Pehal- An AID Delhi Initiative

Project Pehal celebrated childrens day on 14th November, 2010. As the day began, Sahipur school was filled with colours, cartoons, music and silent murmurs of excited children who waited for the event to unroll. The children brought along their parents for them to applaud on their dazzling performances.

The event started with a prayer, where our Pehal volunteers and the children sang along to the tunes of 'Itni shakti hamein de na daata' played through the Harmonium. This was followed by an extravaganza of performance by our little children and volunteers. Dances, songs and poems echoed through the venue. Our cute little children recited poems such as:

'Chacha Nehru ache the
Hum sab unke bacche the
karte the wo humse pyaar
ab to jeena hua dushwaar
14 november ka din hai aaya
Chacha ko sab ke saath paya
Hum sab bacche lagate hai awaaz
Chacha Nehru Zindabad!!'

Similar performances by various kids concluded with a huge round of applause across the hall.

Our volunteers then conducted a play aimed at towards the parents. The play reiterated the importance of education in a child's life. The volunteers, wonderfully displayed he future of an educated and an uneducated child. The stark contrast between the two were taken as an example and later explained to the parents. We asked them to make a commitment towards educating their children to ensure a bright future.

Our kids were now ready for some games! We organized a game in which we put up cartoon pictures namely, Popeye, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Schinchan on each wall. The children were asked to dance till the music played and as soon as it stopped they were asked to run to a cartoon charachter. A cartoon charachter was then chosen through shuffeling of small chits. The children standing on that wall of that cartoon character were then considered to be out. The entire venue filled with cheerful voices and excited screams as children danced to music and ran.

The game was followed by a session of continous dancing, where all the children and volunteers tapped their foot to music.

After we distributed prizes to the winners of the game, we also distributed prizes to the top performers and students who had a regular attendence. The tired children then sat to have snacks, which included samosa's, chips and sweets.

The day ended with laughter, fun and frolic. As the children and their parents walked back home with a smile, we were convinced that our team effort was a success!

Volunteers Present: Prachi Aggarwal, Vikramjeet Singh, Prachi Garg, Vipra Dhawan, Nikita Khemka, Anandita Yadav, Zulaikha Rahman, Vibhor Gupta, Tushar, Siddharth, Ashmeet Bilkhu, Aditi Sachdev, and Kartik Sharma

Meri Udaan is witnessing a satisfactory progress in the women who are coming to the project regularly. Poonam Ma'am, our teacher, has been focussing on teaching the women Mathematics. Today, most of the women can read and write till 50 and solve basic addition and subtraction problems. To add to it, a few are learning tables and solving multiplication problems!

The only issues that loom as of now is that many of the women who had registered for the classes do not turn up. Even if they do, they are very irregular. We have met these women and motivated them to attend classes every day. They have said they'll be regular now.

Poonam Ma'am has been asked to maintain a proper record in the form of an attendance sheet. Also, at the end of each month, the total classes attended by each of the women would be calculated. This shall help us in the proper assessment of their performance.

Implementing AID’s Philosophy of SEVA, SANGHARSH & NIRMAAN has been a continuous endeavor of AID Delhi.

To move one step ahead in this direction a new project has been started. This Project is a Micro-financing Project catering specifically to Rickshaw Owners. Project name “SAKSHAM” has been unanimously decided by AID Delhi Volunteers as this name depicts “making someone capable of doing something on its own”.

Project Saksham started with an idea to stop exploitation of Rickshaw Owners as they have to pay rent to the rickshaw lender. This initiative provides them an avenue to buy Rickshaw without paying full cost of the Rickshaw in lumsum. Rickshaw Owner will get the rickshaw from SAKSHAM and start returning money on weekly basis. As soon as he gets a rickshaw he will stop paying any rent to lender and therefore his exploitation stops then and there. He will then pay weekly installments to SAKSHAM so as to give back the money equivalent to cost of a Rickshaw. Based on Calculations, it was found that whole cost of Rickshaw can be easily given back by Rickshaw Owner in 7months.

Rickshaw Owner now owns his own Rickshaw and he does not have to pay any amount to anybody thus he can accumulate that amount as savings.

NOTE:

1. SAKSHAM will not charge any interest from Rickshaw Owner.
2. Though Project works on same philosophy as that of AID, SAKSHAM is not an AID endeavor.

Following are the minutes of the volunteer meet, held on Saturday, the 4th of August, at Sahipur School

People who attended the meet: Aditi, Ashmeet, Vipra, Zulaikha, Megha, Surabhi, Prarthna, Vikramjeet, Prachi, Tushar, Vibhor, Siddharth Kartik, Tasha, and Ashish

1) Orientation: The meet initiated with a orientation session lead by Prachi, who briefed all the volunteers (old and new) about the history of AID, its evolution, the origin of AID Delhi and its current endeavors. Another important aspect was the discussion about how to develop AID delhi as a chapter.

2) AID Delhi's Future: As AID Delhi's recently separated from other chapters (Noida and Gurgaon), the path ahead was discussed in detail.

• Core Team: A core team of AID Delhi has been formed and it consists of 17 volunteers.

The Path Ahead :
• It was unanimously decided that AID Delhi would extend its local and community outreach by collaborating with various ground level, volunteer supporting NGO's by providing them with monetary assistance as well as resources (volunteers), whichever required.
• To initiate the process, volunteers would look around for such NGO's and AID Delhi, after assessing the credibility would collaborate with them.
• This would serve as the first step towards taking AID Delhi to new heights.
Other Interventions
Each volunteer attending the meet was asked about their interests and how they would like to contribute towards building the chapter
• A few volunteers like, Vibhor and Kartik expressed interest in investing their efforts for AID Delhi's fund raising initiatives. They shall initiate the same soon.
Kartik, would be reviving the RTI Cell in AID Delhi.

3) Pehal and Meri Udaan: Pehal and Meri Udaan are projects being run under AID Delhi. The two schools run within the Pehal project were facing some issues that were discussed in the meet

It was unanimously decided to shut down the BT Block school as running the school and implementing our program seemed unsustainable due to non-cooperation of the higher authorities
The syllabus in Sahipur School, would be taught in lines with what the children are taught in school as their exams are nearing, after which the focus would be on strengthening their basics.
• New volunteers joined the community connect team and will be joining Vipra and Vikramjeet every week. This will help us in strengthening our outreach in the Sahipur community

4) ORM: The ORM will be conduted by AID Delhi this month. The theme was discussed in the meet

The ORM would be conducted on the 26th of sept, 2010. The venue is open for discussion.
• An idea of conducted a theatre workshop instead of a formal meet was discussed. Everyone seems okay with the idea.

• The agenda shall be finalised by this week

5) A team has been formed for the school initiatives and it comprises of astha, ashmeet, aditi, tasha, surbhi prarthana and megha

6) A team will be formed to manage the website and blog. Also, we will start releasing a newsletter for AID Delhi soon

India celebrated its 63rd Independence Day on 15th August 2010; Pehal volunteers took up the initiative to celebrate it with the children of the MCD School in Sahipur.

The programme started with the flag hoisting ceremony, followed by the national anthem. Thereafter, the children performed a dance and sang a patriotic song ‘Saare Jahaan Se Accha’. A skit based on the importance of the three colors in the National flag was then presented. We felt really proud as the efforts of the children & volunteers faired really well.

We then had a successful sports session where we conducted sprint races. Many students participated in the competition & showed great enthusiasm. The children who won the race were awarded. In the end, a march-past was done by the kids that concluded with a final call of JAI HIND and VANDE MATRAM!

The adult literacy program i.e. MERI UDAAN has taken its first step on 6th July at BG-1 block in Shalimar Bagh.

However, turning the idea of catering to the "basic education needs" of girls and women above the age of 15 years, was not a simple job. These females had either left their books way back or had not been to school ever.

It was only after the PEHAL team went to the homes on a regular basis, were they able to locate the women and girls who readily enrolled themselves in our literacy program. In the beginning only 7 females showed interest in the program, but since then the number has kept on increasing and now it has 20 females within 10 days.

The journey that had begun with Poonam Ma'am teaching these ladies to write their own name (and thereby giving them a sneak-peak into their self-worth) is bound to travel several miles in the days to come. Also-- we look forward to getting more women and girls enrolled in our program and replicate our success in other nearby areas i.e. BC Bagh, BT block, slums near the railway track.

Pehal change makers got together on the 26th of June to brainstorm about the various activities undertaken in the school adoption program .There was a lot that was being planned at Pehal for our children and there was a lot to be brought into consideration.