Over 96 children and 60 parents participated in the day-long Kinship Care Summer Camp organized at the Bala Mandir premises on 24 May 2024. This event was part of the series of Bala Mandir’s 75 th anniversary celebrations, planned across Kinship Care districts. Parents and children from Chennai, Tiruvallur, Chengalpattu and Kancheepuram attended the event, unmindful of the heat and the long distances.
As the children and parents entered the Bala Mandir Cultural Hall, they were greeted by the staff and the standees that gave them a good idea of the 75-year-old institution and its five different units.
Bala Mandir’s Home children enthralled the audience with a juggling event They also volunteered to teach the little ones juggling on stage. This was interesting as well as challenging for the Kinship Care children. This was followed by a story telling session by Srividya Veeraraghavan from Story Train fame. She engaged with the children by asking them to sing, laugh, say dialogues for five different characters, each time the character’s name was uttered.
The parents had an interactive session with the Kinship Care management team and shared their experiences over the last two years. The Kinship Care management presented the different programmes for different age group of children and listed out the benefits of each programme and sought feedback from parents participating
in such programmes.
A beneficiary of our livelihood programme from Chennai came forward to tell other mothers how she learnt tailoring and Ari work through Bala Mandir’s support and how she has been gifted a tailoring machine to pursue her own tailoring business subsequently.
Another mother expressed openly that she was earning Rs500 each day after material costs in her batter business with the commercial grinder gifted to her in Tiruvallur region and that has made all the difference to her family.
“It has been only two days since my son attended a programme on Magic Squares and he seems to be solving a lot of puzzles during the summer holidays,” said a father of two, whose children are also part of Kinship Care’s Kai Mel Kalvi Foundational Math programme taught through classroom and self-paced Tab sessions.
While the parents were sharing their feedback with the management, the children were engaged by the social workers in games and fun activities such as ventriloquy by social worker Benjamin, hoopla hoop dance, drawing and colouring, aiming the target, ball games. For many children who had not gone out for the summer holidays, this event was a memorable trip to celebrate and make new friends.
