Greetings friends and warm wishes from HCL as we enter our 10^th year.  The quarter has been a busy one with lots of activities and events – so here goes:

Activities during the quarter

Annual Board Results – all the 7 students from the library, who appeared for the board examinations have successfully passed, with Bhumika, securing 84% in total and 97% marks in Maths in Class 12. She is joining the BSc Hons (Maths) course at Banasthali Vidhyapith in July.

Past students return – the past students are on their summer vacations these days so they are an integral part of the library activities. While some actively participated in the annual day function, a few join in mentoring the younger children attending the library. 

Sonal visits – Sonal made her annual visit to the library for a month till  29^th Apr. As usual it didn’t take her any time to plunge into all the activities from science, nature study & bird watching, to collaborating with Samarth in giving a different dimension to his ongoing art workshops.

We are grateful that volunteers like her take time out each year to spend time with us and enrich the children’s experiences.  

Sonal with the children

Visit to Lakshmi Ashram – Sonal led a team of 5 older girls on an overnight visit to Lakshmi Ashram, Kausani, which houses 45 girls following the Gandhian lifestyle They grow and cook their own food, maintain the ashram and then attend the local government schools. This was a very good exposure for these girls from travelling on their own using public transport to staying in an ashram setting and gained a very different type of exposure.

We hope to be able to arrange more such visits for the children in the coming years.

Sonal & team visits Lakshmi Ashram

Varun – visited after two years from 18 – 25 Apr and as always, the library and its surroundings were echoing with children singing new songs in different languages. He was able to get them to develop, write and enact a song & dance drama based on their day-to-day games and experiences in the village – a totally new experience for the kids who were taken in by his infectious enthusiasm and came out with a really forceful presentation.

Varun conducts his workshop

Tuitions, Yoga & Taekwondo – continued throughout the quarter with some breaks for the preparations for the annual day. The summer months also bring an inflow of cousins and siblings staying in the cities and they are now as much a part of the library as their cousins in the village.

Yoga/taekwondo and science experiments

Art Workshop – Samarth continued with this initiative, with the younger cohort showing great promise. He has now started using their developed skills in other areas as well – so the children added art to the puppetry workshop & the nature vidya programme. The art group also put up very good art-based games and participatory art stations during the annual day function.

from the art-based workshop

Nature Vidya – This continued on a weekly basis with a group of 10 middle school kids. Rita & Anita have now become very adept and are able to conduct the programme in Shruthi’s absence as well. The children go on nature walks, study the environment and the surrounding flora & fauna and discuss their observations. They showcased their learnings at the Annual day.

Nature Vidya

WORKSHOPS

Puppetry – Ramlalji, a fourth-generation puppeteer, based in Dehradun, conducted a workshop from 16 – 21 May. He did a show for the children and then taught them to make different types of puppets using readily available materials. They then worked in groups to develop their own stories, which they presented in the form of puppet show. Samarth assisted with his painting and modelling inputs in making the puppets.

Most of the stories were topical and showed how the children’s skills & thought processes are changing over the years – they are becoming more and more conscious of their surroundings and able to use these art, song & theatre and nature-based skills as a medium to share their stories. This was very evident in all the performances put up during the annual day.

Puppetry workshop

Football – Vihaan, a young friend, on vacation after his first year of college, conducted a football workshop over two days. On the first day, he taught the children the basic rules and various skills and on the second day conducted 5-a-side matches for all age groups. The trainees really enjoyed themselves and showed off their acquired skills, stamina and competitiveness during the matches.  Trophies were awarded to the winners, best player, most prolific scorer and fair play. All this was followed up by a well-deserved snack and cold drinks.

Football with Vihaan

Dramebaaz – an offshoot of Manzil, an organization in Delhi that works with children from less privileged areas, was invited to conduct a workshop for our children. A team of three members worked with different groups across ages.

Theatre- This group learned aspects of street theatre and then developed a “nukkad natak” based on their experiences in the village and surroundings on issues regarding cleanliness, preservation of nature, migration and sale of land.

Music – another group learned basics of vocal music and picked up a variety of songs.

Dance – two groups of children were taught dance with the younger lot doing a fun Bollywood dance and the older ones a very energetic bhangra number.

Team Dramebaaz in action

Science workshop – Ashutoshji, Arti and Gaurav from Alliance for Science conducted a science workshop from 5 – 7^th June.  They worked with children from class 3 – 10 teaching basic scientific concepts through very interesting models made out of waste and locally available materials. The children learnt how to make 18 working models and displayed & explained these to the visitors at the annual day function.

Science Workshop

Franscesca – a very recent acquaintance, who has backpacked from her home in Italy to India and back via Marco Polo’s land route, spent a few days in the library while revisiting India.  She travels with her stories, which are captured in a travelling exhibition of prints of her paintings based on her journey through the different countries along the route. 

The children (and we), were awed by the distances and places she had covered and her interaction with different communities & lifestyles. They asked her many questions on her fears, challenges and experiences. Some of the elder kids already seem to have decided to travel like her in the future!

The discussions led to her teaching the kids how to make pasta and sauce from scratch – a cookery session ensued, with all the participants enjoying freshly made pasta.

Painting workshop – being an accomplished self-made artist, she then conducted a painting workshop with a group of kids and explained the use of colour, texture, effects etc.

Franscesca interacts with the children

Annual Day (08 June) – This year we modified the format for the annual day with the idea of showcasing the children’s learnings during the year in addition to a set of group performances.

‘Baal mela’ was set up with different stalls for the Science models, Art works, Nature Vidya, Puppetry and games. Groups of children assisted by our ever-ready volunteers and facilitators, managed their stalls and showcased their acquired skills.

So, while some of them displayed their science models and explained the principles while being quizzed by the visitors and parents, another group showed them how them use paints and dabble with colours with block printing, thread painting & brush work. A third group quizzed the visitors on bird calls and names, with gifts for the winners and the fourth one displayed their puppet making and puppetry skills in a much-appreciated show.

The games group had the parents play games developed by the children.

‘Performances’ – the mela was interrupted with stage performances by different groups through a hard hitting ‘nukkad-natak’, children & bhangra dance, songs and a kathak recital by Akanksha, our past student who is majoring in dance at Banasthali.

Volunteers from our sponsors, Clearwater Analytics participated in all the events and distributed stationery packs to the children. Bhumika, our graduating student, received a laptop – an essential requirement for her higher education. Children excelling in their annual examinations were given cash awards and our staff members were felicitated.

The day ended with the distribution of sweets among the visitors and children.

Annual Day 2025

Videos – The Annual Day Roundup video can be seen at https://youtu.be/l2unz5fieiQ and the individual performances at https://youtu.be/jDIQwOwAyhU

Siddharth & team – we had a surprise visitor in Siddharth Agarwal and his team members from Veditum, an organization that works on life in and around Indian rivers, with an aim to create environmental, social and contextual records of these spaces and people.

They interacted with the older children, explaining a totally new area of work to them. Thereafter, as an exercise, each member of their team led a group of kids on a walk up the local ‘gadhera’ – mountain stream – documenting the area and life on either side of it.

We hope Veditum would be able to visit again and conduct a full-scale river walk in our area – thereby documenting our stream & its environs and also teaching the kids.

The children with Veditum team at the ‘gadhera’

Volunteers & Interns-

Neha – a Social Work student came for a month-long internship as part of her course at St Joseph’s University, Bangalore. She assisted in all areas of work at the library and documented the various workshops held during her stay.

Diti – a final year student from Ashoka University Sonepat, is presently on a two-month internship with the library. She is teaching the children English through songs and activities, computer usage and helping the older children with researching higher education options and applications.

Training – 

Khili Buraansh – women from villages around Seem/Byasi have been taking sewing classes from the samooh and two trainees have joined them as well.  They also  trained a young girl from Lakshmi Ashram, Kausani as part of her vocational training.

Library-  two young ladies, Navjot from Lakshmi Ashram and Lata from Ashray Jan Seva Samiti, Kotabagh, attended the library for a week’s training on the working of a children’s library and also helping kids with their studies in an interesting & simple manner.

Visitors – The library had a number of people visiting to see how we function – Ravi Gulati, who is associated with Manzil Foundation , came with his family to see the setup.

APS Ayodhya – 65 children and staff, on their summer excursion to Camp Agastya, visited again this year. HCL has now become a half-day session for these students every year

Gaurav Chhimwal – who this year qualified for the UPSC examination came for an interaction with the children. Gaurav, who belongs to Kakrighat and has been a student of Vijay during his Intermediate course.

So goodbye then and we leave you with some endearing snaps of the youngest members of HCL!!