We, five students from Class 11, Anmol Nangia , Anoushka Bakshi, Riya Kohli, Akanksha Vashisht and Natasha Syal chose the option of an NGO project called the The Hope Project for our Summer Internship.
The project has been undertaken for the purpose of offering service to the underprivileged. It was founded in 1975 by a Sufi teacher, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, who was moved by the extreme poverty of the people living near the mausoleum of his father, Hazrat Inayat Khan. He then envisioned a program which would enable the poor to help themselves. Starting as a modest milk programme in Nizamuddin Basti, the Hope Project strives to provide the poor and the vulnerable, with opportunities and resources, to attempt to realise their hidden potential and able to help themselves.
The Hope Project runs a Community Health Centre, Mobile Medical Unit, Education Centre, Thrift and Credit program, Baking and Catering courses, Vocational courses and Income generation projects for the benefit of the local community.
Our summer internship was scheduled between 27 and 31 May, 2013 between 8 am and 2 pm.
The first day we assembled at School and our teacher, Ms. Sangita Verma accompanied us to the venue of the NGO's activity, where we were briefed about our daily duties.
[gallery columns="2"]Our daily 6 hourly shift was divided in the following areas:
- Teaching at the Pre-Primary School- Community Health Centre, where we were required to help at the reception by attending to patients as well as arranging medicines/medical disposables at the dispensary.
During the teaching hours at the school, we were divided into pairs and each pair was put in charge of a section comprising of 15 pre-primary students .
The children were taught conversational English, writing, reading, pronunciation of Hindi and English word, counting, reciting rhymes, learning about hygiene etc. The students carried tiffins from home and the study material was provided at the Centre. Every morning the school started with a short assembly where the children recited a prayer. This was followed by teaching and a one to one interaction with the students.
The Reception at the health centre required two of us to attend to incoming patients. It also required making entries in the records and fetching patient cards from the files for incoming patients and putting them back after use. We were allocated duties by rotation, some of us at the reception, others arranged the medicines, we made cotton balls for use in the dispensary, poured tonics/digene/cough syrups into small bottles for distribution to needy patients etc.
The health centre which had facilities for both homeopathic and allopathic medicines was attended to by paediatricians, general physicians, a gynaecologist and homeopaths.
On one of the days we were assigned to extend our computer skills to girls of our age. These girls had come from nearby localities and were being exposed to computers for the first time ever. We started with a brief introduction on computers and their relevance in todays world, followed by teaching them how to draw and paint on the computer. The girls showed a lot of interest and enthusiasm which in turn motivated us even more.
The week slipped and we got very attached to the young children. On our last day we wanted to contribute a bit more so we distributed toys, stationery items, etc to the kids. We also donated our old books to the foundation.
It was an overwhelming and memorable experience which each one of us cherish.
Reported by Natasha Syal, XI-B.
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