The Story Begins With You!

At the end of two weeks of promotion the book collection looks like this. Pretty good going when the promotion was made in schools and colleges.

The outpouring kindness of the contributors always warms my heart, So many schools, colleges allowed us to set up a drop box and do campaign in their premises. Many of our volunteers did not hesitate to do a campaign in their apartments and gather hand full of books for children. It is amazing how it all balances out for children in need!

Well we are still short of target books this year. 

As a part of reading sessions, designed to inspire kids to spend time reading that help develop the critical thinking, vocabulary and language skills a pre-readers needs, we need to accommodate them enough quality books. 

And that is why we encourage any size of contribution, new or gently used books even if it is just one book! 

Imagine the possibilities - Donate new or gently used books and imagine how far a passion for reading could take a child.

Combining the joy of reading with the power of helping others.

We need your help!

Here's what you have to do: Support our Book Collection Drive

Do you have a stock of books not being used anymore, stowed away in some corner of your home? Donate these books for a noble cause, and support our book collection drive.

As a part of our effort to enable every kid to read, we started ‘MyLibrary’ in each of our schools, making books available for children along with regular fun activities. Kids select the books according to their interests. They feel empowered and renewed, and they begin to see new possibilities.

Since its launch in 2011, we established 3 libraries in 3 schools with 1500 books and this initiative has continued to expand, develop new resources, conducting regular reading activities, encourage children to read a wide variety of books and reinforce them to renew their reading spirits.

Where do we get books from?
We collect books from a variety of sources like colleges, schools, corporate teams and individuals who are the important partners in our work to help children discover the joy of reading.

Donate now
We are now associating with respective colleges of the volunteers with Sahaya in Hyderabad and establishing Book collection boxes in their college premises. It would help collect a good number of books by end of this drive.

You can help by donating gently used books or buy and donate through online (On request) and the categories of the books as follows:

• Rhymes
• Picture books
• Beginner Readers:-Fun stories with short chapters.
• Easy Readers:-Superheroes, popular characters
• Bilingual books:-Telugu, English
• Appealing non-fiction titles:-Animals, Fact books, Geography, History, Science, Sports
• Dictionaries:
  - English to Telugu and Telugu to English
• Monthly or weekly magazines

Donate a Book. Donate a Smile.

For any queries you can reach us:
Eshwar: 9963532307 | Aditya: 9014088995 | Srikanth: 9247766039

We invite you to visit our website to learn more about Sahaya's activities and initiatives @ www.sahayasociety.org and My Library information at mylibrary.sahayasociety.org

Education is a key to unlock one's potential

According to me, education is a key to unlock one's potential. Children who are given right supplement and stimulation arrive at school excited to learn - academically, socially and emotionally. As said, one will reach new heights if they learn to embrace the occasional tumble. A question arises what makes a really capable child give up in the face of failure, while others may be motivated by their failures. Such children require a push, slight guidance, which is also a suggested cure for learned helplessness and that is being done by Sahaya.

During the last session, we organised a computer workshop which stood at a great success having a very good impact on children. students who are really unaware of computers found it difficult when they were orally taught. But I could see them going easy with it after workshops. When it comes to what all the team have provided them, it's really huge. As a part of workshop, they were shown and explained regarding various parts, computer components etc. Apart from this,  students were given presentations and had discussions upon it which allowed them to be clear.

It's a well known fact that drama can always improve one's learning skills compared to any other activities and also a best way of approaching students in case of something difficult for them. They are shown visuals which not just lets them figure out things later but the speech also improves their language expression. I can say, this idea of workshops had truly made children more attentive than usual. As a combined effort can break down the wall of impossibility, the success of computer workshop includes each and every one over there.

On the whole what is done here is-
Go to the students :
Live with them,
learn from them. 
Start with what they know,  
build with what they have. 

All views expressed by - Akhila

Setting up the Reading Challenge

One of our big-picture goals is to build a activity where everyone reads, where everyone shares what they're reading, and where individual purposes and choices for reading are celebrated.

We want to help our students cultivate the habits of lifelong readers. We understand that each student is at a different place on the journey, and through building such activity and offering choice and challenge, we seek to draw each reader further along their path.

Reading Hour

Instead of walking each student in a class through a prescribed series of reading material or language chosen by someone else, we place value on the act of reading. We want to inculcate the values of deliberate practice, with kids immersing themselves in books by providing quality time to read, structure, modeling, and guidance.

It is through this lens that, along with few volunteers we designed the Reading Challenge for different grades. The challenge began last week and will continue through the end of the 2014-15 school year. In last weeks reading challenge for 8th grade, we have few avid readers, as well as many who are still "developing readers." We created the Reading Challenge with the following goals in mind:

• To empower children s individual interests and preferences
• To build reading habit
• To promote wide reading
• To challenge students to either read more in general[bilingual books] or expand their reading to new genres

We are excited about the first iteration of this activity, open-ended, year-long challenge that offers something to engage every kid. We are keeping track of who reading what book. It is a work in progress and, with our goals in mind and our students' feedback, we will assess the effectiveness of this strategy and make changes to improve it going forward.

Learning Expeditions coming soon

Preparing Students for the Challenges of Tomorrow

The inspiration that made us to think on the other side of the coin.

We always think about new ways and ideas to educate children in many aspects, but the inspiration given by Subhramanya Aditya’s Mother made us to think on different aspect to be taught to the children. That is what ‘Awareness on Health and Hygiene’

“If Health is zero, how can we achieve 100% Knowledge??”

This is what we questioned ourselves… which resulted to this session.

A session on Health and Hygiene - experienced a new way of interacting with children by sharing many thoughts.

It always sounds good when we hear something from the students when we try to project something, which we experienced in our session. The team has prepared some presentation with images on creating awareness on Health, Cleanliness and other Hygiene conditions. Students were very interactive during the session and got quick responses to the questions posed to them. Actually, students were aware of many things, we simply tried to increase the awareness among them. 

For the first time we have seen that no student got bored up with the continuous seminar session. Students were very interested in adding their points to our explanation. They were very much involved in the topics discussed and without any hesitation they accepted our request to spend a few more minutes even after listening to the lunch bell.

Getting out of personal and professional activities, the team struggled to make the day’s social activity a big success by holding discussions and presentation preparations for weeks. But entirely the pain just flew away on receiving smiley thanks from the pupils.

We wrapped up the session with complete satisfaction. Hope to carry this satisfaction in coming sessions too.

Thanks

Ravali Dara