By Volunteer Remya R, FHI Chennai
When life gives you lemons, squeeze the best and make a lemonade goes the saying and we decided to do just that and learnt that every situation not just has a bright side but a brighter side to it. May 2019 event for FHI Chennai and personally to me turned out to be nothing like I had experienced before. When we started off hunting for places for this month’s event, we didn’t know what we were honestly heading to, all we knew was we were going to find a place that lets us visit and spend time with the kids in the month of May where a majority of kids are sent to their families for a couple of weeks. Though we had anticipated this, we still weren’t ready to give up, we spoke to multiple orphanages, NGOs and homes and the answer was the same, “Please visit us the next month”. But we still kept on going and managed to convince an orphanage that had only a handful of kids staying back at the orphanage. Little did we know the magic we were creating for them as well as for us. Throughout the whole process, though we realized the location of the orphanage was quite far from the city, it didn’t stop us. We wanted to make it the best and instil the importance of a healthy body, mind and soul.
When we finally reached the place at noon, we had a bunch of extremely enthusiastic and smiling kids running towards us. All of it happened in a split second that, even before we realized we had forgotten the heat, the long drive, and the distance and all we could even think of were those happy jumping kids around us. We were lesser number of volunteers due to the distance and lesser amount of kids. But having said that, as the saying goes, everything has a bright side to it and we in no way regretted this event given the large amount of obstructions we faced. We were a bunch of joyful eight kids and eight volunteers that made the whole event much more intimate, interactive and one to one. The most beautiful part to witness was to watch them encourage each other to sing, dance and participate with enthusiasm so that the rest of them who were not participating did not shy away. Their eagerness, attention and inquisitive nature made our interactive yoga and meditation sessions, made in an interactive session of learning even for us volunteers. Another highlight of the day was that we got to know one of the kids and one of our volunteers shared the same birthday month of May wherein there was a small celebration of cake- cutting together which made the entire ambience all the more exciting. The little tight hugs and content good-byes made everything worth it for everyone. We were so grateful and glad that we decided to go to this place in spite of all the odds. We are truly grateful about having made an impact and the sligtest bit of difference for the little ones wherein we were able to let them know they were special and are in no way left behind.
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