Tuesday 18 December 2012

The Cranes continue to fly …at the Children’s Book Fest 2012, Goa, India


As a part of the Children’s Book Fest that was held on the 15th and 16th of December 2012, in Goa. We were invited to conduct a story-telling session and a workshop.

As we still believe that there are many many more children that we need to reach out with the story of Sadako Sasaki, and her innocent cry for peace in the world. We decided to take this opportunity to tell her story and have some more T-shirts painted for the children back in Japan.

We had children from our support home Care and Compassion, Panjim, children from the group Happy Karma Now, in Calangute, and children from the Mobile Outreach Program of Bookworm, Goa.
The 16th of December session began with our workshops, and we had a full audience. The entire center stage was full of children. Katha, our founder read the story out to the children, and we also explained it for some of them in Hindi.

The stage was already set for the T-shirt Painting workshops, as the walk-in to the stage were already flagged with the old painted T-shirts from the previous workshops, so when the children we asked to paint, they had a direction.


To make it easier for the younger ones, we gave them cut-outs of the crane to make it easier. The older children came up with some really nice messages for their T-shirts.



We thank Ms Sujata Noronha and the team of Bookworm for inviting us for this event. It was a larger platform for us to tell our story and get support for the cause of the 1000 Crane Project. Also, thanks to Sophie, Sarika and Davide, our volunteers who were there to help and support us.
The 1000 Crane Project is now moving to its second phase, where we are trying to connect with a children’s organization in Japan, who we can send these T-shirts and also a sponsor who will help us ship the T-shirts to Japan.

Thursday 4 October 2012

It's the final Countdown

We are within sight of the finish line…We move on to the next phase of the 1000 crane project… We start documenting the t-shirts painted and getting them ready for shipment.




We conducted the Last and final painting t-shirt 1000 Crane Workshop at St. Pius X Convent High School, Orlim, South Goa. 



This is a great school catering to the needs to the children of Orlim and the neighboring villages, and we had a lovely bright group of youngsters who knew about the tsunami and the destruction it caused in Japan, they understood the concepts and it was a very interactive session..It was a fun session..



We worked with 84 children from class 7. The school is absolutely beautiful…The property on which the school stands was donated a Goan family who migrated to Portugal…The Presentation Nuns who run the institution have still maintained the original ancestral Portuguese house and run their primary section from there.

Nancy, Bea, Kirsten and Soraiya our volunteers conducted the programme in two separate batches…They were able to inspire them to paint their own T-shirts. Bea and Kirsten our new volunteers had a lovely time interacting with the children…

All of them made it a point to write a message for the children in Japan, apart from painting their own beautiful cranes on it, and a lot of them displayed their love for Goa and the environment of Goa through their t-shirts.


A number of them also wrote messages of peace and hope, and love for the children in Japan.

Tuesday 18 September 2012

With Vidhya Bhuvan School we cross the 900 mark...

The Vidhya Bhuvan School in Comba, Margao was set up by the Konkani Bhasha Mandal.

Konkani is the language of the people of Goa and also the Official language of the State. The organization aims is to bring about speedy development of Konkani language, literature and culture thereby promoting the cultural unity of Goa.

 

The School has around a 100 students from grade 1 to grade 5…The school is managed by a very enthusiastic and motivated group of teachers…and at the helm the principal Mr Anant Agni has a keen desire to encourage learning and promote the all round development of his students……

Besides the 1000 crane project…Tara trust volunteers will start conducting programmes for the children once a week…The principal was keen to start with social based programmes as some of the children are first generation learners and come from lower economic homes..

Nancy and Soraiya the Tara Volunteers were amazed and very happy to meet young enthusiastic and keen young minds…Our group of 54 children were well mannered and very keen on learning as much as they could…They were very positive and attentive during the entire presentation and painted their t-shirts beautifully…The wantes to know more about the 1000 crane story and Japan..

 

Simultaneously we also ran a small painting program for grades 1 to 4…What a treat that was…

 

We received positive feedback from the students..They are very keen that we return to conduct more programmes with them and they loved the program and the stories told…The teachers also gave us very positive feedback..

 

Saturday 8 September 2012

Reached the 845 mark....


April 6th and another 1000 crane workshop completed....

Inching closer...

                                                

 

Nestled in the beautiful village of Benaulim (our home turf) is St.Aloysius school...

 

A hop skip and jump from Tara Trust office...

 

St.Aloysius High School, which is located in the Holy Trinity Parish Centre, was transferred in 2002 from Majorda, where it was run by a private party. It is now managed by the Diocesan Society of Education. The School has pre-primary, primary and secondary sections.

 

Our largest group of energetic young minds, around 125 of them....Our Tara volunteers Nancy, Nisha and Soraiya had the arduous task of coordinating the event...The principal Mr. Eric Fernandes and his staff were cooperative and helped when they could...

 

 

The children couldn’t wait to begin paintings after the presentation..Once we began shouts for more colours were heard...They were keen on painting messages of peace and love from Goa...They had a zillion questions like “Miss, can I paint a Goan scenery so the children know what Goa looks like” to “Are the children in Japan really going to wear our T-shirts”.....a lot of hidden talent came to the fore which was displayed in the t-shirts that we collected...

 

 

The children had a blast and As always our programmes ended on a high....



Dependable Nancy perfect in her arrangement with the materials, t-shirts and paints but then our camera stops working...Nisha to the rescue with her i-phone...

Monday 30 July 2012

Inching closer ....1000 crane project reaches 651 with Infant Jesus Academy ,Velsao


 
26th July 2012 – Infant Jesus Academy is situated near the beautiful Velsao beach, in South Goa. It was established in the year 1980 largely for the underprivileged children of velsao. A large percentage of these children come from the neighbouring states and this programme was a great exposure for them.

Mrs. Lizette Athayde, the principal and the staff of the school were helpful and keen to know more about our work. 




We conducted the 1000 Crane Project at the school for the 6th standard students around 51 young bright and keen minds. We gave the children a background of our work and spoke to them about the tsunami and talked about the alternatives to the use of Nuclear power. We finally connected all this to the story of Sadako Sasaki and the thousand paper cranes.
The children were very responsive and remained attentive and alert during the entire session.

Children using the stencils to paint
  

 We provided the children with paper stencils of the cranes, to aid them in their attempt to draw cranes. In order to further encourage the creativity of the children we asked them to paint their own personal message of peace, love for the children of Fukushima on the T-shirts.