Empowerment…Enjoyment…Entertainment

The Kids and volunteers with the AOL teachers - Kiran, Sanchita & Manu

Today was the last workshop day of the YES program by AOL. It was a very nice ending to the program, as the children prepared like a short cultural program for which they literally ran from one class to another class of the institute inviting the teachers and students alike for the same. It was a part of their task for preparing the program.

The students from IIITB were the guests for the cultural program

Manjunath reciting a poem to the audience

Gangam Style performed by the boys

Kiran and the boys enjoying the after party

The good aspect of this program was that through life experiences an basic exercises the children actually learnt a little about how to overcome their fears and insecurity, the importance of expressing oneself, the importance of being oneself, respect for time and discipline and many more short life sessions.

After an exciting party, we were joined by Digu, an environmental professional working with the sustainable development consulting arm of Infosys, who brought 2 movies on what is happening to the climate of our planet and why and what can we do to save it.

Digu talking to the children about his experiences

The highlight of his one hour session was the fascination the children had when they got to know he works at Infosys, cause ever since they have visited the Infosys campus, even the boys who aspired to be in the IPS, are now saying they want to work at Infosys, so to meet and spend time with an Infosys employee was a dream.

Post lunch we began work on a collective exercise of building an Aquarium from recycled materials, this is an exercise we are doing to help children understand the importance of aquatic life and the need to keep our water bodies clean so they can survive.

Sophie and group 1 thinking of ideas for their aquarium

Sophie helping Andrea and Pooja out with some doubts by looking it up on the internet

The concept drawing of the aquarium as a part of the project planning

Sophie’s plan for the aquarium was really taken with interest by the children and she was Queen of the Aquarium world for the afternoon.

The children also had an experience of what it is to be in front of a video camera. The IIITB media center in-charge, Swati and Subha came to our workplace and interviewed each child trying to capture all their amazing moments.

Swati and Subha capturing the experiences of the children on camera

Its Day 7, and there are already mixed feelings setting, in one way we have become very comfortable here at IIITB and feel we have always been here, and in another way it seems like all the days are gone and we wanted to do so many more things.