June 2011 new session, new school; Dr. Ambedkar Memorial School, Pune Cantonment Board is our new school where we would be starting our both the projects. Special focus would be on self-defense for the girls.
This makes our reach in two schools in Pune Cantonment Board. Both these schools are municipality marathi medium schools. Mahadji Shinde High School where we already have the projects will see new admissions and quite possible couple of new additions to the existing curriculums. June 2011 is going to be very exciting; this season we are ADDING dance therapy, teacher-training, psychological testing for the teachers and students, video tutorials, computer-games for brain stimulations and more advanced martial art trainings for our children.
The new sessions will have new additions from Mahadji Shinde High School and of course two new batch from Dr. Ambedkar Memorial School our new school; both schools located in Pune Cantonment Board, Pune. Apart from this we are working with one scholarship municipality school on holistic development of the child. We are having an estimate that the children in projects would shoot up to 200.
Projects
'Colors of Life' provides an answer to one of our nation's most troubling problems.
Although more children are staying in school than in previous years, there are still too many students dropping out, even at the very earliest levels. This problem is especially prevalent among the poor and the disabled. Some studies estimate that as many as 70% of children will drop out before finishing the higher secondary stage. More than half of all children leave school before ninth grade. To reduce these rates, we have to figure out why so many children aren't finishing their studies.
For the most part, children drop out, or are taken out of school by their parents, because they think that school is irrelevant. Many families see school as a bad investment — they'd rather have their children earning money or caring for younger siblings. But by leaving school early, children often fail to realize their full potential; innate skills and abilities are lost by neglect or by failure to explore and foster talents and interests.
If children and their families could see how education will bring much greater economic benefit than might otherwise be gained in the short term, without proper schooling, they would almost invariably prefer to complete their studies.
Objectives:
- Motivating children to pursue further education
- Reducing the number of school dropouts
- Empowering children, developing pride and responsibility in work
- Enhancing leadership quality
- Comment from our student from Colors of Life:
30 students are part of this project. New students will join from the same school i.e Mahadji Shinde High School in the new sessions. Further more a new batch will start in Dr. Ambedkar Memorial School.
Comment from our student in Colors of Life project:
'On joining 'Colors of Life' I came to know other side of myself. 'Colors of Life' is an institution which develops confidence in children. While working with this program I had many questions. But now I could solve them through this foundation. I was surprised to see the development in me which I could not do previously. Now I feel confident that I can do anything with interest. I developed interest in studies. These difficult subjects now I feel easy. I feel happy to know the difference in myself.' -Akash Sakat- 9th Class
Project Enhance uses sport and the arts as tools to promote physical well-being while improving mental health. Mental health is not just the absence of mental disorder; rather, it is a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.
In India, even today girl child is considered as a liability and is often ignored; even harassed and molested. Project Enhance is targeted at empowering the girl child through a blend of martial arts and creative arts resulting into increased self-confidence and improved academic performance as a result.
Objectives:
- To empower girl child
- Develop discipline to achieve mutual respect and understanding
- Develop trust ,confidence, cooperation and togetherness
- Increase attention span
46 girls are part of this project. New girl students will join from the same school i.e Mahadji Shinde High School in the new sessions. Further more a new batch will start in Dr. Ambedkar Memorial School.
Comment from our girl student who is under Project Enhance:
'I am feeling very peaceful on joining karate project. Even our teacher is also very cool person. Karate benefits us and also gives physical exercise. Karate also develops our memory power. It gives physical flexibility to our body. There are many benefits of karate.' -Nikita Mane - 6th Class
Urja-igniting the fire within our vocational training, the participants would under-go training and a psychological test. These women would under-go training for handicraft and imitation jewelry, after the long procedure of identification of these women, doing a detailed survey of their family and their problems, needs assessments were carried out to identify their strength and weakness. Few presentations were given to students of Navrachana School, Baroda on community development and how they can get involved in this project.
We had a great time with interns coming from different colleges who worked and are working with us. Right from Engineering to Management sector; Interns were/are from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Tata Institute of Social Science, S.P Jain Institute of Management and Research, Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Department of Home Science, M.S. University, Loyola College, VIT and many more...
The launch of 2nd Edition of E-zine is due and we would launch it in 2nd week of June. New sessions from June 2011 seems to be super-hectic with most of the plans being laid. Our laptop crashed and we lost quite a lot of data; hence adding further unexpected delay in our on-going planning. We need your support in the on-going process. We need on-site people to support us in the on-going projcts, we need dedicated volunteers for different task, and we need sponsors for laptop (this being our immediate need), stationery, crayons, pen-pencil, drawing papers, registers, educational CD's and more..
Please get in touch with us and share this with your friends and family members. Drop us an email with any of your expression. You can reach us at: contact@colorss.org
Thank you for giving and sharing your time for 'social-change'
For Love,
Anand Koti
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