We contacted GYWS Head to arrange for a day for us with children at their
school. As Durga Pooja holidays were going on in whole West Bengal, they
did great support in helping us gathering children at school on 2nd Oct,
2009. When we reached Jagriti Vidya Mandir, Salua around 3 PM on our bicycles,
some kids were already waiting for us. Majority of them were under 5 years
old. It was apparent that most of them were best dressed for a party and
looking very innocent and cute. Our enthusiasm and energy got doubled by
just having a look at our special guests of the Day. Kids were very excited
and enthusiastic about what was going to happen. Some teachers at school
were also present to take care of them.

Once all done with the Setup, we started our event with playing for kids
a short 15 minutes informative documentary film on Gandhiji in english (which
was the only common language between us). Then we conducted a picture quiz
in which we showed them images of some of the great Indian Leaders and popular
personalities like Gandhiji, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rani Lakshmi Bai, India Gandhi,
Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Shahrukh Khan, etc, and asked some random
questions on their lives. Children took great interest in the Quiz and enjoyed
a lot as it was a sort of competition for them besides getting rewards in
the form of candies for every correct answer.

By the end of quiz, we already had more than 80 kids participating in the
event. Then, we screened about a 15 minutes episode of cartoon film Tom
and Jerry for them, which was again an extremely hilarious time pass for
them.

Lastly, we had a Talent Demonstration round, in which they were asked to
show any of their talent in front of all children and reward was again candies
and lollipops. We were surprised with their versatile performances varying
from dance, poem recital, dialog delivery to mimicking, etc. Every time,
their innocent smile and feeling of being a winner after receiving lollipop
for their performance filled us with joy and happiness. The event was finally
winded up by distribution of packets of some eatables and sweets amongst
the children. Some of them had them there itself and some other left with
their parents at it was already 5: 30 PM.

As a part of fundraising for this event, we conducted some sports events
in our college where fellow mates participated with vigor knowing about
the noble cause they were supporting. The response was overwhelming as people
came up to take up the TT rackets for the first time for the purpose or
enter the volley ball court. The response was far better than expected but
due to constraints of semester break, we could not arrange for a much larger
participation. We hope to continue our endeavors with more zeal and more
participation next year.

And this is how; we had a great time with little kids of Salua, who were
our celebrities for the Joyfest’09 – The Joy of Giving Week.