For us the New Year started with our visit to the ‘Good Samaritan Orphanage’ in Pocharam village. A bunch of friends Neelima, Bhanu, Haritha, Saurabh, Srujan, Teja Srinivas, Pranitha, Sudhir, Suneel who were working in MNCs like Cognizant Technology Solutions(CTS),Oracle, Infosys, Infotech, Adea Solutions and many other friends and juniors from our Engineering college VNRVJIET pitched in and joined hands for a noble cause.
Miss Indu who is the HR Manager at IBM, Hyderbad who came to know about “Ray of Hope” through internet and word of mouth also showed special interest in visiting the children at the orphanage. We all assembled at the place in the morning and at around 11:00 AM we started decorating the place. Immediately after that the activities for the day began with painting competitions and various other competitions which saw an active participation from the children out there. There was so much enthusiasm in the air and we were all overwhelmed with joy on seeing smiles across the faces of the children. We too participated equally with the children and tried to be one of them by wearing clown caps that were also distributed at the beginning of the day. By noon we were all hungry and were raring to have a hearty luncheon. Biryani was ordered from Paradise restaurant especially for the occasion and we could see the children relishing every scoop of the meal. Then we had cut New Year cake and also distributed sweets among the children. After having filled our tummies we were all set to begin our second round of activities which included water games, several other sports, dance competitions and many others. Towards the end of the day there was an interactive session held with the children in which each one of us interacted in person with them.
Through this we tried to know more about them – their dreams, desires, wants and their feelings. This session gave us all a chance to get closer to them and also imparted a feeling as if we’ve known them for years and not meeting them for the first time. This experience has also reiterated our belief that together we can bring in the much needed sunshine into their deprived lives, which becomes the need of the hour. At around 6:00 PM we distributed clothes among the children – both new and old clothes (old clothes that were contributed by our friends and relatives). Moreover, the organizers have planned on constructing a home for the children out there, the foundation for which has already been laid. The good part about this is that the employees of CTS have agreed upon to pass on this message across their colleagues as well as friends working in other MNCs which will help them raise funds for contributing towards the construction of the home for the children. Many such MNCs that have been toying with this idea and see it as a deed that fulfills their corporate as well as social responsibility, too have pitched in. This has just proved to be an icing on the cake for us. In a nutshell, our New Year started with a bang with the first day of the year very well spent towards universal brotherhood!!