Spreading Peace and Love in their Golden Jubilee Year – Mae De Pobres

19th July 2012 - Mae De Pobres school is situated in Nuvem, in South Goa. It is one amongst the oldest schools attached to the Nuvem church. Children from the surrounding villages of the school come to study here as it is the closest and one of the best schools around to study especially for the underprivileged and ecomonically backward families. Mrs. Vilma Henriques, the principal is a very dynamic and forward thinking educator believing in non formal education to be the way for a complete and holistic development for the children.

Soraiya Moraes talking about the tsunami
in 2011

We conducted the 1000 Crane Project at the school for the 7^th standard students. Soraiya Moraes, our new volunteer took the lead to start the workshop by giving the children a background of our work and then moving on to talking to them about the tsunami, using a slide show showing them pictures from the tusnami in Japan, explaining to them the reason why they need to know about it as they live so close to the ocean. We then gave them a short presentation on What is Nuclear Power? Its hazards, and the different other forms of alternative power that the can be generated.

telling the students about how the radioactive gas gets
accumulated in the atmosphere.

We finally connected all this to the story of Sadako Sasaki and the thousand paper cranes, post which we asked them to paint.

the students were well prepared for the
workshop.

What was amzing is that most of these children were aware of the workshop and had been prepared by their teachers for the same. This is the first school we have worked with that has shown such proactiveness towards our workshops and it was a complete pleasure to work with the children.

They were a very excited lot but also a confident group because they were prepared with their messages of peace and hope. Of course, most of the children drew the Dove, since we know this bird as symbol of peace, but, it was not an issue, since the message and the emotion is what is important with each T-shirt, not the image.

Mae De Pobres, after a long time is a school trying its best with its limited resources to make the children complete human being, and we at Tara Trust always are encouraged to give more to institutions like them because the freedom to explore and help the children increases. It is also their Golden Jubiless year so we shall be helping the school with more activities which will teach their children empowerment and confidence.

Sophie Ziekcle, our newest volunteer and a student of environmental studies helped us with the documentation of the workshops and photography, alongwith just being their as a helping hand. Nancy Mascarenhas, our office manager once again was perfect in her arrangement with the materials, t-shirts and paints. We are growing into a great team and like the Crane, we are getting more confident to fly further with our plans and ideas.