It’s been pretty quiet here the last month, not much has happened, not much to report and things are just ticking along…….
Yeah right!!!!
28 October
Jack and Simon left the project having spent a month here, which absolutely flew by!
4 volunteers in and definitely starting to see the beginnings of a really great project here.
If you haven’t seen this video, this is a summary of the first 4 volunteer placements
7th October
A warm welcome to our next two volunteers,
Connor Williams and Elen Masson.
Whoop you’ll notice that the Vi-Ability t-shirts have now arrived too!
These two were straight into Indian life, spending as much time as possible with the hostel boys and taking the new pace of life and culture completely in their stride!
Even if they couldn’t control the weather!
Sport
Morning sport sessions start at 6.30am! Every morning Connor and Elen are teaching the boys new skills, sports, building their fitness and increasing their self-confidence.
Some alternative versions of traditional sports. Of course the expected ‘cheating’ happened but the kids absolutely love this game!
How many kids at home would be happy doing this on a gravelly hot piece of land!
And of course the cultural exchange is two way. Connor is definitely getting into this traditional Indian game. In fact he proudly told me today that his team won 47-16 points yesterday. Lets hope todays result was just as positive.
The volunteers have also introduced 10 minute meditation sessions at the end of the mornings sport sessions. Not an easy challenge with 80 boys but seems to be going down a treat!
Finally Elen has found her sports calling in life, frisbee!!
Mighty Ducks
Frisbee frenzy
The BIG match
Spoken English
80 boys aged from 5-18 years old in one room trying to teach them English has got to be pretty challenging but I’ve honestly never seen 80 better behaved, enthusiastic kids!
Learning about countries and continents
Weirdly Wales is much bigger than any other country!?
Connor helping with homework
Some of the more fun things; movie nights, ice-cream with a container that becomes a ball, aeroplanes, finger painting……
Finger painting
Finger painting
Finger painting
Finger painting
Ice cream and a ball
Aeroplanes
Enjoying the ice cream
Parachute – jelly in the dish
Movie night
Using the ice cream spoons for everything!
Last but not least, the introduction of dance night!
ITI College
The spoken English classes to start with were a little challenging but with a bit of organisation they are now going really really well.
Elen working with the only 3 girls in the college
Elen helping the girls
Connor helping with reading
Connor helping students with letter sounds
Elen supporting the girls
Elen teaching girls like/dislike
Sport
This is perhaps the biggest thing I’m happy about. All those months trying to get the equipment out of customs and now its finally here being used everyday.
BIG BIG thank you once again to Mithra for your time and patience in helping to get this here!!
The sessions last between 45-60 mins, 2 groups back to back. They’re definitely improving their fitness but most of all its like a comedy club! Its literally 45 minutes of giggling as they try to do each exercise.
I’m really pleased that we’re now getting the girls involved too. Its taken a few sessions but they’re started to ignore the boys and enjoy it.
We’ve also recruited our first sports volunteer. This guy doesn’t quite know it yet but we plan on him being able to run the sessions in December when there’s no volunteers here.
It hasn’t all been hard work the last few weeks.
I can proudly say that I’ve also managed to corrupt these volunteers too on a recent weekend trip to Kochi.
It seems the Keralan Government want to stop people drinking so have shut all the bars!! This must be a recent thing as I’d promised the guys that I knew of at least two ok bars to have a beer. Feeling under pressure to deliver what I’d promised,we had a bit of a random ‘pub crawl’ via a rickshaw to a restaurant that had ‘secret mojito’, what can only be described as someones front room where beer was served in coffee mugs and finally a normal place where we played game after game of a very competitive game of ‘alternative snap’.
Secret Mojito
Beer in coffee mugs
Jo Clay in India 