kids, constructed a team of over 30 volunteers, expanded from only one centre to three centers, collaborated with four educational institutes, three well known NGOs and raised funds from legendary cooperates. All this, accompanied with workshops on computer literacy, theatre, music and other important crafts. After such a gigantic expansion, the project “Jaagriti” deserved to be converted from just a chapter of an NGO to a full fledged registered organization. The towering achievement gets even taller when this fact is unraveled that all the volunteers including Anchit are part timers and mostly contribute only on the weekends. Some of the volunteers are students while others are office going professionals; in fact Anchit himself works as a research associate in an economic council. Now the obvious question that arises is that, how such an impressive result was then accomplished? The analyzed answer would certainly be incomplete without mention of the phrases “team work” and “individual contribution” but it would be unfair to expect from a writer to cite the account of each person’s approach & contribution. Hence I choose to take the convenient-conventional way and describe the leader and his tactics that led to the rewarding times, assuring to myself that the team anyhow is inspired by its leader and identifies with him.

The story begins at a time when Anchit is in his formative years and is engaged in his school program of imparting non formal education to slum children. But due to a few unavoidable obstacles, he is unable to carry on with his deed & drops it halfway. This breakdown of his effort strikes him hard and a seed of inspiration is sown - a seed of which is nurtured further as he grows up. Anchit while growing up learns more about the world and its problems by reading & interacting with various people and situations, and gets firmer that he ought to do something. In his college years Anchit learns the art of management and organization by involving himself in various extra curricular activities and different initiatives and somehow develops a liking for entrepreneurship. By the time Anchit gets out of his engineering college he is sure that he would not settle for a regular life where the only concern is to get a heavy paycheque instead would do something that makes a change, something that is important, challenging, and that finds him a purpose, something- something that gives him satisfaction to be alive. But the question persists - what is this something? Luckily this time he has an answer-Jaagriti! So soon after finding a mean to earn his bread, Anchit starts working on his project & decides to work for it after his office hours. The reason I emphasize so much on Anchit’s pursuit of knowing what he wants to do, is to show his desperation to find a platform. And because he didn’t find one for himself, he made sure that others are not deprived of it. So Jaagriti is not only an NGO to help underprivileged kids but as Anchit puts it “Jaagriti is also a tool to awaken the youth and provide them a platform to act”. Perhaps it is because this motive to enlighten the economically backward children and to awaken the youth that he named his initiative Jaagriti.

Inspiration, vision and passion are fine but for a set up to be a success what is required is an idea that clicks. The innovative idea that gave Jaagriti a kick-start was Anchit’s plan to take it online; in fact much of Jaagriti’s success is credited to a strong network that has been developed on internet. At this point it is crucial to mention that Anchit doesn’t even spend a penny to get this strong base of network. All he does is that he stays regular and makes a point that the activities of Jaagriti are constantly informed and updated to a wide spread mass through free internet services such as blog, Youtube, Picassa and e-mail groups etc. Anchit defiantly says “I don’t want to work in isolation. If our work is good then others must witness it, so that they are encouraged to associate with us or they replicate such work at more places.” Due to this constructive use of internet, Jaagriti has earned a wide mass reach, because of which, funds and volunteers (two issues which otherwise have lead many organizations to collapse) were never a big deal for Jaagriti. Apart from gaining popularity, internet services have also been Jaagriti’s bulletin board. Be it a requirement, an event notification or any information about an activity, every single detail is updated to all the associates just by a single click. In view of these advantages Anchit goes on describing internet as “Least expensive but best quality output.”

Once you are out in the sea, the tides would not always be in the direction you swim, at certain times you would have to swim against the tide to reach the shore. If you have started to believe that Anchit has been a lucky chap for whom situations have always been lubricated then let me clarify he’s had a fair share of friction in his pursuit. He had some hard instances in the beginning, when he was still figuring out how to be sure of funds, human resources, convincing adamant laborers to send their kids etc. But somehow not only his tasks, but all the tasks that were picked up by Jaagriti cleared the hurdles that were on the way and emerged victoriously. When asked about his biggest challenge Anchit says “The most difficult thing for me has been to handle my parents, they know that this is a good cause that I am working for, but still they are not convinced and want me to focus more on my career.” and when asked about the solution he devised for this problem he replies “Well this is one problem that remains unsolved.”

Now that we have understood extensively about the working of Anchit and his team, how do we see the concluding paragraph to be? The adjectives and appreciation that describe Anchit as a heroic figure, is perhaps what most of us would expect. But hang on when Anchit was asked what appreciation meant to him he said “I try and stay away from it simply because I don’t think I deserve it. Had I been the almighty I would have made it mandatory for everyone to indulge in an activity that’s noble. What I do I believe is my duty and is not something extraordinary.” And I completely agree to what Anchit says. In this concluding paragraph I’ll give a brief recap of reasons which made things possible for Anchit and you will follow that he is not a hero or anything of that sort. By now it must have been clear that Anchit possessed certain managerial and organizational skills that he had picked up in his college years; it was his liking for entrepreneurship that helped him in his endeavors. Jaagriti for him in a way is an enterprise; he took a social problem as a management problem. So he is simply catering to his hobby by indulging in something that uses his abilities- So by what means is that heroic? In fact the whole team of Jaagriti is the same - the one who teaches music is doing so because of his interest in music so is the case with the one teaching dance and every one else. All of them do it because their qualities and abilities are used to accomplish the results. Now the argument that they are bringing a positive change to the society and thus are heroes do not stand because more than the positive change they bring to the world it is the inner change that they experience is what gets them going. E.g. Anchit groomed as an entrepreneur by taking the first hand experience of the real situations. He has become better with decisions, can take larger risks and finds himself more confident and optimistic than ever before.

The good that this young lot has done is that they have also made others benefit from their talent. The Mahatmas and Teresas of our time need to be this way; they need not be exceptionally different creatures of the only kind but be very regular people who bring change to society only because it helps them to bring a change in their own selves. The team of Jaagriti reminds - that all of us can do our bit to bring a change to the society, and not consider it as a sacrifice but as an opportunity to groom ourselves. All we need to ask is a question “Are we the change, we want?” and then work, in order to get an affirmative answer.

- Abhishek Kukreja