HALLI SUMMER CAMP- A Prelude

It was probably around noon on a Sunday, after yet another "SBS". A group of Aashayein Foundation volunteers sitting in a café and sipping coffee, all with worried faces. All plans of conducting a summer camp going in vain. Govt. schools in Mysore not co-operating, not enough kids in any of the orphanages, we volunteers were trying to make the last forlorn attempts in making it work, but it didn’t look likely. Suddenly out of nowhere, one of us just comes up with a thought- Why not have the summer camp in a village? And that was it- in the next 3-4 hours, we managed to choose a village and even go there and find out the possibilities. At the end of the day, we knew for sure- WE WERE GONNA HAVE THE SUMMER CAMP AND WE KNEW WHERE!

So it was “Destination Hadinaru” from then on. Around 25 km from Mysore, the village is quite apt for our exciting project. A school has around 800 odd kids, out of which we’ve chosen 50 for our camp this time and all 50 of them have just passed their 9^th grade. Few of us have already met those kids and they seemed to be highly excited about the whole thing! So the last two weekends have been pretty busy for all of us in trying to chalk out the whole plan. One can clearly feel the excitement and the jitter building up with all the volunteers who are trying their level best to make this event a success.

Starting from the 24^th of April, the camp will go on for 3 weekends from 9 am to 1 pm. Some interesting science experiments, basic training on Vedic maths, fitness and agility training, career guidance, morale boosting sessions, basic training on computers and internet, painting, crafts etc. are some of the highlights of the camp. Plans are still on to include more exciting stuff in the stipulated time period of 6 days.

It’s the first big event that our 3-month-old AF- Mysore is taking up and we know it’s not gonna be easy. But all we know is, we have enough potential and zeal in us to make this work. As the saying goes "There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."

PS: For those who don't know about the organization I work for and are interested to find out, please visit our official AF-Mysore blog- http://afmysore.blogspot.com/