Pankhudi Foundation Blog

Every Year the week of November 19 is celebrated as Team week at Pankhudi. This year, Pankhudi Mumbai volunteers decided to go for a trek. Volunteer Mansi Fadnavis shares her experience below.

Pankhudi Team-Day:

On the occasion of Pankhudi team day, 19th November some Pankhudians decided to go for a trek at Yeoor Hills in Thane. These hills are are located in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park.

On the morning of November 21, ten team members gathered at Thane station and went to the base of the hills. All of us were suspecting that since it is 7:30 AM the sun will be up and by the time we begin the descent, it will be too hot. But we were lucky as the sky was filled with clouds and the fog added to the beauty of our trek route.

Our cameras were out the moment we entered as it was quite an awesome sight for all the people in Mumbai to see so much of greenery and bright, vibrant flowers. We reached the hilltop in 30 odd minutes and decided to explore more. There were mud houses built by the local community living there, known as Varli. There were various types of weapons made of wood designed and kept in the mud houses for protection from the wild at night.

After wandering for a while we did lose our direction but managed to find a place where we could sit and play a few games. It was great fun as all of us went back in time and let ourselves out! We traced our way back as asking some of the villagers and finally came back to the starting point. The landmark was a beautiful lake surrounded by trees.

There was a small museum that had pictures and information about wildlife there and some very old pictures of Thane & Mumbai. We ended our day with an awesome lunch celebrating our team spirit!

To honor the innocence of children, who are most definitely our brightest hope for the future, we celebrate the Children’s day on 14th November every year. This year at Pankhudi, we celebrated it by organizing what children love the most – games!
All the children we are associated with assembled at Sambhaji Park. We divided them into three groups: students of classes 1 to 4, 5 to 7 and 8 to 10, respectively. With each group we played 4 different games: Relay, Dress Race, Kabaddi and Three-legged Race.
In relay, we had teams of 3 children each, who ran one after the other while passing batons.
The dress race consisted of several stages where the participants had to stop at different points and wear or take off shoes, tie and untie handkerchiefs and eat biscuits.
In the Three-legged race, the left leg of a child was tied to the right leg of another, and the duo ran using three legs, towards the finishing line
Last but not the least; the children played an energetic game of Kabaddi.
They also enjoyed the slides, the swings and the see-saws of Sambhaji Park
We gave away compass boxes as prizes to all children who won, and note books to all who came. The gifts were sponsored by TCS.
The children enjoyed some savory snacks at the end of the event and were then walked back home by the Pankhudi volunteers along with 13 students of Mahila Vanijya Mahavidyalaya. We would like to profusely thank them for their help.

The NASSCOM foundation has always promoted volunteering among the IT workforce. On the occasion of their opening office in Pune on 23rd Oct 2010, they asked IT companies to team up with an NGO each, and perform a skit/dance to deliver a social message. The unique idea behind this association was to promote volunteering by the IT associates at the NGO, after getting to know the NGO children.
Pankhudi kids teamed up with TCS volunteers to enact a play, whose theme was ‘Woman’. Our skit depicted, using 6 scenes, 6 different stages in the life of a woman where she faces gender discrimination. It starts right at her birth, because she was born a woman. She is not allowed to study further, in spite of being very talented. She is forced to do household chores. She is not given the freedom to choose her extra-curricular activities. She does not even get to choose her husband. She faces dowry abuse after marriage.
Every time a stage was enacted, a red ribbon was tied on the body of a volunteer, who represented the condition of women confined by the shackles of discrimination. The skit ended on a positive note, with a girl appearing on the stage, and untying all the ribbons of discrimination, while swaying to the song Ye hausla kaise ruke from the Bollywood movie Dor.
The skit was appreciated by one and all. NASSCOM also donated a sum of money to the participating NGOs to help them build their own library. We sincerely thank them for their generous support and hope to participate in more of their events in future.

Tata Consultancy Services, the IT giant of India, promotes a lot of Corporate Social Responsibility activities. On 19th September, they hosted an Inter-NGO competition at their Rajashri office in Pune.
A TCS vehicle picked up the Pankhudi kids at 9:00 am and drove them to the venue, where they were joined by the kids from other participating NGOs, namely, Eklavya Nyasa and LaxmiBai Magar School.
The competitions followed soon after. Asif set the ball rolling by reciting the poem Itna bada pahad. It helped kids overcome their initial bouts of nervousness, and paved way for the competitions such as Essay Writing, Poem Recitation, Drawing, Mad-Ads and Pictionary.
The competitions were interrupted, to the kids’ delight, by an entertaining magician. The magician took them to another world as he showed them tricks and called them to participate in them.
After a hearty lunch, it was time for the final event – the skit competition. The Pankhudi kids performed a skit revolving around the evils of child marriage and the importance of education.
The event concluded with the prize distribution ceremony, wherein the Pankhudi kids won a whopping seven individual prizes, along with a group prize in skit competition.
Along with these prizes the kids were also given a TCS bag as a take-home gift, in return for a promise to meet again next year!

Pankhudi Mumbai received about 33 applications from IIT-B for Winter Internship 2010.

After shortlisting and interviewing 16 candidates, we extended admission to 3 – Anant Prakash, Suparna Gharpure and Jim Mathew.

Each is a bright lad and brings different skills and competencies to the table.

We have chalked out and shared a detailed project plan with the group.  Their deliverables include a project report and presentation at the end of the stint.

More details will be shared in the coming week. Stay Tuned!