Hi….My visit on January 27, 2008 (Sunday) to the Todapur basti area (New Delhi) was a great experience. I had visited the place with a plan to conduct a drawing and singing competition within the Municipality school for children ageing 5-10Yrs and also to make these young lads realize the importance of education in their lives.

In the beginning, things were not easy. Children were reluctant to come together and participate in the competition. After some efforts, few of them got in and the rest followed. There were around 50 boys and girls who participated in the two competitions.

Lakshay works for promoting education..so the theme of competition also went with the same cause. It was cool to find 80% of children painted computers and flowers. This clearly shows a combination of ‘modernity blending with tradition’ in our next generation. There were some special cases wherein a child name Divya and few others’ came up with arts of Goddess Durga, Lion and Skycrapers.

Few prizes were also available with us to do the honors. After the completion of these activities, our group got together to make these children learn the importance of education and how they should move towards realising their dreams. We tried to identify what makes them move away from the school by bunking school, missing school, and even leave school.

All kinds of reasons came in which revolved around environment that they live in, parents orientation towards education, lack of facilities, money and many others…After listening to most of them, the point that really struck me was ‘money’ was not the foremost issue which walled them towards education. There parents were open to pay their fees.

I believe their problem lies in the availability of direction and guidance. A bit of motivation and provision of basic facilities will help them improve for sure…I know it is pre-mature to make a mindset on their actual problems but this is what my first experience was all about…never the less, I am already up for it and will be visiting again next weekend…so lets wait till then…thanks