Riding A Cycle Of Awareness

Here's a success story. Not the rags-to-riches kinds, but of achieving the unthinkable. Neither their lack of years nor their address -- they belong to the slum areas -- has been able to stop them. This bunch of little angels from Janta Colony and Adarsh Nagar in Nayagaon, who're anywhere between nine and 14 years of age, has managed to improve the health status of other slum kids.
And for all the hard work they put in since May, the youngsters have earned smart bicycles. They will be felicitated on Sunday, the birthday of Pt Jawaharlal Nehru, who wanted to create responsible citizens out of children. And, here's a group he would've been proud of.
Older children looking after the little ones' health might have sounded like an unachievable task but then Gurpreet Singh, assistant director of NGO Developing Indigenous Resources (DIR), came up with the novel idea two years ago. Today, it has turned out to be one of the most successful projects and the NGO's chief executive officer, W Frederick Shaw, is all praise for Gurpreet and his army of little soldiers.
"From Monday, we will go to school riding our new cycles," smiles little Satish, as Poonam joins in, squeaking with excitement. "I would love to join DIR for other projects," he adds with conviction.
Though she's not very chirpy, little Kajal's pleasure is also visible as her eyes light up at the sight of the cute bike. Like her, others too have no words to express their joy, but the emotion is palpable.
"These 150 children managed to convince a significant number of families to feed their kids inexpensive, but nutritional food. Four months later, we found that the weight of 50 out of 181 children had increased by 2 kg on an average," Shaw says proudly.
After analyzing their work in October, the NGO ' with the help of a donor from Canada ' bought some goodies to felicitate the kids on Chacha Nehru's birthday. Though just 10 have won the first prize, a few others too will be honoured for being a part of Child Activist For Social Empowerment (CASE) project.
"We played games with them and they passed on the nutritional lessons. This competition might have ended here but we're thinking of launching similar projects in the near future," promises Gurpreet.



Here's the link to my piece that appeared in TOI on Children's Day...
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/Riding-a-cycle-of-awareness/articleshow/6921976.cms