A day with kids....
I've talked about the Planet Child initiative in an earlier post. Last week, I visited a school as part of their Development through Drawing project along with some visitors from the US and it was an amazing experience, more so because I haven't been doing much outside of work these past couple of months.
The school we visited was the Keshav Memorial School in Narayanguda. The school is run by a society and caters to children of families who do not afford to spend too much on education for their children. Most of the teachers are members of the society as well. Some of the kids are sponsored and they get food at the school as well.
We went there on Wednesday morning and went to a class that was the 4th and 5th grade combined and the kids all got up and wished us 'Good Morning' in a way that reminded me of my early school days. One of the visitors introduced the concept( which had to be translated to Telugu for the kids) and when we started distributing the sketch-pens (which I'd purchased the same morning, in a display of poor planning), the kids got soooo excited.
One of the visitors and I decided to take another class, so that we could cover more of the kids. So we went to the 6th grade and the kids were still as cute there, being shouted at by their PTI. We got things rolling and asked the kids to draw what they wanted to be. It took them a while to think and some got influenced by what their neighbours were drawing, but things got into the groove in about ten minutes.
The surprising thing was that these kids understood and spoke pretty decent English. Where we had to translate things for the 4th-5th graders, these 6th graders preferred to talk to us in English. The class was an interesting mix of the shy little girl who wouldn't let us see what she was drawing, to the class loudmouth who had an opinion on everything. There were kids who wanted to be cricketers to the sweet little guy who wants to be a priest (Mr. Tomnus, if you're reading this, it reminded me of you).
Their drawing skills were an interesting mix as well, from those who drew only in black and white, or blue and red buildings to the guy who wanted to be an artist and used very appealing color combinations.
When we were leaving, we decided to take some pictures and there was a never ending queue of kids of all ages who wanted to be clicked with us. All in all, it was a brilliant experience to see those kids get all excited about the little things we take for granted in our day to day lives and be so passionate about what they were drawing. It reminded me of times when life was simple. It made me realize how spoilt we all are. It made me think of how people make do with so little and are happy with their lives inspite of all the difficulties they go through. It made me want to do this again and again. And I will.
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