Hello  friends  –  Greetings from the children of  HCL! and please accept our sincere apologies for having missed the 31 March update, mainly because the back-to-back activities these past few months kept us on our toes.

We celebrated our 7^th birthday on June 1^st – so please wish us the best and then get set to be updated with all that has happened in the past 6 months – so happy reading 🙂

Some assorted activities during the period

Tuitions & Library sessions – the attendance at the library continues to grow from year to year. Now with more time available in the summer and due to holidays, the area of impact of the library has increased further, to cover a total of 12-13 villages & hamlets. About 80 children from class 3 – 12 attend the library daily and the strength increases to more than 110- 120 on the days of activities.

While this is a very encouraging sign, space and resource people, to keep so many kids fruitfully occupied, are becoming inadequate.   We are now looking at ways and means to make the library available to the children closer to their villages to lessen the load here.

Playground development – The playground has now become a place for many activities including the annual function. To take precautions against the sun and to prevent damage to the standing crops of others from frequent incursions to fetch balls, an arrangement of netting and shading has been made. Apart from taekwondo practice, the covered area has now become an area for other activities and workshops as well.

The playground being cleared and in use

Exposure trip to Delhi – One of the highlights of this period has been the trip to New Delhi from 04 – 08 Jan 2023. 13 girls & 11 boys from Class 9 – 12 accompanied by 6 chaperones made up the tour party.  Metores Trust coordinated with the sponsors and made all the arrangements in Delhi. Make my Trip sponsored the accommodation and the local travel in Delhi and other well wishers contributed towards the entrance tickets, the PVR movie experience and all meals.  Friends from the army arranged for a full day visit to Rashtrapati Bhawan , India Gate and National War Memorial.

The travel on board Shatabdi Express from Kathgodam to Delhi, the luxury bus for local travel and the luxurious accommodation at a star-category hotel was a first for all the children and some of the chaperones.

The visit covered Qutab Minar &  Humayun’s tomb, a picnic Lunch at Lodhi Garden, Gurdwara Bangla Sahib, Sarojininagar market and Dilli Haat, Rajghat, a Metro ride, Old Delhi Food walk,  Jama Masjid, National Rail Museum and a movie at PVR, Saket with in-seat  dinner.

The friends from the army had arranged for a full day visit to witness the changing- of-Presidential guard and Rashtrapati Bhavan and its museum in the morning followed by a visit to Red Fort, India Gate and National War Memorial to witness the wreath laying ceremony.

The children had an amazing experience. They found the trip to be an eye-opener to have seen and experienced crowds, the glitz and glamour of the big city and most of them really appreciated the serene atmosphere of the gurudwara. The Metro ride was a great experience for the children who took a ride from Patel Chowk to Chawri Bazaar and learnt how to use the metro services.

They also say they have learned a lot by way of, handling themselves in hotels and such places, crossing busy roads, negotiating the metro and interacting with the friendly and welcoming hosts wherever they went. 

Delhi Tour

Carleton College, USA. –  In a first for us, the library hosted students from Carleton College, USA for a two week community engagement part of an off-campus semester in India.

Angela and Nick, two liberal arts students stayed at the village homestays, attended some sessions as part of the library outreach and worked at the library.  In their company the children learnt about their families and life in the US, read books, learnt songs and dances and played games.

Overall it was a very good exposure for the kids as well as the interning students and we hope we can organize more such interactions in the coming years.

Angela & Nick at the library and with their host families

Taekwondo sessions –  These have continued every Sunday in the newly developed play area on the recently procured taekwondo mats.  Now there is more space to train and also to learn new games with proper rules. Kamal, the trainer has a tough time and spends more than 5 hours with the children during each session. These had to be suspended for a month to accommodate theatre and dance preparations for the annual day and have now resumed with even more josh.

Library outreach – This continued at the Primary School at Dhona, which we supported by way of a para-teacher and exposure visits by the interning students from Carleton College.

Library Outreach at GPS Dhona

Holi celebrations – This year holi was celebrated at the library on 5th March with the usual fun and gaiety.  The village women came to the library and along with the children, sang and danced to their hearts content .  Angela and Nick, the students from Carleton College, also participated in the celebrations and saw how we celebrate the festival of colours here and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.   

Holi

Alliance for Science – our old friends Ashutoshji, Aarti and Ashish visited again after the lockdown and conducted a two day workshop this time on Astronomy & Social Science.

Through hand crafted models the children learnt about the earth and its relation with the sun and moon and their rotations and path around the sun . Using these models, in an easily understandable role play method they learnt about night & day and the monthly and seasonal cycles.

Workshop on Astronomy

The Social Science session was a very interesting introduction to Gandhiji in which groups of children made a cardboard model of the mahatma with the charkha. The  session dealt with his approach to education and development, in which the children did a group exercise on Gandhiji’s philosophy on education and the impact of development and their assessment on the present day systems. The write-ups by the kids was indeed an eye-opener.The session ended with the children crafting paper bags made of old newspapers.

Workshop on Social Science

We also took this opportunity to host 10 shiksha sahayaks from Aarohi, an NGO in Peora to learn from the visitors and try to replicate these techniques while teaching in their areas of work. We hope to be able to host more such groups to spread such teaching methods.   

Samarth – conducted a week long programme with a group of children in written & spoken English. They picked up some skills and have since been in touch with him online.  We plan to hone these skills further with more engagement by Samarth in the immediate future. 

Varun ( 10 – 20 May)– who had visited last year came again for 10 days and this time taught the  kids story-telling, creative writing,  dance and songs in different languages. While the middle school children learnt Bengali songs, the older kids learnt songs in multiple foreign languages, which they now sing competently to the surprise and utter amusement of our visitors.  These were also showcased during the annual day function.

Varun is very popular with the children and they look forward to his visits each summer.

Varun conducts his sessions

Annual day (4th June 2023) –

Theatre & dance practice started in right earnest every weekend from the end of March.  This time the children insisted on participating in both theatre and dance items! As a result Nidhi and Jayesh had a tough time short listing scripts and choreographing suitable dances to be able to include as many children as possible. 

Shreya, a young volunteer, spent a month with us and trained the youngest kids, termed “XS group”, in a bollywood action song medley and practiced with the older ones in song and dance during her stay. She played an important part in the preparations for the annual day.

All the efforts culminated in a very professional 2 hour long performance on 4th June. The playground area was spruced up with a stage and sound system and suitable seating arrangements, lending a very festive atmosphere.

The programme started at 11 AM and more than 200 community members and 60 invitees attended the function and really enjoyed themselves. They were all praise for the competence and efforts put in by the children, with the “XS group” receiving the loudest applause.  

Prizes were also awarded to the meritorious students for good results in their final examinations in February/March 2023.  

Annual Day 2023

Interactions and documentation of village information –  Geeta and Rajeev, two close friends from Ahmedabad spent about 20 days in May-June.  They interacted with older members of the community and gathered information about Seem village, its history, traditional songs & dances as well as information on medicininal plants and herbs.    

The children were formed into four groups and were briefed on the techniques for recording and collating the required data. They then went around the village and documented the information under different heads.  Geeta and Rajeev now plan to put together all the information into a suitable document, which we will share with you in the future.

Apart from gaining valuable insights on survey methods, collecting and collating information, the children (and us!) learnt a great deal about the history, culture and the other aspects of our village and many new facets of them.

Village survey and documentation

Clearwater Analytics-  As part of their CSR engagement with us, Clearwater Analytics, a Noida based accounting services software provider, visited Seem on 9^th & 10^th June. On 9^th evening they conducted a talent search and also enjoyed a song & dance presentation. All the performers received a certificate of participation.

The next day they organised a very professionally conducted cricket match and other outdoor games for different groups of children in the new playground. There was a lot of fun and laughter and stiff competition among both the organizers and the participants. For most of the girls, playing cricket was a first-of-its-kind experience.

The winners and runners up were presented with trophies and medals. A hearty lunch and snacks were also served to all the participants and visitors.

This was a very good start and seeing the enthusiasm of the children the CA team are looking at a greater and more meaningful long term engagement with HCL.

Clearwater Analytics visit

Visitors –

Radhika & Vaibhavi – visted the library on 29 May and interacted with the children. Radhika read out her newly published book – “Gol Gol Gappas”.

Library trainers – Anandya Foundation, who, as Angelic Foundation, had helped set up the library in 2016, deputed two of their library trainers, Geeta and Prathibha, to visit us. They did some fun story telling sessions with the children and guided our young library support team of Anita and Rita in making characters in story books come alive. Anandya has also agreed to send such trainers more frequently so that our resource persons gain more skills.

Team from Manzil – on 21^st June a 22 member team from Manzil, a Delhi based NGO working with youth visited the library. Together with our children they spent a fun filled afternoon of games, theatre, song and dance culminating in a guided tour of the village.

Interaction with Manzil Team

Sonal visits again – The children were thrilled to see Sonal, whose visit was kept a secret and they whole heartedly welcomed her. We’ll share the details of her activities with the children in our next update.

so Goodbye for now and we leave you with these endearing smiles-