The Ashoka Tree Blog

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...