#6 - The Swastha Centre

Over the weekend I went with a group of 17 other people from the US batch to volunteer at the Swastha Centre for Special Education and Rehabilitation in Suntikoppa, Kodagu in India.

I haven't put any of the more recent photos online yet (except for two), because I haven't had time. I'll post again when I do upload all the pictures.

It's a wonderful project that provides educational and vocational training to about 70 children and young adults with mental and physical disabilities, with the support of Tata Coffee Ltd. and the Coorg Foundation. Tata Coffee provided the land it is situated on, and in return one of the vocational activities is producing stationery for Tata Coffee.
The day we came happened to be a day where a lot of the parents were there. In the morning, the kids put on a program, with singing and some skits. I took video of each of the acts, and transferred the videos and all the pictures I took during the day to their computer. Here are the two skits:

This one was described as a "patriotic dance" (note that they're using the flag colors).


This dance is a story about a cow and a tiger. The story goes like this:
The man leads his herd of cows around. One of the cows gets separated and encounters a tiger. The tiger is about to eat the cow, but the cow begs the tiger to wait. She explains that she just had a calf, and wishes to say goodbye to it and to tell the other cows to take care of it. The cow promises that she will return to the spot in one day so the tiger can eat her. The tiger asks, "How can I trust you?" The cow explains that she always, without fail, keeps her word. The tiger reluctantly agrees. The cow returns to her herd, says goodbye to the calf and the other cows, and tells them to take care of the calf. The next day, she returns to the spot to meet the tiger and be eaten. The tiger is so touched that she kept her word that he cannot bear to eat her, and instead throws himself off a cliff to his death.

After that, we got a little tour of the facilities and met the children and the teachers. I found a lot of the kids who were in the skits and showed them the videos...they got a kick out of seeing themselves. The kids also loved it when I'd take a picture of them (or a picture of their teacher) and then show them the picture on my camera. I spent a lot of time doing that. Later in the day, we helped them make collages. We brought a stack of poster-sized sheets of paper, a box of glue sticks, several scissors, and a huge stack of magazines. The kids I helped were prolific collage makers, they made two densely-packed collages in the time that most of the others made one with only a few pictures [pic1 pic2].
The last thing we did is get them in a circle to teach them a couple dances. First was the hokey-pokey:

Then, the chicken dance:

It was a really, really fun and fulfilling experience.