Deepam Quarterly Newsletter (Oct-Dec12)

Contents
Quarterly update (Oct-Dec12) ..................................................................................................................... 3 Volunteer meet ............................................................................................................................................. 4 Deepam Volunteer meet Dec12 ........................................................................................................... 4 Events ............................................................................................................................................................ 4 Childrens Day celebrations ...................................................................................................................... 4 Olcott Center......................................................................................................................................... 4 VRS Center ............................................................................................................................................ 5 WM Center ............................................................................................................................................ 6 Visit to Radio Station................................................................................................................................. 7 KC Center .............................................................................................................................................. 7 Deepams Lastest Laptop .......................................................................................................................... 9 Infosys initiative ........................................................................................................................................ 9 Run(s) for Deepam ...................................................................................................................................... 11 New volunteer Induction program ............................................................................................................. 12 Scholarship program_Testimonial .............................................................................................................. 13

Please send your valuable feedback to janavi@deepam.in

Quarterly update (Oct-Dec12)

By Janavi Shyam New Years greetings to all readers! Deepams 3rd quarter updates is an account of an exciting and event filled end to 2012 which marked the beginning of yet another center at Kodambakkam. The advent of our latest center is the result of concerted efforts of our leadership team with Education Department, Govt. of Tamil Nadu. Ms N Latha, Joint Director, School Education Department met with our leadership team and, impressed with Deepams initiatives and activities, offered to extend help by earmarking 5 centers in Chennai. The Asst. Educational Officers who subsequently visited our WM center witnessed a typical Deepam session in progress and gave positive feedback to Ms Latha. Following this, our leadership team selected Kodambakkam as our next center where we will continue our journey of educating primary school kids in English and computer skills. Deepams volunteer meet that took place on a balmy afternoon at the scenic Guindy Park looked at different suggestions from our new and old volunteers on how we can improve our ways and means of teaching children. The members also took part in a knowledge sharing session that saw some interesting experiences and ideas being exchanged. The last three months of the year saw us celebrating Childrens day in an eventful manner with all centers organizing several events ranging from painting to fancy dress competition. Some of our kids were lucky to witness the functioning of Chennais only all-English radio station, Chennai Live 104.8FM. In a philanthropic gesture, a young couple, Karthik and Sudha donated Deepams latest laptop. The laptop will help us serve our students even better. Infosys CSR arm Sneham donated 50 English dictionaries for our students. The dictionaries were distributed as required among our different centers. The quarter also marked the closing of our UK center. This was a sad day for Deepam and all who were closely associated with it were quite upset. However, the tough decision was taken following rounds of discussion among the leadership team which decided that Deepam will continue in govt. run schools only in the future.

Volunteer meet
Deepam Volunteer meet Dec12
By Janavi Shyam

Deepams quarterly volunteer meet was held in Dec12 after a long gap. About 25 members were present at the meet that was held in Guindy Parks natural surroundings. Members expressed their rich experiences with Deepam and also exchanged ideas on how to improve our methods and practices. Some new volunteers who had joined us recently also participated in the meet. It is planned to hold such meets more frequently and with a packed agenda in future.

Events
Childrens Day celebrations
Olcott Center By Janavi Shyam Olcott center celebrated Childrens Day with much fun and frolic. The center organized a theme based painting competition for the kids. It had a good turnout and the kids came out with interesting ideas. Prizes were distributed to the winners.

VRS Center By Anuradha Murali After what seemed like a no show day with many things not going our way at the start, it dramatically turned out to be a very good event with many of our kids surprising us with their well memorized few lines delivered confidently. And the mike organized by the school made it even better. Few parents, exstudents and us volunteers were the audience. Top of the charts was Mother Teresa (Sharanya). Her costume was perfect..and KP will be happy to know that she blasted thru the I am Albanian, Indian etc etc Thunderous applause! Second place went to Santa Claus (Jenith) who fitted the part perfectly, and said his lines with gusto. He actually brought a red bag filled with stuff to add credibility to his role, not to mention the rags that were stuffed into his red pullover to give him a Santa tummy! Smiles all around! And the third place went to Bharathiyar (Akhila) who started with the fiery Tamil poem Achham illai and ended with a couple of English lines and Vande mataram! Super! And to think that she didnt know even a single Bharathiyar poem one week ago!!! Surprise package was Jayalalithaa (Dinisha)for a girl who is usually so reticent, she spoke bravely into the mike, and was dressed to look the part too. Nehruji (Poongavanam) looked so real, but her delivery though correct was a bit sing-songish. The other Nehru (Shweta) was also sing songish-ly good. Mickey Mouse (Uma) and Snow White (Vaishali) were both good too, with full English lines, but they narrowly missed being placed.

Neil Armstrong (Santosh) was a surprise letdown. He is such a bright boy, but somehow on stage the words just didnt come out. He was the only boy who came fully dressed as instructed, and spared us some effort. The other participants two Krishnas, two cricketers, Gandhiji, Muruga & Avvayyar, Rajinikanth, dancers etc., were dressed up for the part, but obviously they had not put in the effort to learn their lines. Leeba (alumnus of VRS center), the judge for the event, was visibly happy to be at VRS again, and in her characteristic style, she pampered the kids with lots of goodies. Janavi gave crayon boxes to all the kids.

WM Center By R.Rajagopalan At Deepam WM, Children's Day events started off colorfully -- all the children resplendent in their Deepavali 'new's for this special day. The events planned for the day were no less colorful. The volunteers having earlier reached a consensus to allow children, for a change, to do what they like to do most, thus making it their day -- Children's Day -- the competitive games and events steered well clear of anything related to reading, writing, speaking, spelling, grammar or pronunciation. Even the team names chosen were from popular characters in story books the children like to relate with and draw pictures of -- Bubbles, Bruno, Pepper and Scooby Doo. Keeping in mind the different levels of skills and interest of the children (we have kids of III, IV and V std), three main events were conducted today. BINGO - This was a team event participated by 14 children, with a volunteer to help each team, involving crossing out words as they are called out. The team that gets to cross out all the words in the given 4x4 grid was adjudged the winner. MEMORY GAME - Again, a competitive event to encourage children to see, retain, recall and recount -not words or sentences, not answers to questions, not vowels nor consonants, but objects. Objects were 6

the ones children see and use every day, ranging from an apple to onion to mobile phone to buttons to mickey mouse to coolers to wallet. This was an engaging event for both the children and our volunteers. CREATIVE DRAWING - A circle, a triangle without a base (or an inverted V), a semi-circle and two parallel lines. With the condition that these should form part of the pictures they draw, children were allowed to let their imagination go unbridled. To help them in this, each child (this was an individual event) was given an A4 sheet with the 4 patterns drawn on top, and a pencil, an eraser and a packet of crayons. The concepts children came up with were outstanding, some of them stunning. It was astounding what all children could think up to use the given patterns. BOARD GAMES - This was a subsidiary event to keep teams of children engaged while another team was participating in Memory Game. As is always the case, volunteers played these with a passion that matched children's enthusiasm. At the end of the events, all children were given one piece of cake, drinking water, one packet of 'Lays' chips and one Frooti. At the beginning, instructions to children on the events planned was being given while at another end few volunteers were discussing plans for conducting the events smoothly.

Visit to Radio station

KC Center By Vedavalli Rajan Saturday, the 13th October turned out to be a special day for us in KC centre. The long overdue outing was to take place and the volunteers- three from KC centre (while Madhu mam from WM centre joined at the venue) - and the children - fourteen of them, seven boys and seven girls - were equally excited. The trip was to the radio station of 104.8 FM, Chennai Live at Empee Tower, Egmore, Chennai and we spent as much time travelling as we spent at the destination. Enroute, one of the boys suggested 7

we play Spellbee and it was fun because the kids had the signboards on the way as clues to the answers. We finally arrived at 104.8 Chennai Live FM station at 11.00 A.M and the producer Mahalakshmi came over to take us around. She asked the kids to introduce themselves and it was such a proud moment for us volunteers to see that all of them could actually do it in English with ease. Mahalakshmi was quite impressed with their ambitions - software engineer, police women, astronaut etc. She wanted to take the children in 2 batches and the kids devised a way to form the batches, one girls batch and the other boys batch. They visited the sound-proof studio from where the live broadcast happens - at that time there was only a prerecorded program going on and then went on to see how the playlists are made up, the other two back-up studios where they record programs and the music scheduling section too. Mahalakshmi showed the kids the work of the person who prepares the announcement type advertisement - and explained how he records the vocal part first, then mixes the musical background and then schedules it to go on air as per the requirement of the advertisers. We met 2 of the RJs and a quizmaster too. The quizmaster, Thouseef, had a question for the kids: Who won the T-20 championship recently? and Divakar gave the right answer which was impressive. We wound up the trip by 12.30 P.M thanking all of them at the radio station for such an educative session but had to hang on as the van was parked elsewhere. Sathish, a volunteer from KC centre played the 104.8 FM on his mobile and the kids were thrilled. During the waiting time, there was a lot of assimilation of facts learnt inside the radio station and if only they get to have a topic for an essay about a visit to an important place, these kids can actually write out of their experience!

Deepams Latest Laptop

by Janavi Shyam

Deepams latest possession, a fine new laptop, was recently donated by a young couple, Karthik and Sudha, who expressed their interest in contributing to the organisations cause. Though the couple is not involved directly in our classes, the gesture came as a positive for the organization. A big round of applause to them from the entire Deepam fraternity.

Infosys initiative
By Prasanna Hail the benevolent philanthropist! Sneham, the CSR wing of Infosys, is only as popular as the company itself for several of its positive influences to the outside world through its involvement. Snehams latest drive that includes supporting education of our children connected with Deepams objective that focuses also on education. Infosys, through Sneham, donated 50 dictionaries to Deepam to be distributed among our center and eventually to the children studying in them. The dictionaries were distributed equally among all centers and were well received by the children In identifying the children for this valuable gift, WM center had set the norm that the child receiving it the dictionary should really appreciate its value, be able to use it or be willing to learn to use it, and preserve it with the respect it deserves. At our VRS center, the dictionaries were distributed to 8 fast-track students and 2 intermediate students. The kids were first told about Infosys and how having a dictionary as a reading aid would help

them in their academic pursuit, that may eventually lead to employment in a big company like Infosys! They all nodded eagerly and said they knew how to use a dictionary. At our KC center, 10 kids were identified based on track record and were distributed with dictionaries. The kids really enjoyed the gift and we have instructed them to bring it to the class every week. The kids were also given lunch baskets contributed by our friends from Thomson Reuters.

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Run(s) for Deepam

By Janavi Shyam

A unique event that was probably the most special of all the social happenings in the last three months was the Run for Deepam event as part of Marathon specialist Balas 12X12 challenge which covered 12 marathons in 12 days in Decemeber12. One of his runs was dedicated to Deepam and its causes. Though the objective of the run was not to directly raise funds, the aim was to publicise about the NGO and garner attention through social networking sites that will be populated with details about his run

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New volunteer Induction program

By Janavi Shyam

Deepam continued with its endeavor to grow its volunteer strength and the final quarter of 2012 was no different. There were two rounds of induction for new volunteers and we had 25 new volunteers joining us in these three months. Most of them are young professionals working in varied fields like IT, Mfg, etc. What is encouraging is that there are a number of college students among the new volunteers. Deepam believes that the frequency of our induction programs is only likely to go up considering that new centers will be up and running in 2013. With the growing interest of youngsters to be a part of NGOs, the pressure will be on us to be inclusive and responsive so we dont miss out on eager to-be volunteers.

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Scholarship program_Testimonial
By Janavi Shyam Muthuselvi is from the Deepam 2009 Batch . She was focused, regular and has always been motivating her friends at Deepam. Her persistent efforts got her good marks and earned her a seat in an engineering college. Deepam is supporting her college education starting with a full scholarship for the 1st year. Thanks to Paras Shah and the ISB alumni for their contribution towards this.. Muthuselvi affirms that Deepam vastly helped her in improving her English communication and computer skills. She strongly feels that this is helping her a lot in College to compete with other students. Deepam wishes her all the best in fulfilling her ambitions in life.

How can you be involved ? You can volunteer to teach You can refer a friend to teach at Deepam You can sponsor a child's education You can donate laptop or books For more infomation, contact Janavi(details given below) Visit www.deepam.org.in Mail us at janavi@deepam.in or call @ 9791088036 or to know more about Deepam or to join us

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