The Adhyapana trust organized a day long outing and tree planting activity for the students of Seva in Action (an organization started with the
objective of empowering families of rural children with special needs) on Saturday 4/8/2012. The day started with transporting the students from the Seva in Action (SIA) campus to Hoskote, about 20 kilometers from Bangalore .
SIA has secured some land to come up with another branch and we organized the tree plantation activity here.
There were several reasons to organize this event. One of the major
issues with special children is the lack of societal acceptance and the fact
that they tend to be isolated and treated differently. We wanted to organize
this event so that these children are also able to enjoy the simple pleasures
of life and they feel welcome and accepted.Another reason was to educate the children through different means - song, dance and drama- on the importance of saving the environment.
Before the actual event, we organized a few activities to educate and entertain the children. The session started with laughter
exercise where everyone joined in. the event turned out to be a laughter riot with the whole place was echoing with sounds of laughter This was followed by prayer and a game of passing the parcel. The centre piece of the session was a skit depicting
the importance of trees. We were overwhelmed when all the children voluntarily joined in towards the end of the skit.We concluded the session with the song “We shall overcome”.
Saplings were planted jointly by the special children, teachers and volunteers of SIA. Everybody took part by digging the soil, planting the
sapling, nourishing the soil with manure and watering the sapling after they
are planted.
Lunch was served at 2.30pm. After a hearty
lunch, we set out to Bangalore and reached by 4.30pm
A
lot of planning had gone into the day’s event – arranging for transportation
for the children, procuring the trees and manure, digging up the land, hiring
people to help with the tree plantation, ensuring hygienic food and water for
everyone, planning the other fun activities etc.We were ably supported by the staff of seva in action who had
coordinated with a nearby school for space and even arranged to take care of
the saplings .
4th
August served to be a book mark in the pages of the Adyapana. This was our first initiative with special children. We hope to have more of these events in the future.
