The Ashoka Tree Blog

In concurrence with World Oral Health Care Day (yes, there actually is one!), The Ashoka Tree, in association with the Indian Dental Association - Kochi Branch, conducted a dental camp yesterday at one of our Anganwadis. With nearly 100 people turning up, the dentists from IDA also intend to continue follow-up care and further procedures (for those who do need more work) at their centre in Chalikkavattom, Cochin, on the first and third Sundays of every month. A big big Thank You to the dentists and our lovely volunteers who came to help organize the camp, guiding our little children to each doctor and queuing people up as they came in for their free health check. We couldn't have done this without you!  Keep Spreading More Smiles!   

A census report five years ago left India’s population at 1210.19 million with 48.5% of this being women (this works out to around 586.47 million).   So here’s the thing, we have nearly 600 million unsung heroes in the country today. From the lady who works daily cooking meals in other peoples homes so that she has enough money everyday to cook one in her own, to the housewife who silently reads about gender pay-gap issues around the world and says nothing of the fact that her work remains uncalculated 24 x 7.   She remembers which child has a sore throat coming on and which child has to wear their sports uniform to school.   She remembers there’s no more rice in the container for dinner and skips a meal so the family has enough to eat.   To the woman who is strong and independent at work, but secretly scared of crossing the four-lane road in front of the office.   To the girl who'd love to get out and dance in the rain, but knows there are eyes staring...

Calling out for angels is a simple enough option, getting the angels who actually come is a whole different story. Project Smile was well on its way when we suddenly found ourselves short-funded.   Call it what you want, but all of a sudden we had sacks of cement and laborers we needed to pay for, paint we couldn’t afford.   Angels come in different forms and to those humans on earth who actually made this happen – Thank You! Thank you for giving our little children safe rooms to sit in, for painting these walls a bright cheerful color, for fixing tube-lights and fans, for offers of water filters, for giving us funds to build walls and cordon off cooking areas (where cooking LPG cylinders and gas pipes were out in the open on rickety three-legged tables) where little children run around and play.   Thank you for the joy on all those happy faces of this little unknown colony filled with migrant laborers, who have come to recognize us, and start boiling water for ...

There’s so much we take for granted everyday – beginning with the four sturdy walls that surround us in our bedrooms.    Four strong walls make such a difference to the way our day begins - whether it's rain  water   seeping in on a monsoon day or the fear that the walls might give way, broken and cracked buildings change the way your day progresses. Our Anganwadi in focus this month houses nearly 20 children on a good day, and has a wall that can barely stand another Kerala monsoon.   This was a place The Ashoka Tree originally visited on our ‘Book & Toy Box’ spree, but found there were graver problems here that needed to be addressed.   What we have here is a building waiting to collapse – a calamity waiting to happen – an unnecessary accident in the offing.   While it did cross our minds that we don’t have the necessary funds to do what we propose, we decided to go ahead. People make promises, and a lot of them did, to help us re...

A little bit of outdoor sports has never been known to do any harm.   On the contrary, not only does one feel physically fitter, but you always end up feeling mentally recharged as well.   Getting out to play a sport has always been an easy enough option; however, there are millions of children all over the country without access to either the space or the facilities to play a sport of any kind, much less the option of playing in a tournament.   From gully cricket to gilli danda, options for play for normal children out in the open are numerous with a little bit of imagination, a stick and a stone most often.   Options for special children living in special schools around the country, however, are limited. In late August 2015, we, at The Ashoka Tree, were wondering what our group of children did every evening - whether there were some sort of physical exercises they were lead through every day or sports they could play.   This is when we thought we’d s...

There’s much to be said about a ‘New Year’ and all the resolutions that go with it.   The huge liability of having to fulfill every (ok, at least one) wish you made for yourself at the end of the last, and the need to feel like you’ve accomplished something at the end of the new. This 2016, however, we at The Ashoka Tree have three things we are ‘not’ going to do. We are not going to sweat the small stuff .   Miracles happen when you least expect it, so we’re not going to worry about getting tiny things done.   More than ever, those things somehow get done on their own, with no extra help.   Like we learnt at the onset last year when we couldn’t find a donor for rice for our school in Wynad, or even at the end of the year when we couldn’t find somebody to transport our packages to Chennai - people turned up.   There are still people in the world who wouldn’t mind giving a small amount out of their salary every month to feed needy children elsewhere an...

Chennai’s floods have taught us a lot.   While it’s reminded us, in developing countries especially, that there’s a reason cities are planned a certain way and that nature or climate change is not something you can ever take lightly, its also taught us a whole load of other lessons. Agreed, our country’s governing body is certainly not one of the best, our corporations are not the worlds’ finest and truck-loads of relief material have had trouble entering the city.   However, what has turned up trumps is, beyond all this, the feeling of solidarity that all of us Indians have had towards one another.   The belief that there still exist angels among us here on earth.   That a community working together saves more lives than a million individuals on their own.   We’ve had Sikhs servehot meals from Gurdwaras  and  Muslim organizations quietly sending in volunteers to clean temples as well.   The citizens of Chennai have stood up for each oth...