Mission: To help the under privilege children through the
means of education.
Goal: Pre-Assessment of 4th std students in
English.
Opportunity– This pleasure has
been provided to us by the Cognizant
Outreach.
Benefits: Internal
Satisfaction, Educated Society and many more.
Achievement:
Everyone
wants to do the social cause and make difference to the society, isn't it?
Yes, but
due to various reasons we are not able to achieve it. It might be due to
various reasons like the lack of motivation, time constraints and the most
common and obvious reason i.e. ‘HESITATON’.
The same
was the case with me. Many a times I have thought of going to a social
organization, but out of hesitation I never showed an interest. One day I was
sitting idle on my desk and an Outreach mail popped on my outlook. I opened the
mail and read it, researched with all the events conducted by Cognizant
and the blogs, which really help me get the required motivation to volunteer
for one of the event. It was on Saturday,
July 20th 2013. I mailed
and asked the Coordinator/ POC Rakesh, Dontha
about the program. A quick response mail popped from him. He explained me in
detail what activities need to be done during the event (Pre-assessment of
Class 4th std students on their knowledge on English). I thought it
is such an easy task and takes only 2 hrs (11.30-1.30 PM) of my free Saturday.
Yes I then volunteered for the event, it was Nagu Barne School, Kalewadi
Phata,Pune (not far from my residential). I was really excited about the event
and has been eagerly waiting the whole week for Saturday to come.
It was a
rainy season and was a little worried on how I would go if it rains heavily,
but as it says how God would interrupt in such a Goodwill work. It was a bit
cloudy but doesn’t rain and I reached the school on time. When I reached there
I found only one person (Rakesh), and I thought its already 11.30 and only two
volunteers for such a Nobel cause. Rakesh told me to wait for others to come.
Then after 5-7 min people started coming and the numbers went up to 19, which
is a good number to tackle a class of 50 students.
I was of a
though that we would be given books and ask the children to read a given
paragraph or at least write a sentence, but to my surprise when Rakesh took a
sheet which has 20 alphabetical diagrammatic questions students needs to
identify and answer verbally.
It created
a sense of awareness in me. Then I realized how privileged and lucky I was to
get an education and stand here.
Now we
were handed the question sheet along with a blank A4 sheet in which correct
questions of the students needs to be given. These marks will help us in
assessing the students according to their level, which would help in educating
the students accordingly.
Now as we
entered into the 4th standard class, the students greeted us with
full enthusiasm. There were all seated on the floors. Also 3rd std
and the 4th standard were both seated in the same class on the two
opposite direction of the class (the reason which I later discovered was the
same teacher handles both the classes simultaneously).
So we started with the students, one by one. The
student whom I interacted was Pramod, a cute, little Maharashtrian kid. Luckily
he understands Hindi. As I began started
asking him questions and found out that he can write English alphabets (in
upper as well as lower case), but when I asked him to spell out the alphabets
he was able to spell only A, B, C, D, E.
But I was happy to know that they knew at least
some of the Basic English words like Cat, Dog, Shoe, Garden, Boat, Van, Fish
and some more. The boy was able to give 7 questions out of 20. When I finished
with the questions, the boy asked me (with an innocent face) “Sir mein pass hua
ya fail?” and when I said “Pramod tu pass ho gya :-) ”, you couldn’t believe the excitement in him. He
told all the students nearby him that he was passed in the test. This was the
moment of shinning/ winning faces. For
me it was such a relieving and satisfactory moment and I thanked God for giving
me whatever I have and thanked Cognizant for providing me such an opportunity.
It was
1.15 PM and we still have 15 min left with us, so we went to another class room
where the some of the volunteers were preparing the students for the cultural
activity which were to be performed on 15th August by 7th
std students.
It was
1.30 PM and the lunch time for students. Mid day meal was served to the
students.
We, all
the volunteers had a group photograph and promised to meet again at the same
place again, next weekend.
Mission Accomplished!! J
Happy
Helping! Happy Volunteering!!!
