The Ashoka Tree Blog

Every so often comes a new addition to every family.  A little child in the family means a house is no longer one that has sharp-edged tables or openable drawers.  Houses become homes with expensive curious put away and replaced with soft cushions,  electrical outlets are covered and safety gates installed.  Child proofing exists in every home and play school - in the ideal world. The stark reality in India today, however, is that there are innumerable play schools that cannot afford decent child-proofing equipment. With the youngest children in an Anganwadi just about turning  2 years old, ensuring basic safety measures is a necessity none of these teachers can afford.  Here's where we come in.  In collaboration with the ICDS secretary for the region, The Ashoka Tree short-listed six anganwadis - places where gas stoves were literally balanced on bricks & gas cylinders out where children sit. Thank you Indway  for helping out in a big ...

The Ashoka Tree Wish-List   We Need Volunteers/Interns For: Our Up-cycling project - preferably with basic interest in design and craft work - to work with our mothers and retired teachers who need an income Project Smile - reading with our anganwadi children or working on small art/craft/singing/dancing projects Blackboard project - chalkboard painting walls in anganwadis  Anganwadi Infrastructure Maintenance Project - funding or organizing these projects which run from plastering walls to building toilets for little children Anganwadi Book&Toy Box Project Donation collection, sorting and distribution projects  For Anganwadis with a total of 300 children aged 2-6 yrs Activity Books Activity Blocks Crayons Colour pencils Pencils Erasers & Sharpners Drawing Notebooks Toys (for 2-6 year olds only) Tricycles – 15 (new/used in working condition) Baby Chairs – 50 (new/used in working condition) Mixies – 25 (new/used in good working ...

It’s been a fair number of months since we managed to get together Father Tezza’s Volleyball team, who incidentally made it to the finals of an All Kerala Special Schools Volleyball Tournament. Here’s to our new Basketball Team!  More power to our children up in Wynad, and we’re looking forward to seeing them at the finals for basketball as well!

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...