2011-12

1. Celebrating the completion of Vivekananda Youth Forum’s 25th year!

A programme was put up by the children on the occasion of completion of 25 years of VYF. The Chief Guest was President, RKM, Khar. He lit the lamp accompanied by Jyotishman Dasgupta and Poornima. Before each programme, Swamiji’s quotation was read out. Vidyasagar was the compere for the evening and he enthralled the audience with his fluid words. He was helped by Vishesh Mahadik who narrated the speech in Hindi. The entire auditorium was decorated with posters of VYF’s projects. The stage was decorated with marigold and green leaves. The banners were designed by Idea Spice.

Refreshments were undertaken by Sodexho through Sunil Nayak.

We decided on the following course of programme.

• Sandhyalaya: Children sang two songs: 1) Tu zinda hai tu Zindagi; and 2) It’s a small world after all. With continuous practise, the children picked up the songs. Alokadi taught them the songs and Barua sir played the keyboard. Each child was given a VYF T-shirt, which they wore during the performance. Props, such as the world, a smiling face, tearful face, forests, sun, moon, flowers and butterflies, were made for the second song. About 40 children participated.

• Soup Kitchen: They are the floating children. Most of the time they disappear, so we could not have anything complex. We thought of having a reality show, as how the street children came to Soup Kitchen, how difficult the task was, and how slowly they started learning something at our centre.

Suvarna gave a small commentary about the children’s background, how slowly she could convince the children to come to the centre, leaving their familiar environment. The main resistance came from their parents which she had to overcome. Suman, Sunita and Vandana also acted along with the children. The children were too wild to perform on stage so they acted as children only. After their little skit, all of them stood in a semicircle and sang “Hum honge kamyab”. Suvarna was superb.

• Chembur Children’s Home: Enacted the three stages of Swami Vivekananda

1) His experiment with hukkas; in his father’s house where there were 3 separate hukkas for Hindus, Muslims and Christians, when he wanted to find the difference and was surprised to find all were the same. Noopur wrote the script in Hindi and the boys did a fabulous job.

2) This phase was when Swami Vivekananda was roaming around the country as a wandering monk. His encounter with the monkeys at Benaras Ghat, how he was frightened and how he overcame his fear.

3) The third phase was Swami Vivekananda’s speech at the Parliament of Religion. The speech was in Hindi and was enacted by Rakesh, who resides in CCH and is studying in the 6 th Std. His performance was much appreciated by all. There were 12 children participating from CCH. We had a dress rehearsal on 20th August. We hired a bus to bring them and drop them back. Each of the children was given a VYF T-shirt. Nileshwari, Suman and Vandana went to CCH every Sunday morning to practise.

• The final show was by Sakwar boys. Self-defence class is conducted by Kishore Gavli at Sakwar, which RKM has adopted. We hired a bus and brought about 40 boys from the village. Sakwar is 70 km from Mumbai. The boys came dressed in their Karate dress and performed all the self-defence techniques very well. Sibashish also gave a commentary and interacted with the audience. He also invited a few people to take part in the exercise of realising the power within. The last function was felicitation of our sponsors, donors, and all the members. Each sponsors, donors were given a papaya sapling wrapped in jute bag with a ribbon tied around it, with a chit explaining how it should be planted along with a book by Swami Vivekananda and a key chain made by the girls in our vocational training programme. Nandita wrapped each of the papaya saplings. Members were given a book “Powers of the Mind” and a key chain.

1. GAP

• Government of India is celebrating 150 th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda and has donated some amount to the RKM headquarters at Belurmath. Belurmath has given the money to several branches to take up welfare work in the fields of children, women and youth.

• RKM, Mumbai, has given the grant of INR4,26,000 to VYF under the Gadadhar Abhyndaya Prakalpa (GAP) for 2011–12 for the welfare of 100 children aged below 12 years.

• Categories mentioned are nutrition, books and study material, health and hygiene and establishment cost etc. VYF purchased a computer, projector with a screen, school bags, umbrellas, toiletries and educational study materials as well as decided to give some nutritious snacks.

• The aim of this project is to bring a qualitative change in the health and cognitive development of children. For nutritional food, VYF is sponsoring 23 children under GAP. An amount of INR550 per month has been earmarked for each child. Teachers have to purchase 250 ml of milk per day, eggs thrice a week, green leafy vegetables thrice a week and nachani satva thrice a week. A child’s height and weight needs to be checked every two months.

• Under the GAP initiative, VYF offers toiletries to the children from Soup Kitchen and Little Lamps every three months. Soup Kitchen children were given one umbrella and one toothpaste tube, toothbrush and one bottle of oil. The gifts were distributed by Swami Sarvolokanandaji during Christmas.

• Little Lamps children were given one school bag and one umbrella. Children were given samosa and jalebis. Swami Gaurikantha Ananda from RKM headquarters, Belur, came for an inspection of the GAP project on 6 th February 2011.

• Under this project, 100 boys and girls under the age of 11 are educated and their health and nutrition is taken care of. He was satisfied with the progress and wished VYF all the very best.

2. DIYA PAINTING; DASSEHRA STALL AT RKM, KHAR

Diya painting commenced from 12/th September 2011 and within 15 days painting, designing and packaging was completed. This time there were few children for diya painting, but Sandhyalaya children managed to paint, design and pack 1000 diyas. At RKM, things on display included hand painted jute bags, earrings, bracelets, necklace sets, Giggleberry products and diyas. This time the sale was very good. All the goods were sold within 4 days. We had to order for more jute bags and the diyas that were kept for the mission were also taken for sale. We had a great response and the mela was a success.

3. DIWALI CELEBRATION

• Mankhurd: 200 children

Crackers: 200 packets

Wax diyas: 200 pcs

Uthni powder: 200 packets

Rangoli powder: 1 kg for each kutir (5kgs) + 6 colours: red, magenta, green (light& dark), lemon-yellow, orange (200gm x6)

Few days before the Diwali celebration each kutir was given kite papers, glue, and thread for preparing kandil. Each kutir had made beautiful kandil.

From Sandhyalaya, five children were taken along as volunteers. The place at CCH was cleaned as Nileshwari and Tanvi along with Sandhyalaya children had reached earlier. Each head boy of a kutir was given rangoli powder and were asked to start the competition. The programme started with a prayer and thereafter the children were divided into 15 groups with 6-7 children in each group along with one volunteer for each group. Kite paper and glue was given to each group and they were asked to make rings out of the same. Later on this was used to decorate entire quadrangle. Purnima di showed slide show of Swami Vivekananda to the children.

Thereafter the prizes were distributed. The first prize was 1 packet of 10 big anars; second prize was 1 packet of 6 big anars; third, fourth and fifth prize was 1 packet of 10 small anars each. After prize distribution children were given crackers. Dinner was provided by VYF. For dinner dahi raita, puri, chana, papad, pulav and gulab jamun was prepared by Vrinda caterers.

• David Sassoon: 180 children

Crackers:180 packets

Diyas: 180 pieces

Uthni powder: 180 packets

Food: 7 kg sev and 5 kg boondi

• Soup Kitchen: 25 children

Crackers + diya

Sandhyalaya: 25 children

Crackers+ diya

Crackers consisted of 2 small boxes of roll caps, three chakris, two anars, one rope, 2 pcs of assorted cartoon crackers and one box of fuljhadi.

4. DANCE MASTI AT MANKHURD CHILDREN’S HOME

It is our annual programme at Mankhurd, where children of five kutirs compete with each other in terms of a lively dance performance.

Nileshwari, accompanied by some children and volunteers from Sandhyalaya, reached the venue at 3.30 pm. The programme started at 5.00 pm with a prayer. Purnima di narrated the story of Jesus Christ and thereafter children were asked to blow the balloons and decorate the quadrangle with the same. One packet of Hippo, one frooti and one mawa cake was distributed among them. The program lasted for three hours. To commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, VYF decided to provide one towel to each child. The towels were sponsored by Rehana Deshpande, kedar deshpande, shailesh deshpande and camela Rupani. Alpa Desai arranged for the same from Dadar. Aroon Travels arranged for the bus. We ordered 230 tetrapacks of Frooti and 250 packets of hippo wafers from Jeel Stores in Juhu and 230 pieces of mawa cake.

Ms. Shweta from Lintus Group agreed to be a judge for Dance Masti’11.

Prize Distribution

 Small group from Bajrang Kutir won the first prize

 Bigger group: The song “ Jeena yahan, marna yaha, iske siwa jaana kahan” won the prize.

5. CHRISTMAS FEST AT TURF CLUB, MAHALAXMI

An exhibition was put up at Mahalaxmi for Christmas on 3rd and 4th December 2011. Suvarna and Binita opened the stall at 11.00 am. Shweta and Ananya volunteered in the afternoon from 1 pm to 5 pm. The next day Suman, Vandana, Nileshwari and Suresh were the volunteers.

This is the first time VYF has been invited to participate in the Christmas Fest at Turf Club. The arrangement was very good. Two tables and two chairs were provided for each stall. We showcased jewellery, Swamiji’s literature, slates, education games from Giggleberry and jute bags. It was a new experience, everything, especially food, was very expensive.

JAMNALAL BAJAJ INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, MARINE LINES

An exhibition was put up at JBIMS. Students had taken jewellery and giggleberry products from VYF on consignment basis. They sold almost all the products at double the selling price. Entire proceeds were donated to VYF.

6. HOLI CELEBRATION AT MANKHURD AND DAVID SASOON

For holi, 200 packets of colours and 100 gm gulal were distributed at Makhurd, while 180 packets of colours and 100 gm gulal were distributed at David Sasoon. A total of 415 packets of colours and 120 pichkaris were distributed.

7. GOVERNMENT LAW COLLEGE

An exhibition was put up by the Government Law College at their college campus from 27th February to 1st March 2011. They had taken jewellery and books from VYF on consignment basis. However, the sale was quite low.

8. ROTRACT CLUB

Rotract Club of Andheri organised dualathon, where the competition was held for 5.5 kms running and cycling 11 kms. This initiative was to support the cause of lowering carbon emissions for a greener world and educating the underprivileged.

The proceeds of the marathon were donated to VYF. Sunil Nayak, VYF’s Trustee, accepted the amount and spoke about our organisation. Pankaj Chaudhari accompanied the bigger boys and girls from Sandhyalaya. VYF’s participants were Priyanka, Gazala, Takmina, Rohan, Rizwan and Santosh.

Shubhada has compiled a dance drama (Odissi) based on Swamiji’s saying which was given to Swami Sarvalokanandaji for approval.

9. SAKWAR

Programme Coordinator: Kishore Gavli

This program provides martial arts training in Karate & self-defence to the tribal boys and girls from the villages of Sakwar & Embur, on the outskirts of Mumbai. Martial arts training give the children a sense of self-confidence, self-esteem and most of all trains them in self-defence. It is also a creative outlet and a source of self-improvement. Also, it instils in them the initiative and confidence to go out into the competitive world and make a living for themselves and their family, and to achieve excellence in their chosen profession. Nilesh Ghatal is doing an electronic course. He is a black belt holder in Karate. Once a week he conducts training for children in Sakwar. He takes part in Karate competitions and stood second in a Karate competition at Kataj. Amar is doing a motor mechanic course. He is a black belt in Karate and takes classes at Virar.