Prep time

This is that time of the year when Prayaas gets into the preparation mode. Chaos, the annual cultural festival of IIMA is approaching. From 29th January to 1st February, the campus would witness a different colour, a different crowd, a different ethos and it would have a different feel than the rest of the year.




There was a post about how Prayaas gets involved at Chaos sometime back. So, there would be dance and fun, stalls and cards, crowd and the cause.




This year as well we are planning to have the dance event and the stall. The preparations for the dance sequence have started 2 weeks back and the kinds are full enthu about giving the audience a worth for their money and time. I would not mention the name of the song and break the surprise. I will talk about this after the event.






Last weekened and the current weekend, we are organizing workshops for kids for making cards, bookmarks etc. This ways we would have sufficient items for the stall - to sell and thereby make people aware about the entire effort.






But frankly speaking, many of us are far away from coming up with creative ideas for cards. So, we had to take help of the experts and they were kind enough to oblige. Few of the students from NID, Gandhinagar came for the workshop on a Saturday morning. They spent time teaching kids many methods of making cards and actually sat down with them helping them do the same. The loved the kids so much that they stayed around even after the workshop, just to play around with the kids.

Update

Just wanted to provide an update on the activities at Prayaas.

In total, there are around 50 students enrolled at Prayaas. 25 of them are now going to Sahjanand school which is a main-stream private school not very far from the IIMA campus. The other 25 go to a municipal school near Vastrapur lake in Ahmedabad. The kids are in classes from I to IV.

Of the 25 kids going to Sahjanand, we have been able to get 18 sponsors who are sponsoring one kid each. We allow them to choose the kid they would like to sponsor and plan to extend the programme for subsequent years. This would allow a donor to sponsor the entire education of one particular child if he / she wishes to do so.

Given the current resource constraints, for the time being, we have stopped adding any more students to the initiative. This would help us in consolidating our efforts and help the current children in an effective manner. We think that it would be better to keep the efforts small and sustainable, rather than becoming too big and facing the risk of shutdown and thereby affecting the lives of all the children.

The academics and other events (festival celebrations, movie screening etc.) are going on as before and the first year students have taken the responsibilities in their hands well.

This blog, that we started sometime back, is a good way of getting to know the current happenings at Prayaas.


Team Prayaas