{"id":3708,"date":"2021-10-28T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-28T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/?p=3708"},"modified":"2021-10-26T10:32:44","modified_gmt":"2021-10-26T05:02:44","slug":"visit-day-care-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/visit-day-care-centre\/","title":{"rendered":"Visit to Wishes and Blessings Day Care Centre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Active in more than 6 states in India, Wishes and Blessings<\/a> is a Non-Governmental Organisation located in New Delhi.  I am the newest member of this family, and I found the organization very welcoming!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am currently working for Squad for Change<\/a>, which is the volunteering wing of the organization. Since Diwali is around the corner, every year Wishes and Blessings comes up with different workshops for children in their Day Care Centres, to keep them involved, one of them being the Modi Mills day care centre, situated in Okhla Industrial State, New Delhi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Modi Mills Day Care Centre<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

One interesting fact about this day care centre is that essentially it is a rain basera (night shelter), which is used as a daycare centre for children during day time. Bustling with excitement and enthusiasm of young children, this place will always have a special place in my heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We visited the day care centre to hold a \u2018Diya Decoration Workshop\u2019, which was conducted by one of the Volunteers, Rinky. I was accompanied by Monika, my colleague, and our two volunteers, who were rather excited about their on-field experience. I was as excited as them, as this was my first field viist too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Arushi<\/a>
A photo of me with our two volunteers, Rinky(on my left) and Ruhee(on my right).<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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We reached the day care centre at around 11 am in the morning; there was a very positive and vibrant feel to the place. As soon as we entered the centre, all the children wished us in unison. The day care centre themed in blue was covered with colourful drawings made by the children from the centre. A teacher, who is employed by Wishes and Blessings, was standing right at her desk with a few paintbrushes in her hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The workshop started after 15-20mintes, till then we divided the children into five groups, each group consisted of around 5-6 children. All the groups were very diverse in terms of age groups- ranging from children who were as young as 5 years, and as old as 16-17 years of age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I got a group consisting of 5 boys and a quiet little girl. Most of them were very enthusiastic, but restless, so you don\u2019t expect such a bunch to have the patience for decorating diyas. To my surprise, they were patient enough. The very naughty Gaurav made the best diya in my group. You would typically think that the boys are the naughtiest, but this time I rather came across a little girl, Mohini who fit the right shoe! Upon asking, she told me that she was in standard six. She was amongst the youngest in the group.\u00a0 As soon as the workshop started, the volunteer instructed the kids, on how to go about the whole process, we started to follow her instructions, and each child started decorating their diyas, as soon as we decided on the colour combination, which was decided by the majority in my team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As we all started working on our diyas, Mohini asked me, \u201cDidi should I just colour it all orange?\u201d I asked her if she didn\u2019t agree on the colours that we decided on, to which she replied \u201cNo, I like them\u201d, but despite that conversation, she ended up colouring the whole diya orange. I asked Mohini, to improvise on her diya, it ended up being a total disaster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why I am highlighting this incident is because, Mohini at the end of the workshop, while glancing towards all the diyas that the other children had made, came up to me and said \u201cDidi, I am sorry I didn\u2019t follow what didi (volunteer) asked us to do, all the other children made such beautiful diyas, look at mine\u2026.it is so ugly\u201d. To which I responded that if she had understood the fact that she needs to follow instructions when she\u2019s trying to learn a completely new skill for the first time, and after learning it to the best of her ability, try improvising on it, she will do wonders. She said, \u201cI will do that\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I don\u2019t know if she will ever remember this, but if she does, I am sure, it will take her places, because I saw that she tried hard on doing the damage control, when her orange diya didn\u2019t turn up the way she expected it to be. The boys, on the other hand, followed exactly what was told to them. Yes, they were restless, so occasionally I would ask them to go quickly wash their brushes and come back. This way, I tried to distract them from losing patience altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dharmendra, one of the kids from my group, was the most diligent of the lot,\u00a0and did everything perfectly, till the time he ran out of patience, and almost destroyed his diya (we did save it though), but till the time he was into it, he did it perfectly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Arushi<\/a>
Little Dharmendra and I<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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The NGO has taken the responsibility of providing these children at the day care centre with quality food, which consists of breakfast, lunch and evening snacks, while taking care of their educational needs. Right when you enter the day care centre, on your left side you will see a list of food menu, that the children intake from Monday to Sunday.\u00a0 The kitchen is right outside the main premises of the day care centre, which was neat, tidy and also blue. It is run by a couple, who were very pleasant, and had big smiles on their faces, the minute we entered. They were also kind enough to let me serve the children their afternoon meal. It felt very satisfying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Arushi<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

These children have just started going to school again. After two years of fighting the virus, finally, people can move, meet. Slowly and steadily things are opening up- markets have new stocks, schools, colleges and offices have started to open up as well. The only thing that we need now is sharing kindness, we, especially these children have already seen a lot, not only in terms of their economic and socially weak background but also how the pandemic has impacted each one of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At around 2.30 pm it was time for us to leave, a child came up to me and asked my name again, and asked if I wanted to have some food and water, before I left. That was one of the warmest gestures, coming from a child. The children here are full of life. Yes, they are naughty but aren\u2019t children supposed to be that way? Naughty, pure and innocent. I believe there is no \u2018naughty\u2019 child; I think every child just learns differently. If a child is not able to understand what the instructor is teaching them, it is mostly the instructor\u2019s fault, not the child\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"One<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This is a snapshot of the diya one my kids made. Not perfect, a little shaken, and untidy, but I am proud of it, because I know that the children did everything by themselves. I let them be. I would occasionally help everyone and ask them to improvise, but that\u2019s about it.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cannot wait to go on the rest of the field visits; there is Coolie Camp Day Care Centre in Vasant Kunj and an Old Age Home \u201cMann Ka Tilak\u201d near Saket, and several others. With this, we also shouldn\u2019t forget that corona is very much here, and we need to stick to the behavioural changes that we adopted during the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"All<\/a>
My high-five team: Do you see a child on the extreme right? THAT\u2019S Mohini. The two boys in yellow tees are Gaurav and Rahul(starting from the left), and Dharmendra is the one in blue and white shirt, and to his left there is little Mohit.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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About the Author<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\"Arushi,<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Arushi Painuly is Programme Officer for Squad For Change (SFC) at Wishes and Blessings. She has done her Masters in Political Science from Kirori Mal College, Delhi University. Arushi is passionate about reading books, writing and dancing. She firmly believes in being part of the solution, rather than the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Active in more than 6 states in India, Wishes and Blessings is a Non-Governmental Organisation located in New Delhi.  I am the newest member of this family, and I found the organization very welcoming!   I am currently working for Squad for Change, which is the volunteering wing of the organization. Since Diwali is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[22,36,18,35],"class_list":["post-3708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-children","tag-education","tag-sponsor-a-childhood","tag-street-to-school"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2021-10-22-at-10.40.42.jpeg?fit=828%2C595&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/par1hd-XO","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3708"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3781,"href":"https:\/\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708\/revisions\/3781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wishesandblessings.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}