Rotaractors have fun too

For all of you who think we only do work, work and more work...just to let you know we have fun too.The Rotaract is about friendship, about making others laugh, its about having an extended family, about trying new things, about laughing at yourself, about dancing as if no one is watching. About loving life, and giving back to the society, using your rights and knowing you can make a difference. Its about pride in yourself, about the warm feeling when you know the smile is because of you, about the 2 AM conversations and 4PM lunches....It is about making a difference differently :-)

Recruitment 2010

It was finally the day of the recruitment!! Venue: Jalvihar. The day started with bursting activity, the registration team making the final preparations, GD (group discussion) and TS ( Team Simulation) teams arranging the venues, the refreshments team tidying up the place and our incoming president elect- Kedari Reddy making sure everyone does what they are supposed to. The Participants started coming from 10AM onwards and after their registrations the recruitment took off with the GDs. The First round of Group discussions went on for half an hour and by then the other we has to organize other GD panels which were also soon occupied. The GDs were intensive as the participants became more engrossed, by which time even our GD team was a little hesitant to say “Time’s Up”. The team simulation rounds started next,working parallel to the GDs, with participants churning their minds to bring out the best fundraiser ideas possible. The ideas varied, from vintage car rallies to rock shows. It seemed like the TS team had the best fun, but every team claims that title. The Personal Interviews were conducted by two panels. The interview time varying from half an hour to an hour, the participants seemed more excited than we were. The recruitment was wound off by 3 pm, while the rotaracters stayed back to discuss the potential rotaractors. It was a fun discussion as usual, as we sat around eating sandwiches and pulling each others leg. Thank you for the great response. -Aditya J

Silver Lining

Close your eyes and try to walk around in a dark room, difficult isn’t it?? Now imagine living your life like that, well, that’s how it is to be blind… Like everyone else, people who are blind want to live normal active lives and are often more capable than sighted people realize. Despite their difficulties they are cheerful and happy all the time. Devnar is a residential school for the blind. The school has classes from LKG to inter 2nd year. Upto Std 5, students are trained in Braille. Once they are proficient in the usage of Braille, they start their lessons. The school encourages students and helps in their overall development. The children can sing, dance, play instruments, games like cricket and have other talents as well. They work hard…very hard! They learn and write their exams in Braille. But, for their public exams i.e. for when they are in the 10th and inter, they need scribes to write it for them and even during the pre-finals for practice. So, we thought of writing the pre-finals for these children. We spread the news and the response we got was amazing. Students, business people and even house-wives volunteered to write the exam. We even had to turn down a few of them due to excess of volunteers. The exams were for 6 days and the scribes were very excited to write the exams for the students. It was the first time for most of us to write these exams and we were elated. Basically, we just had to read out the questions and write the answers as dictated by the students. The students were strong-willed and tried their best to answer every question in the paper. They were always polite and enthusiastic while giving their answers. You've probably heard that blindness is the most feared disability. You've probably heard that blindness is a tragedy. You've probably heard that blind people are limited in many ways, that the more vision a child has, the better chance of success he or she has, that 80% of what a child learns is visual. Well, forget all that! Blindness does not have to be a tragic situation. It does not inhibit development of concepts, getting an education, being independent, being happy! It was amazing to see the students interact so well with each other, the partially blind kids help the fully blind ones and they were happy to help. One could notice the genuineness in them when they greet you with a big smile, their sincerity when they come to their exam halls on time (the scribes were late on a few occasions), and their innocence when they ask you if you are going to come again the next day to write their exam. The scribes told us how much they enjoyed writing the exam and how, for the first time they weren’t nervous in an exam hall! Many of them stayed back after the exam to interact with the students. We were told that most of the children were neglected and people look down upon them in the society, so even if we give them a little attention their day is made. We observed that since they lack one of their sense organs they make sure that the others work really well. They learn their lessons through cassettes and have their goals set high. Some of them want to become IAS officers while others lawyers, many of their passed out students are working in Multinational companies, one of the students is studying in MIT, Boston. These are truly remarkable achievements. We could feel an urge in them to make their place felt in this competitive world. The volunteers were given certificates by us as we wanted them to know that they were doing a very good job and to encourage them to continue to serve the community and make a difference wherever they go.. Pragnya Challapalli

Don't know who had more fun that day!!!

photo collage

Some of the members of the Rotaract Club of Hyderabad East. Collage made by: Kedari Reddy

New promise

We apologize for the long gap between the posts. The Rotaract Club of Hyderabad East is back with it's blog. In the time lapse between the posts, we have recruited new members, carried off yet another successful year with Aurum- our annual car treasure hunt, featured in the press, received aamazing responses for our clothes and book donation drive, and for our project with a blind school. We also worked really hard and pulled off Oorja- the 41st District Conference, where various Rotaract clubs spoke about their projects, their future ideas, their relations with one another and with their parent Rotarty club. And time flew by. We are now looking towards our third recruitment, on August 8th, 2010. The new board is in place, being guided by the old ones who will step down in the second week of August. While we will continue to keep our old promises, we make one more- to regularly update this blog.:-). Watch this space for more.

Polio NID -1st of Feb

On the 1st of February, The Rotaract Club of Hyderabad East Volunteered at two booths for its first time ever.We took on the booths at Musheerabad and Domalguda.Since it was going to be stretched out over the entire day, we divided ourselves into two shifts at each booth.We had atleast five members present at each shift and helped in immunising over 450 children. Apart from these two booths, we also headed out to smaller booths nearby which were short of volunteers, and rendered our services there to provide relief to the nurses.We had a lot of fun, especially at the Domalguda booth.There was tiffin centre nearby so we never got hungry! Attached here is a picture of ours with the 300th child! We were so happy that we gave him a cap and a whistle and posed with him for quite a few photographs [ we could clearly see him frowning after three had been taken so we stopped :D ] Overall it was a tiring, but hightly fulfilling project.Maybe we can take up three booths next time !