A Chance for Equality | shortlisted for #mBillionth2018 in Inclusion & Empowerment category

Sachin Tendulkar is a name known to everyone. He is one of the most famous cricketer’s of Indian cricket team, as well as is among the greatest batsmen in cricket history. He was only 11 when his brother, who believed he had great potential, took him to coach, Mr Ramakant Achrekar. Sachin was a little boy and was obviously nervous; he was not able to perform up to his calibre in front of Mr Achrekar. 

Ajit who had full confidence in Sachin, insisted Achrekar to move away from the nets and watch Sachin from a distance. Ajit stole a chance for his brother and it worked, Sachin did not get conscious and performed at his best. A chance at the right time can make a huge difference.

Now is the right time for information and everything digital, helping people on Planet Earth to have their chance to access information, knowledge and services at all times and at all places through the use of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and digital tools is the mission of DEF (Digital Empowerment Foundation). The foundation works tirelessly to bridge the digital divide and empower the information-dark societies. Apart from its various programmes, DEF also launches few awards. One of the awards, The mBillionth Award South Asia, is the most influential and leading platform to explore, recognise and honour excellence in mobile innovations, applications and content services for development and empowerment across South Asia. The mBillionth Award has been previously won by start-ups like Ola, Paytm, Redbus.

The Quick Self-Defense App from Colorss Foundation is delighted to have been shortlisted as one of the innovations in the ‘Inclusion and Empowerment’ category of the mBillionth Awards. The App focuses on women empowerment and teaches techniques for Self-Defense. The app is easy to understand and is also available in multiple languages. It focuses on nine basic techniques to practice Self-Defense. Each technique is explained visually through a series of easy to follow steps. Also, each technique can be run in Learn or Practice mode, the Practice mode being a hands free mode, where the steps run automatically allowing the user to practice along with the steps.

Download the app and learn and practice Self-Defense anywhere, anytime.

References - https://mbillionth.in/background-concept/

Ashpreet Dhillon 

Sessions on Android based Flag Recognition App

In this increasingly technology driven world it is highly imperative that the kids today get an equal and comfortable opportunity to acquaint themselves to the present day Science scene and are able to make the best of it. Many scientific innovations, in the form of engineered systems and soft-applications, are aimed at providing a better learning experience to the kids. Their use not only promotes a more practical and sturdy education, but also helps the kids develop a sub-conscious ownership of technological ideas. These experiences help them overcome their inhibitions and gain substantial technological exposure so as not to be intimidated by it. Additionally, it helps to nurture their interest in the field by showing them how interesting, fun and accomplishing an outlet Science can be.

Saumya with students 

Our demonstration session on the Android based Flag Recognition Application for 5^th grade students of Ambedkar Memorial High School was an attempt towards achieving the above said. We started with the thing that 5^th graders love the most i.e. drawing. They were each given a drawing sheet and a set of pencil colours/crayons/sketch pens. Next, they were to pick their favourite colour flag and draw it on the sheet. They excitedly drew around 2 to 3 different flags each and were eager to pose with their creations. Once the drawings were done, I got out the android phone with its flag recognition application. We clicked pictures of the flags, cropped them, gave them to the application and got the recognition results as a list of top-10 best matched countries. The students would look at the top-10 options and pick out the country that their flag belonged to.

Students engrossed in drawing the maps

This exercise not only helped them learn about the different countries and flags in a fun way, but also gave them a taste of how a machine can be trained to perform such an activity. The idea is to tickle these young minds and set them thinking. After all, good things start when you begin to think!!  

Saumya Jetley

Be your own hero! - FREE 7-days online Self-Defense workshops for women | Colorss

Be your own hero! @ 6th Jan 2014; 9:00 am UTC+05:30

With Colorss foundation’s 7-day Online Self Defense classes

In today’s world, women are faced with danger and violence throughout their lives. We don’t choose to be a victim, but we can choose how we respond to these situations. Self-Defense is about learning the basic physical skills to be able to fight off attackers and reach safety. But it’s also about gaining empowerment and confidence. It’s about standing up and saying, I can protect myself, I refuse to be intimidated.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the time nor money to attend self-defense classes. So the Colorss foundation, a NGO based in Baroda, Pune and Ajmer in India, has come up with a novel idea: an online, 7 day self-defense workshop, to enable all women, from across the globe, to learn the necessary skills to remain calm and fight back against attackers.  The classes will take place on 6th Jan 2014 via the Colorss foundation’s facebook page [events section], in an interactive fashion.

Click on this link [https://www.facebook.com/events/255529674604610/]  to directly go to the event section - don't forget to join and invite those whom you feel will benefit from this workshop.

Participants can easily ask questions to the teacher via the internet, and benefit from the knowledge imparted from the comfort of their home, wherever they are in the world. 

Join in, and become your own hero ! 

~Eloise Stark 

For Love,

Anand Koti

Founder Chariman

Colorss Foundation 

“Who says you can have problems and you can’t smile also?”

 

Definitely you can…I saw and learnt this from these small kids who although came from a weak socioeconomic background, often separated families still had a smile on their faces and zeal to learn and change the way their life was.

While they were introducing themselves I noticed that they had family problems, e. g death of a parent or separated families. Most of the mothers worked in other houses doing the household chores to earn a living or fathers worked in factories or buildings as laborers.

It was an urge to teach small children which made me to join Colorss as a volunteer. My task which seemed to be very easy to me initially turned out to be a challenge for me. I was supposed to take a 45 min class, making children of class 6-9 standard write articles on a few topics.

I started with an article on My Ambition, where I had not only to explain the meaning of ambition to children but also had to assist each of them in framing sentences ,making them spell every word properly and translating their thoughts from Hindi to English. This took 30 min for me and there was hardly any time left for any other activity. It was a kind of surprise for me to see children of 8th grade unable to  spell  “will”  “have”  “doctor”  “because”.  I felt the presence of a loop hole in the education system where students of an English medium school were not well versed in spellings and general English.

I thought of doing it another way. Next day I divided them into teams and told them to ask spellings from the opponent team. This sense of competition made some of them to find difficult words from their text books such as “environment” and learn them. This little effort of the children was encouraging for me. I also introduced some games in the class such as “Bring a thing” where students had to bring specific objects from their teammates such as “A black Reynolds pen or a paper boat”. Although I could not work for a long time as my vacations were going to be over, but it was an experience I would cherish forever.Something definitely needs to be done somewhere and Colorss is an attempt to do it. After joining Colorss as a volunteer, with Anand sir’s support I was more than comfortable and enjoyed every bit of work. Anand sir’s briefing of everything about children, their background, talents, general behavorial tendencies were helpful to know children better. I would like to thank Anand Sir for giving me the opportunity and believing in me. It was something very different and satisfying I could have done in 4 years of my college life. I enjoyed it and learnt a lot from it.

Priyanka Trivedi

VIT Vellore

Volunteered with Colorss at Pune

Joy on their faces was something we can never forget | Colors of Life ~ Baroda

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”  Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

When we first joint colors we didn’t know what to expect from the children. We didn't know how much they knew, what they would be interested in or how they would interact with us. We weren't even sure how we should interact with them. Therefore, our initial classes were not productive. The children did not stay interested in our classes for long and we began to have problems with the attendance. The boys would refuse to talk to us, preferring to talk among them, the girls were shy and we had difficulty in connecting with all of them.

After three months of fruitless discussions, us pestering them to write and them demanding to go out, we finally decided to change our approach for lack of satisfactory results. We spoke to our teachers and mentors and unanimously came up with the idea of doing more activities with the children. Since then, we have done a variety of activities with them like the ‘hero game’. In this, we asked each child to think of his/her favorite film character and tell us how they would respond to certain given situations.

This helped us to understand what they admire in their heroes and it made them think about what they would do in the same situation. We also conducted a quiz o Indian states and capitals. Though we had asked them to prepare beforehand, most of them didn’t bother. When we gave the teams which won kites as a prize, the joy on their faces was something we can never forget. They were genuinely so happy! Some of the others even came up to us and told us that they would come prepared next time. After months of frustration and disappointment with our work, we felt like we had finally achieved something!

Now, we feel more confident about our plans for the future. Though we had broken the ice some time ago, it is finally getting warmer.

Shreya and Ankita

Team Baroda

www.colorss.org

www.facebook.com/colorssfoundation

www.youtube.com/colorssfoundation

“ENHANCING” LIVES ~ Project Enhance

“ENHANCING” LIVES

Education is the key aspect that helps to build a child’s future. However education confined to the realms of textbooks and notebooks does not make the child ready to face the challenges of the world. Overall development of a child is of utmost importance for survival in the world of cut-throat competition. Thus providing basic elementary education to poor and underprivileged children is not enough to ensure a good future for them.

PROJECT ENHANCE uses sports and creative arts to brighten the world of children and contribute towards their overall development. Reaching out to the girl child is of utmost importance to universalize elementary

The project is currently carried out at Pune Municipality Schools

• Mahadji Shinde High School with 51 girls from 5th to 9th grade.
• Dr. Ambedkar Memorial School with 56 girls from 6th and 9th grade.

Both schools are in Pune Cantonment Board, Pune

Children take part in 30 minutes of martial arts and creative arts twice a week. This helps reduce stress, increase stamina, build confidence, developing a spirit of team work and makes education more interesting. In addition to this, professionals give the children talks on topics including body language, careers, family dynamics, communication skills and more. The result of this project is children who are disciplined, self-confident and perhaps most importantly, happy.

Women are given a secondary status in our society. Education of such a kind would help them let go off the inhabitations that hamper the development and growth of the girl child. After all they have to grow up and become women of substance, and this initiative of the COLORSS FOUNDATION helps them achieve this feat.

This novel idea that goes beyond bookish knowledge and helps improve and empower the girl child. All it needs is your contribution and time to touch new heights and change more lives.

LET US ALL COME TOGETHER AND MAKE LIVES FOR THESE CHILDREN A BETTER PLACE SO THAT ONE DAY THEY CAN MAKE THE NATION PROUD.

Contact- www.colorss.org to keep yourself updated follow us: Facebook Colorss

Tarishi Mishra

Requirements for creating a 3D anime ambassador

We at Colorss are Creating a 3D anime , which would represent Colorss Foundation all across the world. 


To achieve it we have got few requirements..


~ Requirements ~


1. We have already decided on the 'ambassador' need a volunteer to get a 3D model ready. 
2. Volunteers to write Jingles , that reflect the very essence of the Colorss Foundation.
3. Volunteers to write some stories , comic strips , where in the Mascot and Colorss Foundation are involved.
4. A video clip would work. A presentation which show the work of Colorss and the Mascot. To be posted on Blogs.
5. Searching for an intoxicating 'Voice' for the anime. - 


Share this with your friends and anyone interested pls email: emailcolorss@gmail.com or ping message! 


For more information:
www.colorss.org
www.facebook.com/colorssfoundation
www.youtube.com/colorssfoundation


Thank you,
For Love,
Anand

Calling Volunteers for Project 'Colors of Life' at Navprerna - a care club of Navrachana School, Baroda - Gujarat

Project '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 50% 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.

Project 'Colors of Life' is going to start for the students of Navprerna a care-club of Navrachana School, Vadodara Gujarat. `NAVPRERNA`a programme to educate Less Privileged - a care-club of Navrachana School. The children come from slums of Sama Village. The women particiapnts of 'Project Urja - igniting the fire' our first vocational training program started in Baroda, Gujarat also belong to the slums of Sama Village. 

Students of 6th and 7th grade would be the part of our Project 'Colors of Life' and we aim to launch the first E-zine of Baroda chapter on 15th August. 

We are requesting volunteers to join us at Navrachana School. The timings are 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm on weekdays (twice a week - days would be confirmed soon) and on weekends i.e Saturday (1st and 3rd - 4:00pm to 5:30 pm)

Psychology students/ Psychologist/Students and any one who can contribute to this project are most welcome. Send us your resume at contact@colorss.org . Deadline 10th July 2011 latest by 6:00 pm

Thank you

For Love

Anand 

Currency Indicator for Visually Impaired People

Currency Indicator Tool for Visually Impaired - Preliminary Survey

We often think twice before a financial transaction - just imagine how the visually impaired population does it!!!

Visually impaired people have different ways of identifying the Indian currency with the help of measurements, smell, folding it……. There is no successful device available to them that will help them identify the currency denominator.

NOW, we have a tool with us that is simple, easy, small – compact can be easily kept in wallet or pocket and the tool is CHEAP - help identify the denomination of Indian currency to the visually impaired people one at a time.

I am doing a required need assessment to find out if this tool is really required by visually impaired people or not.

Kindly help me in gathering information so that based on the real picture we can launch this tool as soon as possible. We need the information from the visually impaired people because they would be using the tool.

Kindly feel free to email me or call me for further information. Your help will help empower them.

Thanking you for your kind support and help extended.

For Love,
Anand K
anand.koti@gmail.com