Makkala Jagruti

On 24rd June 07, the iVolunteer-ASHA Group was at Makkala Jagruti an NGO, whose focus is to work with underprivileged children in the area of education. However, we were there to enrich the children’s knowledge on HIV/AIDS. The age group of the children was between 11years to 16years.

The program started at 11:15 AM and as usual the agenda was to have
- Ice Breaker Game
- Skit
- Details about HIV and
- Quiz

We were about to start the Ice Breaker game of Idli-Vada-Dosa but to our surprise the children already knew the game. However we went ahead with the same game and made it more exciting by picking few delicacies, which the children liked – Biryani, Masala Kallekai (Masala Groundnuts), Soup and Chum Chum (sweet), instead of the usual Idli-Vada-Dosa. Children really enjoyed the game.
It really doesn’t take much time to get along with children, their innocence and naughtiness reminded us of our good old school days. Childhood is the best time of a person’s life.

Coming back to program, the game had set a very good platform to move on to the next point on agenda - the skit. After a brief introduction of the actors, Vijay and Sayeesh started the skit with great enthusiasm and were very well supported by Neetu – the Doctor, Asha – the Wife, Amit – for making the stage arrangements and the new volunteer Tarangini – as the Nurse.

We could make out that the children were watching the skit with immense interest. This facilitated the Narrator (Vijay was the Narrator since Asif hadn’t come) to smoothly give away the punch lines of the skit on Modes of HIV Transmission and Prevention after each scene.

The inquisitive mind of a child was very much evident, with the kind of questions or doubts they came up with after the skit. Vijay answered all their questions, cleared all their doubts and also ensured that there were no misconceptions left. It was relatively tough to address their questions especially at their level of understanding, since many of them were too young and didn’t precisely know about sexual contact, condoms etc.

But, we were able to prevail over all these challenges and were able to provide the accurate information about HIV/AIDS. The children expressed their gratitude for having received so much knowledge about HIV/AIDS and thanked all the volunteers.

This was one more success story of iVolunteer-ASHA Group…