Volunteering at Anand Vidyalaya, Bangalore

Anand Vidyalaya – rightly means the “School of Happiness” .. for that’s what it was. A study center filled with joy, laughter & innumerable smiles. The DhyanYog Society run AnandVidyalaya Study Centre at Bangalore is a study center that provides free tuition to under privileged students from classes 1 to 10 everyday for around 4 hours.When the volunteers posted on Facebook  that they were looking at people to teach the kids some extra curricular activities over the weekend, I approached them that I would love to be part of the amazing work these people did.

Now to set up any art / craft class activity for nearly 80+ kids, a proper structure & plan needed to be put in place. Any model like this has to be sustainable in the long run. So I set up an inventory of items that we would need. Apart from this we needed to use materials that would be easily available and are economical. So we decided to work with donated recyclable materials as much as we could. We are looking at you to support us . Please find all the details on my FB page note – For-a-good-cause-please-donate

Thanks to all the people who took the time and effort to drop items at the set up drop points and special thanks to Preethi, Savitha & Art for their donations to buy the craft materials. Together, the three of us bought paints, brushes, glue, sketch pens, chart papers an stuff that can be used by these children. I will be transporting all the materials in the days to come.

So yesterday was my first day interacting with them . The volunteers run this study center in a government school in Ejipura. They have rented out space in their basement & also use two classrooms to teach. Overall there are 100+ kids and on any day more than 80 kids ranging from 6 yrs to 14 yrs attend the study center.
The challenge for me to teach any Art / craft to the kids was to first understand their skills & interest levels. The best way to do that I thought was to divide them into 8 groups that included a good mix of all ages. The kids made themselves comfortable on the floor in the basement.

  Then we gave them a box of crayons, a box of markers, a box of poster colors in 6 basic colors, lots of sponge, brushes, pencils & a large whit chart paper. The instructions were simple. Each group had to draw a large flower and paint it in. All white space had to be colored in. Each kid should have one or the other task to do.Here is what the groups made.. my daughter & the kids of the volunteers also got inspired to paint something too!

A close up of their art..

The collection drive is open the whole month. If you would like to read more about Anand Vidyalaya,
Here are some links for you.
http://www.dhyanyogsociety.org
http://www.facebook.com/dhyanyogsociety
Items that you can donate 

 They are also looking at Individuals /  corporate who would like to sponsor a day out for these kids – Maybe a trip to the zoo, planetarium ,  industrial museum or aquarium. You can drop me an email at mymindfulmeanderings(at)gmail.com  if you need more info or would like to volunteer.

PS: from next week onwards, we’ll be using all the donated materials.

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