What a month February has been! So many exciting things are happening and now we are waiting as patiently as possible to watch our new programs bear fruit.

The month began with a little visit from the Doon International school. It was children and chai galore and no one could resist a shy little Samir with a painted nose. The school very kindly donated us ample stationary, paints and crayons: all very essential items for our program.

The trainees also enjoyed their block printing workshop at Chhaya where they were treated to a wonderful lunch: the stories of which echoed in our hall for the rest of the week. They returned to Rein Basera in the afternoon with smiles on their faces and some more steam and skill to continue their work but that was not all…

Photographs courtesy of: Melody Murray

…Darby, much loved, returned to us from Joyn India and is now part of our block printing and crafting schedule three times a week, much to the delight of everyone. We love this big family. Darby is here to oversee their training in more advanced block printing techniques, material cutting, bag sewing and a much bigger world of opportunity.

Additionally a vast majority of effort and time has been spent on the new and FINALLY complete computer lab, generously donated and funded for, this lab is a dream. Two staff are enrolled in a computer training and teaching course at the NIIT who will then begin the work of teaching children from both our projects: Street Smart and Wings. This is a unique adventure we are embarked on as we seek to combine computer literacy and literacy into our teaching and step into the 21st century with these children. In the long run we are ambitiously aiming to create a more dynamic curriculum with which we can build bridges with others doing similar work around the country and exchange ideas.

The children are eagerly waiting to learn and have displayed much thrill and curiosity, enough to drive one mad! Deepu and Prince are but two who perpetually wander in and play “pretend typing” on the keyboards in anticipation of a real lesson. The schedules are in place, the children are ready: it’s all in motion.

In other news, we also have a new trainee on our program called Santosh.

Santosh is a physically challenged boy, a friend of Shyam: one of our trainees, and has already displayed a very serious and ambitious will to do well here.

Our daily outreach program has also begun once again and in fact we find ourselves often doing outreach twice a day, once in the morning and then again in the evening. Towards the end of the month we found ourselves overjoyed one day to discover that several of our “lost” Parade Ground children had returned to the program.

And so the work continues, and we all keep growing in the process.
                           

Come back next week to see what else has happened at Street Smart. As of now the blog will be updated weekly or so at least attempted. Joy!