Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Initiative

It was an experience worth experiencing, worth capturing and worth writing!! I'm talking about my first experience teaching pottery to 200 children at a summer camp!! This camp was for children who were extremely rich in creativity, had tremendous amount of enthusiasm and zeal to learn and explore new things. The highlight of this workshop was that none of the participant had ever worked with clay and 90% of them created astonishing work!! Small work space, high temperature, slow fans, no tools...none of these factors stopped them from making their masterpiece.


 It started with a call from  Steria India Foundation who organizes summer camp for underprivileged children every year and this year they wanted their children to explore clay as well. Since i always wanted to do a similar kind of workshop, there was no second thought to it....i immediately said yes. I was exxxxxxtremely excited, nervous, confused, restless. There were couple of things that were haunting me.....how will i manage the entire bunch of students, what will i teach them, how will i teach 200 children and that too in 3 hours time and without using any tools, how will i arrange such a huge amount of clay. But all my fears were taken care of as it is rightly said by our very own SRK ki "Agar kisi bhi cheez ko dil se chaho to puri ki puri qayanaat tumhe use milaane ko koshish main lag jaati hai."

A Big Thanks to all young Volunteers and Teachers

So it happened with me as well. All resources, ideas, material came smoothly to me. The workshop went super grand. We divided the entire bunch in 4 groups according to age group. Luckily all kids were above 8 years so it was easy to instruct them. Managing kids was not a problem etall as there were some really young, supportive, fun loving volunteers to help me out.

It was a classroom session...so i had to be louder and crisp and clear in my instruction. I had to demonstrate them the technique without the use of a mike or projector and that too in quick simple steps. After demonstration, students started creating their own clay model using their own imagination and style. I was surprised with the level of creativity, enthusiasm, self initiation showcased by students. What i liked most is that each one of them was in a competition mode and wanted to do slightly different than what was demonstrated to them. The result was awesome. They created multitude of ganesha idols, wall art, name plate, tribal mask and much more!! They were in high spirit and felt really motivated whn i clikpics....some of them really felt bad when i didn't asked them to pose for a individual pic...poor my mobile...dint have battery and memory space to take individual pics. But i managed to capture some star moments for you!! It was a beautiful claying experience...rest pictures will speak for me :) At the end, I also want to convey my gratitude, respect to all the NGOs, CSR wing of multinationals, and other volunteers who come forward with such initiatives and bring smile to thousands of children around the country!!

Enthusiastic teachers also participated and created their Ganpati Bappa