YES ! It is all about an ACT, a MOVE, a DREAM, a GAME, a TOY that fulfills life and brings JOY

Day 2 began with excited and curious looks in all the children. We could already see some bonding happening amongst the kids which was a good sign.

Ragavendra from Sparsha Trust, Bangalore, Ramzan and Mahesh from Mark Fernandes Memorial High School, Goa, having their morning chat.

We started with the YES – Youth Empowerment Seminar which Art of Living practitioners are going to conduct for the children for the next 6 days. The first 2 days are introductory sessions of 3 hour each and the next 4 days shall be 2 hour sessions. The objective of this seminar is to bring about awareness of self, community and environment. The practitioners Sanchita, Kiran and Manu really made what could probably be a very heavy program into a fun and games workshop, where they got the children really engaged and awake for the day apart from creating challenges where they had to start to interact more with each other.

They ended today’s session with a some somber but essential exercises completing the exercise of understand the 4 essential sources of energy – FOOD, SLEEP, BREATH and PEACEFUL LIVING or MEDITATIVE LIVING.

A game of Tom & Jerry, where you need to know your partner and then introduce him/her to the group

Ramzan introducing Darshan

Kiran inside the circle motivating the group to speak up

Surya Namaskar to bring the body to balance and calm the mind 

Sanchita having a good laugh with the boys on a joke they made in an exercise

Its all about balancing your body, mind and soul with a SMILE

By the time this session ended it was noon and lunch time, the children had mixed feelings about the morning, as it was all fun till the games were happening but many were not happy to stay silent and quite because of the immense excitement that they have.

The afternoon was a BLAST – Shabari Rao and Maitri who conduct movement workshops with children across various ages apart from being Shabari being a trainer and Maitri a psychologist. They had been briefed by us about the project and its theme on WATER earlier, so it was really lovely that they came prepared with exercises which related to the subject.

Shabari making all the right moves to motivate the girls 

SWISH! SWISH! SWISH! Maitri with the boys making sounds of a waterfall

Kumar enjoying the PIST! PIST! PIST! of a shower

Pooja going GRRRR! GRRRR! GRRRR! due to cold water

Ragavendra enjoying his time in his water filled bath-tub

It was really really nice how they managed to encourage and motivate every child to create, think, concentrate and participate in each exercise, which ranged from actions, sounds, words, enacting, role playing and also teamwork.

The group working on some situations

Its all about spontaneous expression

Shabari and Maitri also come for the next 2 days as their workshops need a minimum of 8 hours to come close to their objectives through the workshop.

The action packed day did not end yet for the kids. The children were all cordially invited by the Director of IIITB – Professor Sadagopan to his office. He was happy to meet them all, getting an introduction from every child and then he asked a few questions to the group.

Prof.Sadagopan meeting the kids and welcoming them personally to IIITB

Mahesh to the Director of IIITB - "Sir, I am happy to meet you"

All hands go up when asked who wants to study at IIITB in the future

Our team with Prof Sadagopan - Director IIITB, Mr Ramachandran - Administration Officer, Prof Prasanna

The children were awestruck because they did not ever think a BIG MAN like him would be interested in meeting them. And of course when the kids were asked how many of them would like to come to study at IIITB, we had half the group raise their hands. But, truly, once again we have not had such great hospitality or attention anywhere till now.

Our evening plans of beginning with the introduction of the topic of the camp had to be skipped because we were introduced to a student of the institute who is working on a game project called Inverse Chess.

Deepa, Ashwini and Jyoti figuring out their next move

Anuj passionately and patiently explaining the rules of the game 

The boys trying their hand at Inverse Chess - Manjunath, Ragavendra and Kumar

The kids were all taken to the BOARD ROOM of the institute where Anuj, the student explained the games and some kids who had never played chess in their lives got an opportunity play the game. We all know how Chess can be addictive… and so only because Anuj’s computer hung we ended the session else we were worried the kids would stay their all night.

The finale of the evening was a short talk on ROBOTICS by Shubhashree. Subhashree explained in very basic layman’s terms to the children about engineering, computers embedded systems and then introduced the kids to LEGO ROBO. The fascination in the kids was nothing less than if they were in Disneyland.

Subhashree introducing LEGO ROBO to the group

The children trying to control the sensitive robot

They came out learning that computers have their own languages and the alphabets in the computer language are numerical 0 and 1.

Highlight of the day – it was Aruna, one of the kids from Sparsha Trust’s birthday. All day the girl was quite shy to let us know what she wanted to do, but, we wanted a littled celebration, so we got her a cake and surprised her after dinner.

Happy Birthday Aruna !!! 

It already feels like a family…and it is amazing as all day we did not see one child not SMILING.

Sophie was told by one girl from the group – “I have been to other camps and programs, but this is the BEST of all” 

Language is no barrier….It’s the Spirit that matters…

We started our third 10-day art camp under the 1000 Crane Project today at the International Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore.

The main institute block of IIITB

We have children from our support school project Mark Fernandes Memorial High School in Calangute, North Goa, who travelled with Sophie, Lina and Abhishegh by bus to reach this morning. Initially there was to 6 students from the school, two dropped out for reasons that make us feel we need to educate the parents more than the children!

The children from Bangalore are from a trust called Sparsha. It runs shelters for destitute and abandoned children on the outskirts of Bangalore.

It’s a great bunch and also a challenging bunch. This is the first time that we have two groups coming in where the common language between them is English – but, the irony is that English is not their first language either.

The first half of the day went in settling down in the hostels of the IIITB campus.

The Womens Block - we all have single rooms here, but we are sharing it :) 

The Boys Hostel - they have been given a common large room, as the no of men are more on campus !

We began our camp by a tour around the institute. Shubhashree, the lab incharge and administration staff of the institute took the children and us for a tour.

The Reception of the institute

The Institute Building and its Green Design

Subhashree with the children in the Main Classroom of the institute used for special programs

The children with Subhashree admiring the modern corridors of the institute

We took the children to Fields of View one of the Incubators on campus to show them the possibilities of a future enterprise and how a college supports even such ventures

IIITB is one of the most modern technology institutes of India. But, one of the most open minded institutes as well. When we set out to aspire bringing the 1000 Crane Project to Bangalore, we approached institutes like IIM etc which have high acclaim in the Indian education world, but the response was very shallow or nothing at all. But, when we wrote to IIITB, we had the most prompt response. And the facilities provided to the children are of the highest standard.

After the tour, the volunteers, Sophie, Lina and Abhishegh began with some basic exercises “To Get To Know Each Other” , using one of our favorite party games, we challenged the children to dance, sing, enact, make sounds, basically get comfortable through fun.

We then distributed the ART BAGS – its always like the best Christmas present for them as they least expect it J  We then had them paint the bags for each other.

The evening session was the best of all – A Football Workshop with volunteers from DREAM A DREAM Foundation – Manjunath and Revanna – through basic football and life skill exercises they challenged the children eventually to break free from the language barrier and work as a team to save their ship from sinking!

If we look at the group we have – when it comes to the kids, the languages known by the Bangalore group is Kannada and basic English, the kids from Goa know Hindi, basic English and Konkani with little Kannada – the volunteers – Sophie and Lina are German with English knowledge…Abhishegh is a Malayali with fluency in English and can survive with his Hindi and Kannada skills…and myself who is happy if its all English or Hindi but put in a tight situation I can speak Kannada and Marathi…..But, even though there are no proper overlaps – we achieved a great many tasks today, with the final creation of the pyramid which went to prove that all that matters is Spirit, language is just a tool.

Where there is a will, There is a WAY...

Today...The T-shirts...all 1000 of them....were Packed ! Sealed ! and Shipped to JAPAN....

It all started in May 2011, when a group of our volunteers decided they wanted to do something for the children of Japan who had been victims of the tsunami and earthquake earlier in March 2011. Not only did this natural disaster disrupt their lives but it brought on bigger danger to the communities of Fukushima, when the Diachi Nuclear Power Plant got damaged.

We wanted to do something for the kids who suffered in 2011 and we also wanted to tell this story to our children in Goa and other projects, to make them aware of such disasters and also help instill a spirit of sensitivity and concern for other human beings.

We started the 1000 T-shirt Painting drive.

We did not know where we’d get the 1000 T-shirts from because we are not a large organization with huge networks or even famous for that matter… but friends came forward to help and support and LEVIS generously sent us a 1000 T-shirts to paint !

We did not know how much of paint will be needed for the painting all 1000, but a bottle here, a tube of paint from there and we managed to have enough resources to provide the children to paint.

So, we started the T-shirt painting drive in October 2011 with the first 1000 Crane art-camp, conducted nearly 15 satellite workshops in village schools of Goa and some other organisations, and the T-shirts were all painted and done by early 2013.

How do we send them now to Japan? Who will sponsor it? When will we be able to send it?

MANY QUESTIONS…

Meanwhile the work on other projects had to be handled….with permanent team of 2 and aspirations which need atleast a team of 12, but an amazing set of very passionate and dedicated volunteers !!! We stayed hopeful.

And then March 29^th, 2013 – it was almost like God heard our prayers….I am talking to an audience of designers, artist, entrepreneurs in a forum where I was presenting our journey and concept about the 1000 Crane Project . In the my last 3 sentences of the presentation, I mentioned it as a passing statement – “So now we are ready with the 1000 T-shirts and are looking for a sponsor to send them to Japan” ….and there in the audience, I heard a voice saying “DONE ! I will help you”

That’s it…. We quickly got together an packed and ironed each T-shirt nicely and as professionally possible into neat polybags.

Thank You Rahul Narvekar, our sponsor from New Delhi and Thank You DHL and Thank You LEVIS.

Thank you Katha, Sophie Morbe, Nancy Mascarenhas, Abhishegh Menon, Lina Talke, Sarika Ugar, Kerstin Temmel, Bea Hajek, Laura Dresse, Lotta Mantheny, Johanna Eckmuller, Hanni Schmidt, Soraiya Moraes and all the volunteers who have been a part of this project from its inception.

With the help of our friend and supporter - Chikako Yamamoto who is now based in Tokyo, we shall be able to distribute it amongst the groups of the children not only in Fukushima but other parts of Japan where the tragedy was so grave that people are still suffering due to the aftermath. 

The 1000 Crane Project is now a permanent initiative of Tara Trust, and using the crane as a symbol of flight, we aspire to help the underprivileged children we work with to travel to other parts of India for a 10 day camp, to be motivated to better their lives and also feel important and valuable.