Friendship day at Annapoorna

Happy friendship day to all my friends! :D

Here at Amdocs, we have a 'Community Relations' group that engages into some small social work. I've joined them and we had decided to celebrate this friendship day at Annapurna and Salvation army schools; with the kids there.

I met the other volunteers in front of tower 2, Amdocs at 945 in the morning. We collected all the logistics and left in two cabs. The rest came in bikes and a santro.

The kids assembling for the national anthem

When we reached there the kids were havin their breakfast. After sometime they reached the school. There were kids from class 1 to 10. We started with them singing the national anthem, after which they were divided into 10 groups. Each groups consisted around 20-22 kids and two volunteers were assigned to take care of each group. Asmita and I got group four. The kids then tied friendship bands on their friends' wrists. We had bands of different colours for each group.

We conducted musical chairs for children from class 1 to 5. The elder kids played Hulla-hoop[i hope i got the spelling right.] They had to stand in a circle holding hands, then each child in the circle had to pass through a circular loop made of plastic, and then pass it to the next person. During these games the music system was on and some small kids in my group who were watching the others play, were very eager to dance. I asked those boys to dance on the side. Soon the number started increasing and the place started getting too crowded; so we promised them that they'd get to dance in the end. Then we had a game where a child in a group would be blindfolded and using his teammates' directions, had to walk through a path drawn on the ground. The fastest team wins. By then most of the kids were hungry.

The kids were taken in groups to the three rooms where food was being served. The kids ate well, and most of them in my group wasted no food. After they finished having the lunch all the volunteers forgot all the dining manners and attacked the food. All of us were starving. The rice was over. There were few puris and sheera left. We shared whatever was left and joined the kids who were waiting for us.

For the post-lunch session we had earlier planned a skit competition; we volunteers had to teach the children what they had to do in about an hour, the scripts for which were handed to us a couple of days back. Asmita had translated ours into hindi and marathi for the kids. But it was quite late for having the skits, as the morning session had taken a lot of time. On popular demand we decided to have few matches of kabaddi. We conducted separate matches for the boys and girls of the higher classes, and then for the smaller kids too. Then there was a match between us volunteers and the staff of Annapoorna. Dont ask me who won that match, but it as pretty close. Its the participation that matters, right? :P

Prize distribution

The game was followed by the prize distribution. The points for each game was added; and the winners were declared. The winners and the first runners-up won got their prizes. My group came third. [should I have a happy or a sad smiley here?]. Prizes were also given to students who passed class 10 last year. Two boys in class 10, Arun and Anil were also felicitated, for securing first and second ranks resp. Arun had also got an internship at Tata Motors. He was also given a new bicycle.

The kids dancing

After that, as we had promised the kids, we kept the music system on full volume, and everyone started to dance. The kids were so full of energy even after playin for the whole day. They started pulling us into the crowd and made us throw our limbs too. We called the cab from Amdocs at around 530 and left the place after having a great time with the children.

Some of my friends here went on a trip to Lonavala today and another group had gone on a trek to Singad. They wanted me to come along, but I decided not to go with either of them and went to Annapoorna; and I am really glad I did that.

PS: The pics here were taken on Abhinav's cam and my cell phone.

The photos of the friendship day celebration at Salvation army could be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/parimalgbhatia/