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VOL.9, NO 6 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2015

What is life but a process of constant learning, and who knows it better than the Udayan Care family. True to the spirit of accumulating and sharing knowledge, we saw our bright, young minds across Udayan Ghars, the Shalini Fellowship, Big Friend Little Friend, Udayan Care IT & SDC (Skill Development Centre) indulge in workshops, events and learning sessions with hungry minds. We also take up advocating child rights by organising trainings, conferences and by presenting papers on Institutional care.

Familiarising children with their Right to Education

The youngest group of citizens is also the most unaware of their right to learning, and that’s why on Children’s Day, the kids of Udayan Ghar participated in learning modules that acquainted them with the constitution’s provisions for children through a painting competition and awareness rally. The Delhi Child Rights Club formulated an association of all children from various NGOs, where the children from Udayan Care participated to plan and discuss the Children’s Sports Mel in December. Workshops were also held with programme stakeholders, regarding the psychological well-being of children and panel discussions on individual care plans.

Being an active, aware society

Udayan Ghar’s children attended a Life Skills workshop, focusing on subjects like Problems and Solutions, Coping with Emotions, Understanding Feelings, Managing Differences and Conflicts, My Body an Me, and more to help them develop into well-rounded individuals with full cognisance of themselves. Meanwhile, the children of Mayur Vihar and Sant Nagar conducted an educational walk to Humayun’s Tomb on the occasion of International Education Week organised by the United States-Indian Educational Foundation. The children thoroughly enjoyed the walk, striking the right balance between fun and learning.

A time to learn and celebrate The last few months of 2015 were a time of tons of celebration at Udayan Care. Diwali celebrations abound across Udayan Care IT Centres, with cultural programmes at the Badarpur centre, Deep Utsav at the Sahibabad centres and environment-friendly Thermocol models of diyas and gods to celebrate the banishment of darkness from the world.
On the other side were the Children’s Day celebrations organised by big friends of the Big Friend Little Friend Programme. A child rights awareness workshop was conducted on the day, where the little friends were divided into groups, given a situation about a child and asked to define the rights of the child in it.

Shalinis participate in The Missing Girl Campaign

Human trafficking is one of the world’s largest crimes, and the magnitude of its negative impact on society needed to be communicated to people who were unaware of it. 65 Udayan Shalini Fellows gathered at the Jahangir Puri Residential Area in New Delhi to conduct a child trafficking awareness campaign. They went to every household in the area, talking to the residents, spreading awareness through pamphlets and painting silhouettes of girls on walls and tagging them with #missingirls. The highlight of the campaign was the street play performed by the Shalinis, which was hard-hitting and struck a chord in the hearts of the local community.

Leadearth Fellowship 2015-16 Orientation

As the world focuses on the Paris Agreement, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and Genpact paid a visit to the Gurgaon Shalinis to lay the groundwork for sustainability and environment stability. The LEADearth fellows got acquainted with the nature of work Udayan Care does under its running projects, while the Shalinis were urged to brainstorm on ways to keep our environment clean and disseminate awareness among people.

Genpact and Aeon Hewitt’s impact on Shalinis

To give our Shalinis confidence in the corporate world, Genpact has designed a monthly exposure meet where the Shalinis visit their Gurgaon office and interact with top Genpact executives. These executives conduct workshops for the young women, enabling them to become skilled and competent to combat the challenges posed by the corporate world. For example, in the November meet, Ms Manvi Sharma (Senior Manager, HR) spoke to the girls on personality development and, in particular, developing oneself into an informed, respectful person who remains true to oneself; while Mr. Nitin Khurana (Assistant Vice President, Hiring) took a session on spoken English, motivating the girls to practice speaking English no matter the difficulty.

Aeon Hewitt visited the Kurukshetra Conference Hall at Seth Banarsi Dass College of Education for an interactive dialogue and fun session on counselling, career planning and social issues with the Udayan Shalinis. The ‘Betibachao, betipadhao’ song, coupled with the catwalk conducted by Shalinis sporting recycled paper dresses designed by a fellow Shalini were the highlights of the session.

Creativity unleashed, evil kicked

Our Shalinis relived their childhood days as they played with clay during the terracotta handicrafts workshop conducted by Dolon Kundu, award-winning Terracotta artist, in Kolkata. She taught the Shalinis to make birds out of clay. The Kolkata Shalinis were also fortunate to catch a film screening of a documentary on women empowerment that addressed topics relevant to the women – reservation and oldage, for example.

While their brains were being nourished, their physiques were not far behind. In a self-defence workshop conducted exclusively for the Shalinis, the women put their strength to test learning martial arts and Kung Fu. Watch out for their lethal skills, world!

Teaching people to be good

Big Friends and Little Friends of the Kanak Durga base wanted to spread light during the festive season of Diwali, and chose a unique way to do it - they conducted social lessons around the festival’s significance and taught the neighbourhood to celebrate the essence of Diwali without harming the environment, human life or animals. Big Friend Isha Almadi’s idea to split the little friends into groups and pen their thoughts on why the society should celebrate a cracker-free Diwali was an instant hit. Pictures from the session are available on the Udayan Care Facebook page for all to see.

Sharing a point of view at the National Seminar on Child Protection

The Research & Documentation associate of the Udayan Ghar Programme attended a National Seminar on Child Protection and presented a paper on “To Evaluate the Current and on-Going Changes in Children's Trauma, Attachment, Self-concept and Ego-resiliency” at Christ University, Bangalore on November 18, 2015. Responses to the paper were positive, with the audience interacting with the associate extensively and asking the right questions to understand foster care children better.

Udayan Care IT Centres’ learning spree

Accenture volunteers, connected with our IT programme since October last year, conducted three career counselling sessions with our Badarpur IT centre students. Three volunteers spent time with 45 students aged 18 and above and spoke about preparing for MNC interviews and explained the basic qualifications needed. The volunteers then followed up the sessions with a practice interview round with the students. The Sahibabad IT centre organized a visit to the India International Trade Fair in Delhi to spread awareness among the IT centre students on how important it is to balance peer pressure, study pressure and more using handicrafts as a learning medium. During the visit, the students participated in research work, recognized sound handicraft techniques and successfully explored ideas for making beautiful designs using technology.

Udayan Care’s 2nd Biennial International Conference

Not only was the first biennial international conference on “Standards of Care and Mental Health of Children in Institutional Care” in 2014 a tremendous success, but it was also an incredible experience for Udayan Care. Encouraged by the positive feedback and the learnings gained during the 2014 conference, Udayan Care will be conducting the 2nd Biennnial conference on the theme “Improving Standards of Care for Alternative Child and Youth Care: Systems, Policies and Practices”. The conference will be held at New Delhi from March 18-19, 2016, with a focus on South Asian countries. If you would like to be a part of the conference, registrations are open. For more details, click here.