Gift shelter to a destitute child by Sevalaya

The children participated in all the activities and events that happened in the school and hostel. Major events ? Most of the children excel in various sports activities like basketball, handball, athletics. They have represented at the district level. The students also participated in various classes conducted by volunteers. They participated in events like dance, drawing, music conducted by various organisations and volunteers. Kasuva village in Thiruvallur district were covered. Number of people impacted directly were nearly 100 children. The program mainly focussed on the orphan and destitute children. The children are given free clothing, shelter and food. The donation received are spent for the children. They can lead a healthy and happy life through this.

As like last year, there was not many challenges this year. All the basic needs of the children were taken care in the homes, for any medical emergency round the clock doctors are available inside the campus and the health needs are taken care. For any further support the children are referred to hospitals. There was no major challenge in case of medical needs. Next six months more support will be given to academic improvement. One on one coaching for children will be faciliated to focus on their academics. Simultaneously more focus will also be given in sports to achieve in district level.

P Lakshmana, one of the beneficiaries who is residing in Sevalaya?s boy?s home is a well-disciplined boy. He is good at academics. He is a top performer in basketball. His father is not alive. His mother is a daily wage earner. He has been residing here for the past 7 to 8 years. He is also the Prime Minister in the children parliament. He has good leadership quality. He takes care of his juniors in the hostel very well. His overall development is owed to the support, care and safety he receives from Sevalaya. In this list of sponsored hostel children, four hostel children have scored good marks successfully completed their Class XII. The 4 hostel children are: Ammu G, Girija M, Sharmila S and Varshini S. All these children come from the poor family background. They are very old students and showed good performance in their Class XII examination. The four hostel children got admission for undergraduate courses in Soka Ikeda College in Ambattur under sports quota. They are exempted from paying fees for all the three years of study. Their performance is well appreciated by all the teachers.

After a long break, Sevalaya’s Mahakavi Bharathiyar Higher Secondary School at Kasuva was reopened for all classes on Nov 1, 2021. Due to a spike in COVID cases in Tamilnadu, the school was closed in January 2022 for a few weeks as per the state government's instructions. Again, the school was opened a few days back, approved by the state government authorities. All the safety precautions are in place.

Providing quality education, food, clothing, and basic essentials to the children who are residing in Sevalaya’s Mother Teresa Girls Home and Sevalaya’s Swami Vivekananda Boys Home. Medical checkups for the children are being done regularly for the hostel children. This is a continuous process. The children wake up early and participate in daily yoga sessions. They have proper meals on time and their progress is monitored. For the students, it’s been the joy of being back with friends, the familiar settings of the school, their classrooms, and their seats. Learning gaps were identified among students as most of the sessions were conducted online. The teachers took a lot of initiative to bridge the basic skills and the portion skills. BGV (Mahakavi Bharathiyar, Mahatma Gandhi, and Swami Vivekananda) value education sessions were conducted. Diwali, Christmas, and the birth anniversary of Rajaji, Mahakavi Bharathiyar, and Ramanujan were celebrated. Competitons were conducted and children participated with enthusiasm.

During the COVID pandemic, most of the classes are conducted online, and the performance of the students is well monitored by the teachers. The children are very cooperative. It was a challenging period.

To prevent COVID, we keep the following protocols: The class size was reduced; the students from each section were divided into 2 groups and attended the school in 2 shifts—morning and afternoon.

Classroom space and physical distancing within the classrooms

Temperature and Symptoms Check

Veerabalan T, 17 years old, student. His father's income is not sufficient and his mother has no income. He comes from a poor family background. At his initial stages, his parents were struggling to educate him. With Sevalaya's support, he started studying well. Now, he is one of the intelligent students in the class. He is studying in Class XII in this academic year (2021–22). He maintained his consistent performance in academics in recent years. He shows an interest in learning new things. He also participates and excels in carom and throwball. Now, he has started preparing for the Class XII board examination. He shows immense dedication to his work and is confident of doing his best in the Class XII board examination. His performance is well appreciated by the teachers. He is safe and in good health. He follows COVID safety precautions regularly.

Due to the Covid pandemic, all the schools were completely shut down and we are conducting online classes for the 53 children via google meet. The beneficiaries participated in an online musical event to celebrate Independence day. Our students participated online in many state-level inter-school competitions like oratorical, essay writing, drawing, storytelling etc. on various occasions and won prizes.Sevalaya continued to focus on training in sports for the students, though not many events were conducted because of the pandemic.

Sevalaya has been reaching out to these children through mediums like Google meet, WhatsApp on their parents’ devices. The teachers were in regular touch with their respective class children through these mediums. However, it has been a challenge to do so, as not all families have smartphones or access to the internet, a limitation that Sevalaya recognises in its endeavour.As the schools reopened for classes 9 to 12 on Sept 1, 2021, we are planning to engage children in more activities, like life skills, career counselling, motivational and self-improvement sessions.

Lalitha J, a hostel student, studying Class X, previously used to tease her friends, call her friends with nicknames and sometimes will beat her friends. During training, we were able to see many changes. She started to wish teachers, talk with due respect, deals with friends with affection. She also started guiding her hostel friends to behave properly. Now she is the leader in the hostel and even in classrooms, she will take care of the class, while the teacher is not there.

Memorable learning experiences

1. On 7th September 2019, 200 children of Sevalaya had a memorable day. As guests of His Excellency the Governor of Tamilnadu, Banwarilal Purohit, they attended a colourful function at the Raj Bhavan. They had tea with the host and received gifts from him.

   
   



2. 200 students of the Children’s Home and 8 care takers went on a trip to Vandalur Zoo on 25th August 2019. The children were thrilled to see crocodiles, snakes, many species of birds, zebra, monkeys and wild animals like bear, the white lion and the white tiger. The trip was sponsored by Rotary Club of Madras Magnum.

   
   



3. 198 children from Sevalaya participated in Rotary Diwali Nite at VGP, orgnised by Rotary Club Dist 3232 Universal Kingdom on 12th October 2019. The children were welcomed with breakfast. They then played on the various ries and had fun. Delicious lunch was served to them students. It was a fun filled day out for the children.

   
   



4. 24 students from Sevalaya's Children's homes participated in the 27th Rotary Neeta Talent contest for children held at Kamaraj Memorial Hall by Rotary Club of Madras T Nagar and Neeta Memorial Charitable Trust on 22nd November 2019. Orphans and differently abled children from 50 NGOs participated in this programme. Sevalaya children presented 2 group dances and 1 skit in their alloted time of 10 minutes. Sevalaya students won the overall 2nd prize in this event. 3 students participated in the drawing competition. Bhoopathi of Std IX bagged the first prize among 50 participants.

   
   

Program Update

Sevalaya’s Mother Teresa Girl’s Home and Swami Vivekananda Boy’s Home houses nearly 170 children. The children are mostly orphan and destitute. The children are provided with quality food, education, opportunities for skill development and talent promotion in an atmosphere of love and care. The children do their prayers in the morning and evening. They are provided fruits twice a week and ragi porridge daily morning. Medical Checkups are conducted regularly.

Nila Mutram activity is conducted on every Saturday evening. During this activity, children selected a theme every week and act it in the form of telling stories, drama and dance. This helps them to get a wide knowledge on various topics. The residents of the Children’s Home are instilled with a sense of social responsibility by interacting with the residents of the Old Age Home. They also get to understand their responsibility towards sustainable environment by learning organic farming and other eco-friendly initiatives. All these together make them confident, well- rounded citizens of the future. The children were taken to temple every Friday and they sing devotional songs.

Sevalaya’s Hostel students actively participated in Rally on the theme of creating awareness of Voting to the nearby village people at Puliyur . It was organized by Dr. Ambedkar Law University – NSS Students. This was held during the month of March 2019. Sevalaya’s Hostel Students actively participated in the Motivational Class conducted by Ms. Santhi, Headmistress of Alamathi School. The students thoroughly enjoyed the session. This was conducted during the month of February. Also, visited the Station Mandir, CRPF at Avadi during the month of January.

Sevalaya is doing work in ensuring the good health of the Children’s Home residents. In addition, there are comprehensive playing facilities for the children. This again abides by Swami Vivekananda’s dictum that a good game of football can do as much to the awakening of the spirit as reading of the Gita.

Story from the field

Sathish R, now 13 years old, is from Old Karuvakshi, in Villupuram comes from a poor family background. His father Mr. Raja and mother Ms. Sivagami are brickworkers, as they do not have sufficient income to educate their son and were very much worried. When Sevalaya came to know about this, Sevalaya took responsibility on taking care of Sathish R, who is studying in Class IX, is a well disciplined boy, who maintains and keeps his surroundings neat and clean. He is now staying in Sevalaya Hostel and continuing his studies. He has improved a lot after he joined in Sevalaya. He actively participated in the yoga training, fire awareness safety programme and also in other interesting activities like tongue twister. He is excellent in drawing and won runner price Playing Hand Ball recently conducted in competition held in Erode. His performance is always well appreciated by the teachers.

Program Update

Sevalaya is a charity, registered in 1988.Inspired by Mahakavi Bharathiyar, Mahatma Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda, Sevalaya serves the poor, orphan and destitute children and senior citizens and works for rural development.
Sevalaya's Swami Vivekananda Boys Home and Mother Teresa Girls Home shelter around 175+ orphan/destitute children. Sevalaya provides food and accommodation, education, health care, sports, dance, music, entertainment, tours, skill development trainings and talent promotion in an atmosphere of love and care. These children are taken care of till they become self-reliant.. Many children are now well placed as software engineers, bankers, teachers / professors, police, electricians and mechanics.

Story from the field

V N Jagan from Mamandur near Thiruthani lost his mother when he was 7 years old. His father earns a living by grinding idli batter and selling it. Jagan's grandparents stay with them but his grandfather is blind and grandmother is too old to take care of the children. Jagan who is now in Std VIII and his brother came under Sevalaya's care this year. "I love this place. I feel at home here. My appa (he refers to Boys Home caretaker G Krishnaswamy) takes very good care of me. I like the school very much" says a happy Jagan. Sudha Anand, a volunteer from Dubai and her son Siddharth who were recently at Sevalaya teaching Chess and Rubik's Cube to the children is amazed by Jagan's intelligence. "He quickly grasps and understands the concepts" observes Sudha. Jagan, who has always been a topper in his class, shows keen interest in sports. A very friendly boy, he helps other students and is very happy with the various opportunities he gets to explore his talents. "When I am well settled in life, I will come back to Sevalaya and be of service to the organisation which serves the needy" concludes Jagan.

Sevalaya's special activity called Nila Mutram, was conducted for both old aged people and children who live without their parents. Elders shared their knowledge & stories with the kids. A small drama was performed by the kids in front of them, so that both kids and old aged people felt that they were united as if with their own grandparents and grandchildren.
To improve self-knowledge and patriotism, we insisted the kids to select the books of Gandhiji, Vivekananda & Bharathiyar and present their book review once in a month.
To motivate the kids, Sevalaya conducts education and entertainment tours periodically. Last month, we arranged a tour to Bangalore by flight which was an unforgettable experience for the kids!
Expected total number of beneficiaries in this program for FY18-19 - 190
Total Budget for the project for FY18-19 - INR 4500000

Gomathi's story
E. Gomathi came to Sevalaya at the age of 11. She began her studies here from Std VI. Her father had expired and her mother is a housemaid. She stays at Sevalaya hostel. She has a good helping tendency and engages herself in helping small children to get ready for school, at the same time ensuring that she is also present at school at the right time. She also assists aged persons living in the campus for their regular activities. Now she has reached the final stage of school in class XII. Though she is average in academics, our physical director identified her interest in sports and gave her special training in athletics for the past 5 years. She has also delivered hard work as an athlete, as a result of which she won Divisional level in 3000 & 5000 meters in athletics. She has now been shortlisted in Queen Mary's College for B.Sc Physical Education under sports quota.