March 2023
Visit from Ms. Prerna Goel - In her own words:
"Today my #heart is full and my #eyes wet. I have received the best #gift a girl can ask. I finally met my girls in person- who I have had the privilege to teach spoken English for the past 18 months via zoom. I feel at the top of this world. These girls who come from some of the harshest backgrounds are an absolute inspiration!"
To my dear girls, so #bright and #strong,
You fill my heart with a #joyful song.
With eager #minds and #eyes so wide,
You #inspire me with an abiding #pride.
Though #life may not have granted you much,
Your #determination and #grit are such,
That you light up the classroom every day,
And #remind me why I #love to teach and play.
Thank you for the #honour and #privilege,
Of guiding you on your journey, so rich,
I learn from you as much as you from me,
And together we grow, ever so free.
So let us cherish this precious time,
And build a #world that is truly sublime,
Where every girl can learn and thrive,
And make the most of her precious #life.
April 2023
Donating Laptops
- Shaktii donated a laptop to blind organization so that they can learn typing and get employment in banks etc. Thanks to Sudha kamat for initiating this.
- Disha Kanojia is doing her management studies. She found doing projects challenging with a laptop. Shaktii received 5 Dell laptops out of which one was given to her.
April 2023
Creativity Fest
- Vijaylaxmi Ghattargi and Kalyani Basu from Shaktii Eduction Trust attended The CREATIVITY FEST of Parisar Asha which was a certificate workshop in series NEP 2020. The much needed change in our education system is slowly coming into realization with the implementation of NEP 2020 from this year onwards. So teachers need to gear up themselves and update themselves as much as they can in the 4 C's
1]Critical Thinking
2] Creativity
3] Collaboration
4] Communication
Vijaya and Kalyani attended three workshops,
1] Experiential Learning by Ms. Aarati Savur
2] Spark your Creativity by Ms.Sapna Shirodhkar & Ms.Sukhada Sahasrabudhe
3] Language Arts & Creativity by Ms.Vidya ramaswamy.
- A note from Ms. Basu:"All three workshops were very interesting and gave us a lot of perspective on how easily we can make learning enjoyable for children with the help of art, music , role playing, physical activity etc. All three days we did a lot of activities which helped us realize that each and every one of us are creative in our own way and we can make learning fun for the children with help of various activities. This way children retain the knowledge and also can recall when needed, apply the same when needed.
NEP 2020 encourages multi learning activities like Visual, Auditory, Read & Write, Kinesthetics & Multimodal. At Shaktii we already have been implementing lots of activities in the above modes so that our girls have fun while learning, but attending the workshops have definitely given us more tools to spark our creativity as teachers. Thank you Parisar Asha for conducting such beautiful workshops and big thank you to Vimala Nandakumar Ma'am and Shaktii for giving us this opportunity to learn. ""
June 2023
Orientation Day 1
- As we do every year, this year too our orientation started with a session by Mr.Satyendra Singh about the Power of Subconscious Mind. We had around 35 students (mix of old and new batches) attending the session. The older students were already aware of quite a few concepts which Mr.Singh was explaining but still they soaked up everything that the session had to give them. The new students were in awe.
- Points from today's session:
1.The whole universe is full of positive and negative energy.
2. All our subconscious minds are connected.
3. Each of us has minimum 61000 thoughts in our subconscious mind each day. Most of it is negative.
4. When we give out negative thoughts, we attract negativity 10 folds.
When we give out positive thoughts, we attract positivity 10 folds.
5. So why not always think positive. So we need to teach our mind to think positive. All negative thoughts should be cancelled.
- Mr.Singh told the girls to DREAM BIG. Simply because beliefs and desires become thoughts and then they become reality. He advised them on SMART Goal setting.
S......Be specific
M.....Goal should Measurable
A.....If it can be measured, it becomes Achievable
R.....Goal should be Realistic
T.....Goal should be Time-bound.
Orientation Day 2
Story Telling, Eat to evolve
Session 1- Story Telling - This session was conducted by young and dynamic Roshan Harwansh. She started her own initiative called Under the Banyan tree (UTBT) to encourage young kids to read and improve their vocabulary and writing skills. Soon she is leaving for London to pursue her dream of studying marketing, management & media
- All the girls enjoyed the session and it showed in their participation when they were divided into three groups and each group made up a story according to the graph and enacted it
Session 2: Eat to evolve - This session was conducted by Dr Sujata Udeshi. She is a clinical nutritionist with a career span of 35 long years and still going strong. She was consultant nutritionist with many corporates and educational institutions and also with Sanjeev Kapoor's Khana khazana.
- The girls were given a piece of coconut to eat and then describe the experience. Some said oily, others said chewy and some said sweet. All had different things to say proving that we experience food through our mind too. Food creates an environment within your mind. So we need to eat the food which is good for our body, mind and soul.
Orientation Day 3
Public Speaking
- This session was conducted by a very enthusiastic Rhea Sabherwal. Rhea has a master's degree in Industrial Psychology and is a marketing professional at ICICI Pru Asset Management Company
- She explained to the girls that Public speaking doesn't have a definition but then public speaking is a very important skill which everyone should learn because you need it in every phase of your life, be it school, college or in your professional and personal life.
- Public speaking has two aspects, Verbal and Non-Verbal communication. Three points to be noted for excellent public speaking: Eye-Contact, Confidence and Content
- Six girls were given a sentence and an emotion with which they had to tell the sentence and we all had to guess the emotion
- A game called Non Stop Nonsense was played. The girls had to answer to Rhea's question with anything that comes to their mind except the right answer.
Orientation Day 4
Art Therapy
- This session was conducted by Arunima S. Her son Anindya helped her facilitate the workshop. Arunima is a painter and art therapy practitioner by profession. She is passionate about art psychology ,self growth and self-awareness.
- Arunima started the session by telling us that Art has healing powers
- Arunima made the girls perform three activities.
1) Draw your breath
2) Color the Mandala
3) Affirmations
Orientation Day 5
Rath Yatra
- This session was conducted by Vimala Ma'am herself.
- The girls , specially the new students were unaware of a state called Odisha. So they learnt about Odisha, which part of India it belongs to, and what is special about the Rath Yatra. They were shown the animated story of how Lord Jagganath came into existence
- A competition was held of 3D still drawing of the three deities, Jagganath, Balbhadra and Subhadra and coloring of the Chariots or the deities.
Orientation Day 6
Confidence Building
- This session was conducted by Mahalakshmi Krishnan who completely took over with her speech on CONFIDENCE.
- In addition to understanding the ways to enhance confidence the girls fell for Mahalakshmi's charisma. They listed things that they would do from her to improve their confidence.
- Mahalakshmi said she knows1000 songs by heart!!! It was but natural that on our demand she sang - Kailash Kher's Saiyyan. The girls were simply thrilled to hear her sing so well.
Orientation Day 7
Dance Workshop
- Ninety percent of our girls, when asked about their hobby, say dancing. So it was inevitable that today was an extremely exciting session for them.
- Ms.Poonam Lama and her daughter Dechhenn Lama conducted the session.
- They taught the girls two dances on two upbeat bollywood songs
Orientation Day 8
Physical & Mental Health (Self Care)
- At Shaktii we want our girls to be strong mentally and physically and today's session is a big step forward to address Self-Care amongst the girls
- Ms.Manisha Jhamb, a multi-faceted lady who runs Mind Buddies and Shrikanth Aiyer, a brilliant Psychologist conducted this amazing session
- After the girls listed out a lot of positive words as important factors in life we performed two activities of enacting mother-daughter situations where the daughter disobeys and how the mother reacts.
- The session was ended with the positive promise that we will all give our 100% to Self-Care.
Orientation Day 9
Djembe Drums, Computer Programing (Coding)
Session 1 - Djembe Drums
- The third time Arwin David and his team came to our centre to play the Djembe Drums to us and with us.
- Arwin started the session with a beautiful song - "Ummedowali dhoop, Sunshine wali aasha, Rone ke wajah Kam hai, Hasne ke bahane jyada."
- He also enthralled us with a medley of old Bollywood songs
Session 2 - Computer Programing (Coding)
- This session was conducted by a beautiful & confident young lady Anshika Jhamb. Anishka has completed her graduation and is soon leaving for UK for her higher studies.
- In an hour Anshika informed our girls that coding is the language of computer and is used in every industry, every aspect of our lives today.
- Anshika also told the story of Margaret Hamilton (American Computer Scientist), the original coding expert. How with the help of her coding , America could complete Apollo Missions successfully.
Orientation Day 10
Basics Of Photography
- This session was done by Suhasini Ahluwalia. Suhasini made the session so very interesting, first by talking about herself, her education, her work and then her passion/ hobby that is photography
- She taught the gilrs that Photography doesn't always need a big camera. You can do it even with your mobile camera
- Some Nuances of good clicks suggested by her: Point on focus, Use natural light,Keep negative space where the eyes focuses, Hold your phone still, Find different angles and so on.
- Suhasini ended the session by giving an interesting project to the girls. They have click six photographs according to all the points that they learnt today. This homework was whole heartedly welcomed by all the girls
Orientation Day 11
Drama/ Theatre, Cooking without Fire
Session 1: Drama/ Theatre
- This session was done by Ms.Aarti Patt. She is founder of Creative Expression - A drama academy. She started the session with a miming activity. The girls came forward to tell their names and enact their hobbies and others had to guess
- She spoke about the acronym PEEP, P - Posture, E-Expression, E- Eye Contact, P - Projecting your voice
- The girls had to imagine they are on a beach and select any activity related to beach and as soon as Aarti yells "Alive" they start doing the activity. Girls enjoyed the activity.
Session 2 - Cooking without Fire
- This activity was done by Shehzin. Shehzin told us that we would be learning to make Continental Chat. So she started the session with a Spell Bee trivia of all the ingredients of the recipe of Continental Chat
- She then shared the recipe for a continental chat without cooking with all the girls and the mentors.
Orientation Day 12
Music, learning English songs
- This session was done by Caleb Ellis. Caleb has been associated with Shaktii since last year and girls always enjoyed his music class. Caleb has a deep soulful baritone voice and when he sings , his voice reverberates in the room and we all love to sing along with him.
- The songs he sang were - " Clap your hands", "Take me home, Country roads", "Leaving on a Jet plane"..
- Caleb showed us this wonderful trick of clapping with our right hand fingers on our left palm, adding one finger after another to increase the sound and vice versa
Orientation Day 13
Basics of Makeup
- This session was done by the beautiful Lipi Sengupta. Lipi is a trained professional makeup artist
- Lipi spoke about basic skin care : types of skin and a CTMP process to prepare your face for the makeup
- Lipi went on to demonstrate on one very willing model - Renu, the whole process of Makeup. Dipali, our Shaktii-ite then did the process on another enthusiastic model, Ravina.
Orientation Day 14
IT Basics
- Abhishek Gupta , a computer engineer is a successful entrepreneur and has two big offices in Navi-Mumbai. He has given employment to about 35 people. Today we were fortunate to have him at our centre and talk to our girls about basics of Information Technology.
- He spoke how communication has evolved since our ancestral days to our current times. Technology has brought a drastic change in our communication system. It has made the world so small that we can reach anywhere with a tap of our fingertip, though virtually.
- Abhishek also explained how Truecaller works and how the future of IT is AI
- Lastly Abhishek gave a wonderful advise to the girls. Like a computer follows processes to give accurate results, he advised the girls to make a process about their aims and steps they need to take to reach the aim and follow them to become successful in life.
Orientation Day 15
July 1 -Founder's' Day
- In the last 15 days we conducted orientation for the new students; all the ex-Shaktii students were invited as well. Almost 20 of them were present each day. The new ones were coming as usual after their school, but the old ones were coming after attending half a day of college, or missing classes, or at their lunch time to attend these sessions. It was heartening to see their love and dedication towards Shaktii
- They conducted the whole program on Founder's Day. The theme was suggested by Ravina, "Breaking the barriers"
- Flow of our program - Theme: Breaking The Barriers
1. Welcoming the guests - Vimla / Ravina
2. Documentary I and II- Ruhi / Soha
3. Felicitation of 12th std Students - Renu
4. Felicitation of Dharamchandji - Kalyani Ma'am
5. Shaktii Poem by Aastha
6. Best ambassador awards to Prerna and Siddi- Kalyani ma’am
7. Interview of seniors ( theme- based ) - by Shrikant sir
8. Request Speech by guests - Kinjal
9. Invite Vimala Ma'am to speak
10. Vote of thanks - Dimple
- Ms. Sheetal Bapat , Director of Shyamchi Aayi Foundation came all the way from Pune to be our Chief Guest. Mr. Sujan Sinha, Ex-MD & CEO of Shriram Housing Finance readily agreed to be our Guest Of Honour.
- Shrikant Iyer did a wonderful job of interviewing some of the senior Shaktii-ites.