On Saturday the 8th of May, we plan to have a birthday party for six of our children who have their birthdays in April and May. It will be from 2:30 pm onwards, immediately after the yoga and art class. Kathalaya will have a storytelling session with the children between 3 and 4 pm.
Read the rest of the article: May You Have A Happy Birthday!…
Internships are available at the Samiksha Foundation this summer for students. We require volunteers to teach children from grades 1 to 8, especially in Kannada. Those who can teach subjects like Maths, Science and Social Studies in Kannada would be particularly helpful. We would prefer college students studying fields such as Social Work, Mass Communication and Psychology.
Read the rest of the article: Summer At Samiksha Foundation…
Our next volunteer orientation program will be held on the 21st of February at the Taj Gateway on Residency Road (near the Hyundai showroom). It will be held from 2:30 to 5:00 p.m. All those who have been volunteering and working with us, particularly those who have spent time with the children, are requested to attend.
This are a series of notes written to me by Rajesh Kurien who took up the project of introducing music to the inpatients and their caregivers. This was to be posted earlier, but i missed it! Sorry Rajesh! In your words, I am confronting your “Lack of time syndrome”!
On the right side of this blog, take a look at the Wall of History, our archive of blog posts and announcements. Everything we have written about our work so far will soon be wrapped up into the 2009 folder, and a new one – 2010 – will be created.
(Written by John Ransley, a friend of Swami Yogaratna who visited the ward to see one of her yoga classes for the children)
I am an Australian visiting Bangalore to meet with old students and devotees of Swami Muktananda, who taught yoga in Bangalore from 1978 to 1985. Together with Swami Buddhananda she established the Atma Darshan Yogashram which still provides yoga programs to this day.
Today was an unusual day at Samiksha. Five of us were there to tutor, read, talk to or share our time with the children at the ward. Only a small group of them showed up. Most were new faces. We talked about this among ourselves, as we realised that we needed to supply fresh school supplies and material for everyone there. We then decided to go around the ward and introduce ourselves to the new inpatients and their caregivers. As we went around we found many beds empty and cleaned out, it was quieter than usual. Truth is that most of the children in the ward had been discharged!
We were experiencing site difficulties, and so we could not post this earlier. Sorry.
Children’s Day was another landmark day for the Foundation and for the children at Samiksha.
We are now in collaboration with a Theatre in Education group named Script People’s Theatre. We had a wonderful afternoon of playback theatre with them during which they heard personal experiences or favourite stories of the children and enacted them on stage. Among the most hilarious and engaging themes played back were the story of the Hare and the Tortoise and actor Ramya’s visit to a child at the hospital ward.
We have a lot of new children who have joined us this quarter. It was heartening to note yesterday that many of the moms of the older children were
a) trying to get their own kids to be serious about their studies with us around so they could make good use of us being there and
b) advising the new kids’ parents to bring in their schoolbooks so they could continue learning here.
It was one of those days that seemed to be extremely busy at the ward…and extremely dull for us. Very few kids were ready for our program when we arrived. Manjari and I went about talking to the staff, parents and children, trying to gather them for some activities and lessons. We did manage to gather about twenty children, many of whom were newly admitted.
