kartheevidya.com - Blog #kids

Happy Birthday to me :)

Sat, 26 Dec 2015 09:33:40 +0000

This is the first post ever I’m writing about my birthday which I recently celebrated on Dec-12, 2015. It is a special birthday because it’s spent with Team Everest Smile 100 kids in Arni. These are 100 kids whom we are sponsoring for their education and we take free daily tuitions as well. You can understand more about Smile 100 initiative through the below video:

I would say it is the best birthday celebration I ever had. My wife and my friend Mani has planned for secret birthday celebration along with kids. We gave a mask to all the kids and celebrated by cutting a Cake.

The highlight of the birthday is Pani poori. Manikanta bought Pani poori for all kids from the shop where I use to eat Pani poori right from my 6th standard. This is the first time the vendor has come out of his shop to put a pani poori stall in client’s place :).

While thanking the vendor at the end of the event, I shared a story with our kids which I thought I can share you the same story.

I use to eat Pani Poori in their shop right from my 6 ^th standard. Most of the days, after school ends, I go to their shop in bicycle, have Pani poori and then go home. My mom use to give me pocket money to eat since I feel very hungry after school hours. They use to put Pani poori in a small moving Vehicle during those times.

One such day, when I went to the shop, the owner of the shop whom I call as ‘Anna’ (Brother), was wearing a huge bandage on his head. I asked what happened? He told that he met with an accident, few hours back and he went to hospital to wear the bandage and came back to the shop to sell Pani poori. It was such a big bandage and he is badly hurt. You could see the blood marks on his head. But still he came to shop. I was amazed at his dedication and hard work.

Years rolled on. Even after 15 years, I still keep eating Pani Poori in the same shop whenever I go to my native Arni. Now, he got a shop in the same place where he use to sell Pani Poori on moving cart. A lot of customers keep coming to his shop to taste his dish.

For me, he is one of the inspiration. He thought me at young age that there is no replacement for dedication and hard work. Am lucky to have the same person to give Pani poori to all my kids during my birthday.

The other thing, I wish to share is the various gifts which I received for my birthday. It was strictly informed to kids that they should buy any new gifts. Instead they can make their own gifts if they want to :) . So, a lot of kids drew pictures, wrote stories and poems for me. Am sharing some of them for your reference. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did:

While celebrating birthday with Smile 100 kids, kids who are taking up computer class in Mom Dad also planned for my birthday celebration.

Mom Dad Community center is our home where I was born and brought up by my parents. When both my parent passed away, we converted our home into a community center to teach computers, yoga and other classes. We called it as Mom Dad Community center.

You can look at the below video to know more about the center:

So, I went quickly to Mom Dad Community Center to cut cake and celebrate birthday with them. The kids have collected raised funds using their pocket money and bought a pack of pens for Team Everest. They requested me to give it to any kids who cannot afford to buy a pen. It is one of the best gifts I ever got in my life. I almost had tears in my eyes. I opened the pack and gifted one pen to each one of thekids and left to Smile 100 tuition center to continue the celebration there.

I opened each and every gift and read the writings or showed the drawings toall kids and parents.

It is one of the memorable day ever in my life. Being with kids, I would call it as ‘Heaven’. Feeling so blessed and happy to have the love of so many kids and volunteers.

I could not have asked for a much better birthday. Thanks for all the love and the blessings. This journey is beautiful. Living to the fullest.

Now, I feel that my responsibility to serve has increased by many fold. I hope to live up to the expectation.

Thank you once again!

Note-1: We are looking for donors to provide evening snacks to our Smile 100 kids every day. It costs an average of Rs 1000 per day to provide evening snacks. If you are interested to donate one time or monthly, please whatsapp to +91 89399 12365

Note-2: To get our regular service updates, whatsapp with your name and city to +91 89399 12365. Happy Volunteering!

What I did after quitting my job?

Wed, 22 Jul 2015 15:33:52 +0000

It’s been 6 months since I have quit my full time corporate job. My last working day as a full time corporate employee was on Dec-31, 2014.

After which, I was working 5 days a month for part time in the same corporate. I quit that as well by May-2015.

So, I have spent the past 6 months in the area which I like the most – ‘Service and Volunteering’.

Note: I founded Team Everest in August 2006 and was doing volunteering work for the past 8 years from Aug 2006 to Dec 2014 while working in a corporate. From Jan-1, 2015 I quit my corporate job to spend all my time and energy on volunteering work.

Starting Jan 2015, to keep my work open and transparent, I wrote one blog post a month covering all the activities that I did for that particular month. You can read them here - Jan-2015, Feb-2015, March-2015, April-2015, May 2015, June 2015

As in corporate, you have a self-appraisal once in 6 months. I would like to consider this blog post as a self-appraisal for myself. I would like to reflect on my work, see where I went right and where I need to improve.

I wrote a blog post in Jan-2015 listing the targets that I would love to achieve in first 6 months of 2015. Here is an update on it:

Mom Dad Community Center:

Goal: Set and ensure the Mom Dad Community Center (MDCC) initiatives goes on smoothly. Will be ensuring that the first batch of students have a quality learning experience in the center.

Hits:

We have completed computer course for 8 batches (6 Student Batch and 2 parent batch) in Mom Dad Computer center. It includes 1 month of summer computer crash course for 2 batches of students.

We conducted 2 Medical camps, 1 summer and 1 winter camp in MDCC.

We are also using the MDCC to take free tuition classes on Sundays for SMILE 100 kids.

Misses: We wanted to start Yoga classes in MDCC. We could not do it due to lack of Yoga teachers in Arni. Once we find the right teacher, we will start the classes there.

First Batch of students who completed their course.

Computer classes for a Parent Batch

SMILE 100:

Goal:Identify 100 parentless and single parented kids in Arni, Tiruvannamalai Dt, Tamil Nadu and put them in a proper English Medium school and sponsor till they finish formal education.

Hits:

Identified and shortlisted 100 parentless and single parented kids.

We have admitted them in a good private school in Arni.

We are also conducting free after school tuitions for all 100 kids since there is no one to guide them after school hours. We have identified a venue for these classes and appointed 4 staffs to take daily tuition.

Every Saturday, we conduct extra-curricular activities for the children.

Every Sunday, we conduct bridge course for students from 6 ^th to 8 ^th standard since they are weak in English.

Smile 100 Home Visit

Smile 100 - Result Day

Smile 100 Inauguration

Day-1 in School!

Reaction of students on first day at tuition

Smile 100 - Parent Meet

Misses:

We underestimated the fund raising efforts for Smile 100 initiative. We need to put in 10 times more efforts in raising the required funds for Smile 100. We have raised funds for 80 students so far. Need sponsors for 20 more students. Interested volunteers can sign up here. To know more about Smile 100, please read here.

The lesson learnt is, that I should be more careful in estimating efforts for our future initiatives.

Starting Everest Chapter in Bangalore:

Goal: To start Team Everest in Bangalore

Hits:

I made a visit to Bangalore, stayed there for 10 days and kick started Team Everest. We had a volunteer meeting followed up by school visit.

Now every weekend, 5 to 10 volunteers in Bangalore are doing some good to the people of Karnataka.

Misses: The entire Bangalore activity is dependent upon one volunteer. Need to strengthen the core team in Bangalore to scale up the initiatives in the city.

Bangalore Volunteer Meet

Reading Session for Visually Challenged in Bangalore

Library set up across the Country:

Goal: To set up 50+ Libraries which is donated as part of Team Everest Contest for a Cause (C4C) prize money.

Hits: We successfully set up 50+ libraries across various cities in India which includes Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, Delhi and Dindugal.

Misses: We chose the wrong time frame to set up libraries. Since many schools were busy with exams, summer vacations from February to May, the bulk of the library set up happened only by June. I underestimated the external factors which will affect our library set up.

Contest for a Cause winners distributing the library in a Govt School

Additional Goals achieved:

Strengthening Hyderabad activities:

We have appointed one full time staff in Hyderabad. Hanumanth is one of our volunteer who has quit his corporate job similar to me to do social work. He Joined Team Everest in March-2015 and played a key role in executing Smile 100 initiative along with me. I successfully mentored him for 3 months and we hope to see the results through our Hyderabad Everest activities.

Re-Structuring Internal support team:

We had a lot of re-structuring within our support team with the focus on empowering the team volunteers, providing them clarity and giving them responsibility for the initiative they own. It is bringing a lot of clarity internally, speeding up decision making process and helping us scale our initiatives.

Everest Support Team!

Partnership with Corporate:

We started focusing on partnering with like-minded Corporate who share a similar vision. Corporate tie-ups need not be purely fund oriented. In fact, we look for corporates who are ready to motivate their employees to engage in community activities.

We had one successful partnership with Lennox who supported Team Everest’s Smile 100 activities during the first half of 2015.

lennox Sponsored Visit

Volunteers from TCS started to regularly volunteer in our schools for our digital literacy programs.

Volunteers from Cognizant Outreach helped in conducting summer camps in 10 villages and they continue to volunteer in various Team Everest activities.

Cognizant Outreach volunteers during Summer Camp

What amazed me is the interest shown by start-ups and small sized corporates who truly want to give back to the society.

Team from Aadhyaa Studios

Team Everest will expand its platform to engage as many corporate volunteers as possible to promote volunteering and motivate them to volunteer at least once a month (12/365).

I’m a person who looks at the past with gratitude and the future with hunger. The first 6 months of this new volunteering journey is fruitful and enjoyable. I was able to set up goals and chase them as well.

The next 6 months is going to be challenging and game changing as we are experimenting with various new initiatives to promote volunteering in our country.

Till then, it is bye from Karthee Vidya. We can meet up again through my monthly review blog post and will write a one year summary blog post by Jan-2016.

Happy Volunteering. Keep Supporting!

Note: If you wish to get my personal updates on whatsapp, plz whatsapp to +91 8939912365 as ‘Update Me’ with your name and city mentioned in it. You can also follow my updates on Facebook and Twitter – @kartheevidya

KILL TERRORISM NOT TERRORISTS!

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 16:15:33 +0000

Terrorism is not new to India and to this world. If the blood wetted this land during each terror attack is not cleaned, this world would have been floating in blood long back!

Now, world has seen one of the world’s ever worst terrorist attacks last week. With terrorists in their duties (!!!), more than 200 killed and 350+ got injured. It was the hot topic in all Medias last week (even now).

Everyone blamed the poor Indian security, the rich politicians and the coward terrorists. After the attack we lost 16 of our life saving GODS. (After seeing this attack, do you still call them as NSG or army or police or what so ever???)

There was lot of angry voices to tighten security in India. Political parties played their part as usual. But, something was running in my mind. Does securing our self is all what we can do now?? If we are secure enough, terrorists will start attacking China or Bangladesh or some other parts of this world. It is the same people but of different nationality is going to be killed. It’s the same blood which is going to wet this land.

Does it mean that we should not tighten our security?? No. What I want to tell is, just tightening our security is not enough. Something extra needs to be done to overcome terrorism.

Shall we go ahead and start killing terrorists across the globe??? Yes, you can. But at the end, you might have killed all Terrorists in this world, but not Terrorism. When you believe only one more terrorist is left alive in this world, there would have been thousands of terrorists trained and got spread across this world.

So, what is the solution? – Kill terrorism, ……..not terrorists!!!

Instead of preventing the enemy from attacking us, let us prevent an enemy being created!!

Just increasing security and killing terrorists may give you a temporary solution. But, killing terrorism will be the real and final solution for all terrorist attacks.

How can we kill terrorism? By killing all terrorist? No!!! We can kill terrorism only by not allowing anyone to become a terrorist!! How can we do that?

By ‘Love’ and ‘Value based Educational system’!!!

Love is the most powerful weapon this world has ever seen! A person with a lovable mother/father cannot be a terrorist at any cost! Their parent’s love would have already planted the seeds of kindness in one’s heart and there is no place for terrorism to spread its roots!

Let us start loving each other. It is the humanity in people which keeps people still alive in this world. Else, the words ‘People’, ‘Humans’ would have been added in history and queued next to ‘Dinosaurs’.

And, there are humans who turned to be terrorists because of the surrounding circumstances. We can name them as ‘Situational terrorist’. What can prevent them from becoming a situational terrorist is nothing but the ‘Value based educational system’. I have a personal feeling that today’s educational system is concentrating more on academics, neglecting the feed of moral values to the students.

A good educational system will not create Engineers and Doctors. It will create Honest, sincere, ethical Engineers and doctors!!!

We should start preaching good moral values to others. We should start doing it right from our home. You might have seen in many houses, when a kid falls hitting a chair when it tries to walk, many parents will go and start beating the chair to convince the child and to stop its cry. This is where we start sowing the seeds of terrorism in that child’s heart. The best response would be, to kiss the child, hug it and tell him to be careful next time. You can question me like the child is very immature to understand this. But, I may in turn question you, “if a child is matured enough to understand when you beat a chair, why cannot it understand your kisses and hugs?? “.

Just preaching others is not enough. We should start following it!!! You being a lion, cannot ask the tiger to be a vegetarian! Practice and preach!

The way you react to a situation matters a lot!! Your attitude determines your reaction!! So, have the right attitude!!!

To reach a stage of ‘Zero Terrorism’, everyone needs to play their role. You cannot just ask the politicians or the army to ensure the countries safety. You need to be socially responsible. Just like you being a good son/daughter to your father/mother, just like how sincere you are to your boss, Be a good citizen to your country!

You may ask whether ‘Zero Terrorism’ is possible. Why not? When a BAD can be taught easily to someone, a GOOD can be taught much more easily to others. Believe first. If faith is there, then you have won half the battle!

So, what can you do now?? How you can help this society kill Terrorism?? Simple.

Love all. Follow and preach moral values. Your great love and good values will certify this world as a ‘Zero Terrorism place’

Let us make the word ‘Terrorism’ available only in dictionary!

P.S: ‘Killing Terrorism’ will be a real tribute to those ‘Life savers’ who lost their lives during the attack and not a simple royal salute!

P.S.S: I just wrote what I felt. It is straight from my heart. I’m not an anti-terrorism expert. But a simple creature in this world who want to live in a peaceful world! This post is dedicated to all those who wants peace in this world!