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Showing posts from 2015

Angels on Earth #ChennaiRains

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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 other, helping distribute relief material,

It Doesn't Take a Village

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The whole contention of whether “it takes a village” to raise a child is still up in the air with no clear insight as to whether it does or not.   What is not up for discussion, however, is that it absolutely does ‘not’ take a village to help other children smile. A small act of kindness towards an unknown child in distress can go a long way in the way this child feels towards other humans later.   Take for instance the little boy you see sitting outside a packed restaurant waiting for his lottery-ticket seller father to finish his day.   Here’s a child who’s probably hungrier than ever, what with the fantastic aromas drifting out the hotel’s kitchen window.   Share the wonderful feeling with your 6-year-old son – teach him what it means to buy a packet of food and hand it over to that child sitting outside waiting.   The smile on that child’s face will give your son more knowledge and satisfaction than 15 years of schooling ever could.   It takes just one act to change somebody’

Project Smile

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How much thought goes in to choosing the right playschool for your little one?   How much research do you do?   How many people do you ask about the playschool and how often do you ask people for their opinion on the whole schooling system as it were? Imagine for a minute you couldn’t afford the school you wanted to send your child to.   Imagine you couldn’t just send your child away for the normal 2 hours it takes at his/her usual playschool but needed to have your child away for the whole day while you were away at work.   Imagine you spent the day cleaning and cooking at another person’s home and hoped your child had a meal to eat at their playschool.   Imagine you were a migrant laborer and you had to send your child to the local playschool in an unknown language only because you and your spouse had to both be away all day at a construction site, barely making enough to cover rent and a single meal. An ‘Anganwad’i is a government-run playschool created as part of the Inte

Making a Change - Helping When You Can

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The viscous circle of poverty keeps churning on like the gears in a well-oiled clock, and the only way to put a spoke in it is to start making a change.   At The Ashoka Tree, our idea of ‘making a change’ means helping where we can and connecting people who need help with those who want to help.   Our visit to the Isolation Ward at the Ernakulam General Hospital reinforced that.   Not only does there remain a huge gap in the kind of medical facilities available through different sections of society, general awareness of different diseases and their prevention seems more a part of advertisements on state television than an actual reality. The Ashoka Tree, thus, organized a small collection of bed linen, night clothes and toiletries, with a little help from our little helpers at the Kids Club and a lot of help from our friends, for the Isolation/Destitute Ward at the General Hospital. While conditions couldn’t seem to get worse at this ward, with the general aura of despair and

Going Where You Think You Have No Time to Go

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Life, inevitably, sends us places we don’t really want to go.   For some of us, it’s that visit to the dentist for that unwanted, but oh so warranted, root canal.   For others, it’s probably the family wedding you don’t want to attend, the off-site work at an unknown place, the transfer to a small town.   For most people, however, it’s that hospital admission – having to be admitted in hospital for an ailment you never saw coming- the expenses involved, the seemingly pointless days spent in hospital, the lack of income during those unproductive days in hospital. While it’s easy to fuss about having to be admitted, a visit to the Government-run General Hospital in your city is bound to change your mind and keep you grateful for the kind of service you can otherwise afford when you get ill. Our visit to the General Hospital led to some painful sights and heartbreaking moments.   With merely 24 beds, there were over 50 patients waiting in the ‘Isolation Ward’.   This is where pa