Children’s Day Festivities in India

Celebrations at the Kindergarten

Here in the beautiful Goa region of India, millions of children are living below the poverty line, deprived of basic things such as healthcare, food and education, commodities which most take for granted. As an organisation, we focus our efforts on helping provide local children with a basic education which will enhance their future prospects and which lays the foundations to ensure they fulfilled their potential as best they can.

Children are the citizens of the future, wealth and development of the world depedant upon how we mould or train them in such a way that will benefit the family and society. We believe in investing out time and effort into the development of children and helping deliver their right to education.

We have been working with migrant kids to ensure they have access to education. We run a kindergarten for the children of migrant slum communities living on the outskirts of Goa who work as unskilled labourers. At our school, we give free education, healthcare and provide basic but nutritious daily meals. A doctor from the Goa Primary Healthcare Centre visits the school every 2 months for a regular health check-up.

The results of our efforts over the years have shown how we have impacted the lives of children born into some of the least privileged communities in the world. We focus on education, but we also don’t forget to have fun in class.

Every year on November 14, we celebrate Children’s Day across the nation. The day marks the birthday of former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. This year, we celebrated Children’s Day with children joining our education and teaching programs. Each program had a different kind of a celebration on this day.

In the kindergarten, we organised a day of full of games and fun activities along with our international volunteers, and all the children received gifts in honour of Children’s day. Our volunteers ensured a fun day was had by all involved; the volunteers and children danced, learned songs, played instruments and played traditional games such as hide and seek.

In another kindergarten we work with, we took the children on a picnic to the beach. We did many fun-packed activities on the beach including paying games, making sand statues and so on. At the end of the day, we watched the sunset together and before returning home. Our volunteers help with the co-ordination and organisation of the day and ensured the children had a day to remember.

In the slum outreach program which takes place in the afternoons, we organised a ‘dancing in groups’ session. Children got dancing lessons and then performed on stage with great enthusiasm and delight. At the end of the children’s performances, there was a surprise dance by their teachers including the program volunteers and coordinators. The day ended with lots of snacks and drinks and also with gifts for all the children. It was indeed an unforgettable day for the kids as well as for us.