Day 1 - Introduction to Care Compassion and a Voice at TISS, Mumbai

Finally, the second 1000 Crane Project, art camp started today, amidst a lot of excitement as well as curiosity amongst the children.

The children from Care N Compassion arrived with Nancy, my colleague, early morning. They go off at the famous Victoria Terminus Station, and experienced their first Mumbai taxi ride. It was amazing to watch them nearly falling out of the taxi staring at the sky scrapers and the city as a whole! It was almost like bringing them to Disneyworld.

The campus of TISS was also a surprise, its greenery, clean roads and the university feel had the kids asking many questions, like, “Can we come and study here too? “

The girls from VOICE, Mumbai, drove down from Borivali, north Mumbai to Chembur, East of Mumbai, and for them it was as good as travelling to a new city and see new people and new things. All dressed in their best finery, walked thru the old campus to the new campus, only lost in the greenery and the buildings on campus.

By the time we began the day, it was nearly noon, so we did a quick round of introductions. Then, we played a name game, so that all of us as a group get to know each other by our names.

We also then created the day buddies, and each of them painted a bag for their buddy, which is now their art bag full of materials required for their entire week of activities.

We also had them exchange noted about each other, and write them in their diaries, after which they had to come up and introduce their buddies to the rest of the group. 

It was really nice to watch kids, who were total strangers about an hour ago, sitting together having a little conversations about themselves.

Post Lunch, we had an interesting session with Surendra Singh ( Bunty ), he is the founder of his creative design company called BLueGod, has been an adman for a long time. So, I had invited him to work with the children on various creative writing skills.

Thru a series of presentations and games, Bunty, very nicely taught the children the art of using the right words at the right time. 

He conducted a session of Mad Ads to teach the children how to create their own commercial. It was fun, as we had our enthusiastic volunteers, Renuka from Care N Compassion, Laxmi from Voice, Victor from Khula Asaman, Nancy and Laura from Tara Trust, also participate as a team.

For this session, we also had a group of 7 children come from a nearby slum school, which is supported by one of Khula Asaman’s volunteer called Victor.

In all it was session, that made them CARE for their team/partner, solve every problem with COMPASSION, and give each of their ideas a VOICE !