Sharanam
I love visiting India with my family. I get to visit so much family. This time my mom decided that I should get an unique experience and see India through the eyes of kids that are less fortunate than myself so that I appreciate what I have. She enlisted the help of my uncle Don and Aunt Mari, who along with their daughters, Maya and PJ are always involved in humanitarian causes.
Sharanam is a place in Mumbai where underprivileged kids including boys and girls are given shelter and food and taken care of. We interacted with 13 girls out of 30.
The kids were ranging from 4 to 15 years. We did not interact with the older girls much. We had an opportunity to get to know them and help them. In the process we did many things. We read books to them, and some groups also read in pairs. We taught them Robotics using an EV3/Mindstorms robot. There was also a simple robot where basic programs were run.
Some of the girls went to an English language school and some Hindi. The girls had varying levels of reading aptitude. I read with Shusmita and I would say she had a good grasp of english and read fairly well.
We played a few games to break the routine and lighten things up. Some of the games we played were Kho-Kho and Duck Duck Goose.
The girls really enjoyed playing these popular games. Also they taught us Indian dance and the beats and melody of Indian music was very catchy. I am not a great dancer but I did enjoy this activity to some extent. When we left some of the girls gave us thank you cards. I will cherish these forever.
It was a wonderful experience for all of us. It was good to see how school and life in India works. We became good friends with some of the girls. I wish them all the very best in life and academics as they were pretty smart. I hope to see them again. I can’t wait to visit India again and my next ssharanam adventure.
Haiku by Anika
Sharanam was fun.
We did many fun things there.
I learned a lot there.
Leave a Reply