muskaan …a smile miles away - asha for...

Muskaan...A smile miles away

The Asha-Colorado team is bursting with ideas and events for the coming year. One of our focuses is to spread awareness about Asha and the need for basic education in India amongst the local community. To this end we are collaborating with various organizations in the Denver Metro area, bringing together the community for fun-filled activities and at the same time spreading aware-ness about the problems faced by underprivileged children in India.

The year started with a Carnatic music concert held at the Colorado State University in asso-ciation with Sri Paduka Society for Indian Classical Music. Following closely was the Holi Mela that the team put together in collaboration with the Indian Association of Colorado at Place Middle School, Denver. It was an afternoon of colors, games, food, mehendi, face painting, music, and of course pi-ñata.

Next in line is a grocery coupon scheme where we will be establishing relationship with our local grocery stores. Coupons can be purchased from our volunteers and redeemed at these stores-5% of your purchase will be donated to Asha-Colorado at no cost to you.

Mitr-my friend– a movie by Revathy Menon has received raving reviews. We will be bringing it to you along with other movies in April/May. The film festival will be spread across Denver Metro Area-we will be screening it in Denver, Fort Collins and Boulder.

Our signature event,GeetanjaliGeetanjaliGeetanjaliGeetanjali 2002, featuring a music group from Colorado Springs bring-ing you music and dance from popular Indian movies, will be held in early summer.

WAH2002-the annual Asha wide fundraiser where you can donate one hour of your annual salary to Asha will be on time as usual-from July 4th to August 15th. You can donate by simply going to our web page.

Later down the year we will be bringing contemporary jazz to Denver Metro area. Natraj-a group based in Boston-will be performing in Boulder some time in early October. Asha-Colorado team is working with AID-Boulder team to bring Natraj to you.

As always, 100% of the funds raised from these programs will be used to support educational programs for the underprivileged children in India.

Log on to our web page for more information about our future events and projects.

Asha –Colorado, in collaboration with Sri Paduka Society for Indian Classical Music (SPSICM), organized a Carnatic Vocal Music Concert by Sri Neyveli R Santhanagopalan. Sri San-thanagopalan, a celebrated artiste from South India dazzled the audience with a spiritually enthralling concert on a quiet and gloomy Sunday afternoon. The concert was held on the 24th of March 2002, at the Concert Hall in the Music Dept inside the Colorado State University Campus, Fort Collins. The concert was welcomed by an energetic and eager audience who experienced a scintil-lating program with the artiste presenting some of the age-old classics and popular pieces. This eve-ning of elevated spiritualism enthralled the connoisseurs and adventurous fans of music alike. The artiste was accompanied by Smt. Anuradha Sridhar on the violin and Sri Shriram Brahmanandam on the Mirudangam (a traditional South Indian drum).

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Editorial: A year full of activities...

MUSKAAN …A Smile Miles Away A quarterly newsletter from Asha Colorado

April 2002 Volume 2 Issue 2

Inside this issue:

Editorial 1

Neyveli Santhanagopalan 1

Holi Mela 2

My Asha 3

DSSCOD-A site visit 4

A report on child labor 5

Our upcoming events 5

�Check Out: Our upcoming events: Grocery Coupon scheme Film festival GeetanjaliGeetanjaliGeetanjaliGeetanjali 2002 For more information visit: www.asha-colorado.org

Neyveli Santhanagopalan-An Evening of Scintillating Carnatic Mu-sic Concert By Hariprasad Devanath


Holi Mela-An Afternoon of Fun! By Nandini Vasan

Snapshots from Holi Mela -photos courtesy Ravi G.

As nature blooms in full color, the Indian community of Colorado had an opportunity to come together for the first annual Holi Mela. The festival of fun and colors was held on March 30th in collaboration with the India Association of Colorado. The event was an indoor carnival featuring loads of fun for all ages. The activities included creativity in the form of face painting and mehendi, challenging arcade games, mouth-watering food, bingo, thundering music featured by a DJ, and lots of door prizes. And not to for-get the colors! Though due to the vagaries of the weather we were not able to have a full-fledged Holi with water and colors, yet we managed to have fun with just Holi Tikka. Every person was smeared with hues of red, purple, and green that lingered the whole day.

The highlight of the day was the Karaoke session. A group of talented karaoke singers from Asha-Colorado and the Indian Students Association of CSU enthralled the audience with some melodious songs. Hari, Suresh, Shaan, Kishore, and Juhi left us feeling nostalgic of our previous life in India by singing songs from the 60s to the 90s.

Lastly, there was a piñata for the children filled with candies and all sorts of goodies Asha-Colorado team once again walked away with the glory of organizing yet another successful event. This event spread

the message of hope for the needy young children thousands of miles away in our homeland. A few trinkets of Hope will bring a face full of smile.

The Fish Pond was popular with the kids Home made biryani and kulfi proved to be a hit!

Getting the venue ready! Smiles at the end of the day! All the volunteers of Asha-Colorado


A few days back I came back from work after a rather long, uneventful day and found myself flipping through the TV Chan-nels when I happened to catch 'Salaam Bombay' on one of the channels. Having never seen this movie, I watched a good part of the movie. Long after the movie was over and days having gone by, the scenes in the movie are still fresh and vivid in my mind. The movie casts into light the plight of kids who are into such unfortunate circumstances or thrust into circumstances such as prostitution, drug peddling or even simply working in unfavorable conditions to make enough for a square meal a day.

We, at Asha for Education, provide 'Asha (which literally means hope)' to characters such as in the movie. It is through such non-profit voluntary organizations that children have a ray of hope that there is light at the end of their very

dark tunnel. Asha primary education but also teach them sustainable skills. By providing money and monitoring the progress of such projects, Asha provides a means for such people to improve their quality of life and thus break free from the fetters of their environ-ment.

Though the projects funded are small (monetarily), yet the organization contributes significantly towards the betterment of the individuals and to the society as a whole. The smiles on the faces of the poor children who are able to get basic education and con-tinue on to a better life, the feeling of hope that the young women have when provided with vocational lessons to live on their own, are reasons enough to volunteer a few hours of free time to this organization

My Asha By Chakravarthy (Chuck) S. Meduri

...contd from page 1

Nevyeli Santhanagopalan concert- The two artists are highly acclaimed performers by their own

right and are based in San Jose, California. The concert had a good turn over with about 100 people in the

audience considering the fact that the front range area, and Colorado in general, does not witness many such events involving international mu-sic. This concert was the first undertaking of SPSICM. The concert was a fund-raiser for several projects that support education for the under-privileged children in India.

Asha-Colorado wishes SPSICM success in their further endeav-ors in organizing such programs.

Nevyeli Santhanagopalan performed at the Fort Collins on March 24th 2002

The artistes: Nevyeli Santhanagopalan-vocal; Anuradha Sriram-violin; Shriram Brahmanan-dam-Mirudangam; Srividya Venkatachalam-tanpura and vocal support; Hariprasad Deva-

nath– Vocal support

Snapshots from the Carnatic Music Concert

-photos courtesy Nat Sekhar


Projects: DSSCOD Site-Visit Report by Sripriya Venkataraman Place: Dharmapuri, Tamilnadu Details: Available at http://www.ashanet.org/colorado/Projects/dsscod.htm Status: Funded since June 2001 by Asha-Colorado and AID-Boston Date of visit: 31st December 2001 Organization: Divine Spirit Service Center for Disabled (DSSCOD) Basic project: School for physically and mentally challenged children living in Dharmapuri district

Background: DSSCOD, or Mercy Home is located in Dharmapuri District of Tamilnadu. Last year DSSCOD started a home for MRC’s (Mentally Retarded Children). These children will be referred to as Special Children in this report rather than MRC. Brother Louis Rayan is our primary contact for this project. Brother had sent a proposal for $5000. AID, Boston, sent $2500 while Asha CO sent $1000 for this project in the year 2001. Although the site visit was meant only for the school for special children we learnt about the other schools that the organization runs too. This report includes our experience visiting all these schools.

About Brother: Brother has a Master’s degree in Physiotherapy. He started the home for the leprosy around 1983. To-day, this organization is self-sustaining. Brother later on started an educational institution for physically handicapped children. This school received a grant from the State Government of Tamilnadu’s Social Work Department. This annual grant helps them maintain the school building and feeding the children.

DSSCOD: DSSCOD has three separate schools: i) school for deaf and dumb children,; ii) a school for physically handi-capped children; and iii) one for Special Children. There are a little more than 200 children enrolled in all three schools. The school is residential. The children are not abandoned children, most of them have parents and they do visit/or are visited by their parents during weekends and during holidays. The children are not separated from each other based on their handicap. Although they are taught in different classes, they eat, watch TV, play and sleep together. During the lunch hour we noticed that all the children were eating together and were very happy.

The teachers come from nearby places, and stay between 9:30am-4pm in school on working days. Some teachers stay there and visit their family during festivals/holidays. The school has class up to 9th standard. Once they finish 9th standard Brother plans to send them to the nearby “government school” in a van for higher studies. We asked him about the job prospects for these children and he said the SW dept would help them find jobs, he added that a Titan Company, which is nearby, will probably employ these children after their higher secondary education. Brother also plans to start a vocational training center sometime in the future for these children.

At present the Social Work dept. seems to be supervising the whole project in general. The half yearly exams were going on and we saw the sealed papers that had come from Madurai.

Special Children Selection Criterion: There was a teacher Palani, to teach Special Children, who selected the children. We were very curi-

ous to know about the aptitude test conducted to select students so we went through the notes of Palani to see how he had selected students. Basic idea was to select student who can be trained or taught. The following tests were held:

i) Whether the student can write his/her name (in Tamil); ii) Can say her parents names; iii) Motor Memory test by asking the children to string beads; iv) They were also asked to read and write 2-3 letter words; v) They were also tested to recognize numbers from 1-50.

The test also required an official certificate from a doctor Teacher and what they teach: Palani went to a different job since he got a better salary. At present special children have

only one teacher, her name is Sabita. She stays at DSSCOD and visits her family in Madurai occasionally. Brother pays her around Rs 2000. We spoke to Sabita for a long time; we found her to be a very patient and affectionate teacher. We saw her while she was talking to and teaching the students. We asked her about the job etc, she seemed to be enjoying it. Two ladies who have agreed to teach the special children from next year (that is June 2002), they are at present undergoing training to teach special children in Chennai. The teaching at present is Black board teaching. All the teachings are in Tamil. We went through their timetable for the day. During the day the children have the following classes:

i) Made to say the words mother, father, brother, sister, grandmother, grandfather etc in Tamil; ii) The children learn what day/month it is; iii) The children learn the body parts; iv) They learn to count beads; v) Yoga and physical exercise; vi) The children learn times of day morning/afternoon/night; vii) Learn Numbers; viii) Writing and reading three letter words.

Religious Leanings? We heard from Brother himself that a missionary funds the school for the physically challenged chil-dren. Since his sister, (called Sister), who is a nun, also teaches in the school, we asked him if the children are converted to Christian-ity. To this Brother’s answer was:

“I teach my students Moral Science through religious scriptures and mythology. Since I am a Christian, and since I have studied The Bible, I find it easier telling them stories and fables with a moral from The Bible. I do not convert any of my students – they are mostly Hindus by birth and they stay so”. He adds: “…after all, morals and values can be taught in any form…”

RECOMMENDATION: Continue funding the project.


Grocery Coupons: Buy King Soopers cash certifi-cates from Asha every 2 months (or any other frequency suitable to you). Use these certificates instead of cash while shopping at any King Soopers store in Colorado. Certificates come in denomina-tions of $25 to $100. You can request the exact number of each denomination that you need. The certificates are valid for 4 years from date of purchase and are trans-ferable! King Soopers will donate 5% of the certificate value to Asha-Colorado. Help educate children by shopping at King Soopers and using cash certifi-cates obtained from Asha, at NO COST to YOU. Please send an email to [email protected] with complete purchase information (how many $ coupons you would like, your mailing address, etc.) and we will get in touch with you. Coupons will be available from May 1st tentatively.

Geetanjali Geetanjali Geetanjali Geetanjali 2002: The success of Geetanjali Geetanjali Geetanjali Geetanjali 2001 has encouraged us to make this into an annual event. The event will showcase music groups based in the Denver Metro Area. Scheduled for an early summer date, Geetanjali Geetanjali Geetanjali Geetanjali 2002 will feature a well-known group of musicians from Colorado Springs. The group has performed for many Indian functions, the latest being the Republic Day event organized by the In-dian Association of Colorado.

Geetanjali Geetanjali Geetanjali Geetanjali 2002 will feature music and dance from popular Indian movies. Please visit our web site (www.asha-colorado.org) or email us at [email protected] for more information.

Film Festival: Mitr-my friend, English August, The Terrorist...these are some of the mov-ies we are planning on screening in the Denver Metro Areas in association with AID-Boulder These movies will be screened at the University auditoriums of-fering the students and the local community a chance to see these off-beat movies in a big screen. We and other Asha Chapters are also exploring a tie-up with Sulekha (www.sulekha.com) for co-creating, co-promotinfg and co-launching a branded nationwide film festival for Indians.

An Alternative Education

By Minali Balaram

Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen has defined development in terms of freedom, development as education, and development as empowerment among many others. Development has evolved from being simply synonymous with economic growth, to encompassing more socio-political as well as personal issues. empowerment is an important term in development, connoting an ability to make choices, implying that people have options, are aware of these options, and are capable of making informed decisions. With an ability to make decisions comes the concept of developing a unique definition of the self- of a person's individuality. Empower-ment comes from education, and from having the freedom to make a an informed choice. My research deals with the empowerment of child labor in rural Karnataka, through education via a rather traditional form of media. Bhima Patrike is a wall newspaper, a Kan-nada monthly, that deals with various issues relevant to working children, not just in the five panchayats (counties ) that it is distributed in. It deals with issues that are current to the international working children's movement, and thus educates the children of each panchayat about the latest happenings on the international front. Although first started by The Concerned for Working Children (CWC), a non-profit organization working with child labor issues, the paper is slowly being formulated by the children themselves, and a few of the smaller more remote panchayats have even come out with their own local version of the paper. The paper is put up at the local village community center so that all the children who cannot read, can have someone read it out to them. Also many of these village centers, run evening schools, where they discuss issues brought up in Bhima Patrike. Bhima Patrike consists of a car-toon strip, a health column, an international affairs column, a local news column, an experience column, and an editorial column. The content is created in the villages, and sent to CWC's Kundapura headquarters. It is printed out and sent back to the villages, where the makkala panchayat takes care of its distribution. Bhima Patrike is an important step in creating child-participation in the process to remove exploitation by education through creating an awareness of various child labor issues. It is an important empowerment tool, as it provides the children with an opportunity to network with other working children, and gain a better understanding of the issues that need to be tackled. It is an important exercise in recognizing the child as the protagonist, and giving them an opportunity to voice the problems they are facing as well as solutions to these problems.

OUR UPCOMING EVENTS


Our Mailing address: Asha-Colorado Asha for Education PO box 6145 Aurora, CO 80045

A quarterly newsletter from Asha-Colorado

Web: www.asha-colorado.org Email: [email protected]

An Action Group for Basic Education in India

Asha means Hope. Hope for a chance to go to school

Hope for dreams to come alive

Hope for a better future

Our Mission

To catalyze socio-economic

change in India through education of

underprivileged children.

To,

From, Asha For Education Colorado Chapter PO Box 6145 Aurora CO 80045

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