March 2024
PC Bagmar Memorial Award
8th March, International Women's Day 2024 turned out to be a great day at Shaktii. Shaktii became the recipient of P.C. Bagmar Memorial Award.
The whole Bagmar family were very impressed with the work that we have been doing at Shaktii ie educating & empowering young girls. Hence they decided to award us with the P.C.Bagmar Memorial Award.
Mr.Bhavesh, who himself was motivated by Mr. Bagmar to create an organization called Sunrise Candles, which helps differently abled individuals to stand on their own feet, gave a unique motivational speech.
April 2024
Visit to Avasara Academy
- Shaktii begun our 10th year with a visit to Avasara Academy in Pune. The following team visited the academy along with Ms. Vimala Nandakumar:
Sheela Iyer- German teacher, Shrikant Iyer- Psychotherapist, Dr.Sujata Udeshi- Nutritionist, Manisha Jhamb- poet cum entrepreneur, Shweta Mehta - Engineer cum mentor at Shaktii
- Shrikanth Iyer
"Shaktii's goals and plans would be impacted positively. We may find it helpful to provide quality education across diverse sections of the society to encourage equality among them and reduce marginalization and thereby raising empathetic students. We may also consider seeking out donations to specific areas that enable education (library, sports facilities, classrooms etc.). Lastly, feedback and continuous learning as educators is an essential component for us to consider while NIOS specific teaching and curriculum designing, to help improve ourselves and be student-centric."
- Sujata Udeshi
"Seeing is believing, when it comes to understanding the impact of Avasara Academy. I saw that education can be so wholesome. This inspired me to think about what all could be possibly done for Shaktii Academy. Commitment from staff to not just teach books but facilitate the growth and development of the girls are very important. The way the girls presented themselves reflected what right education can do. Shaktii is on the right path and Avasara as a model just gives us positive strength that we can do it."
- Sheela S Iyer
"I felt we at shaktii are already moving in the right direction by engaging the relevant mentors, investors n visionaries. After meeting Alisha, Jill and a few others at Avasara, I felt our 4-6 girls with varied interest like science, maths, singing, theatre etc could be similarly trained to talk to potential investors or visitors, impacting phenomenally and authentically. A code of conduct/huddle needs to be written for shaktii too for us mentors which will reinforce vitals. This was an insightful visit and we have many takeaways to implement"
- Sweta Mehta
"It was amazing to visit Avasara academy today. I was awestruck by the confidence and personalities of the young girls there. They were so well prepared. Knowing the kind of background, they were coming from makes me even more surprised that right environment can groom a child into such bright young girls. Hats off to the founder, mentors n teachers of Avasara academy."
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Orientation Day 1
The Power of the subconscious mind
- Shaktii started our 10th year of with Mr. Satyendra Singh sir - He is a qualified psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, past life regression therapist, life coach, corporate trainer on human psychology, mind management, and performance optimization.
- He gave us a powerful session on conscious and subconscious minds.
- All the girls enjoyed the session, Alumni and regular Shaktii- ites
Orientation Day 2
Kathak Workshop
- Ankana Kirtania arrived with her four students for conducting a Kathak class at Shaktii
- Ankana spoke to our girls about the origin of Kathak and how it evolved from a simple storytelling form of dance to the prestige it carries today as a classical form of dance with its various forms like Benaras Gharana, Jaipur Gharana etc
- The girls were divided into four groups and all four of her students taught them the same dance. Then each group performed
- This Kathak workshop turned out to be an absolutely interactive session.
Orientation Day 3
Raising Awareness
Awareness about plastic
- The first session of today's program was "Awareness about plastic" and how we can care about our environment with just a little effort from our side and make a sustainable environment for future generations.
- Pallavi and Sejal from Shrunkhala NGO made the session very interactive by engaging the girls by asking them simple questions and answering their queries
- We all learnt that nothing is a waste. All waste can be recycled. We learnt how we individually can help our environment
Mental Wellbeing
- The second session was all about "Mental wellbeing" by the MInd Buddies duo Ms. Manisha Jhamb and Shrikanth Iyer.
- The topics given were: Effect of junk food, Abuse - verbal, physical and mental, Stress of exam, Body shaming, Overuse of technology, and Lying to parents
- The girls came up with beautiful skits and also gave explanations and results of the wrong doings
Orientation Day 4
Creative Writing
- The fourth day of orientation was conducted by Ms. Aparna Salvi Nagda.
- Aparna started her session with an ice breaker of passing the parcel. But because this was a Creative writing session, there was a twist in the game. Aparna started the game by writing a sentence on the board. As the game started and girls started getting the parcel, they had to add a sentence to the one on the board
- For the next hour Aparna made pairs of the girls and did an exercise on Character development as all stories are about different characters
- By the time the class ended, the girls were overflowing ideas to write.
Orientation Day 5
Photography and Technology
- The first session was about Photography, particularly about "Portrait Photography". Mr.Jhanak Shah. He is a professional photographer who has many years of experience in India as well as the USA. He has taught photography in many colleges in Mumbai.
- "Photography is nothing but writing with light." - he gave some input on what needs to be done to prepare to take a portrait photograph
- The second session was conducted by Mr. Abhishek Gupta and it was all about Information Technology. Mr. Abhishek is an IT engineer and he runs his own IT company which has about 40 employees. He is also a fellow BNI member.
- He gave a lot of information about why IT is such an important subject in today's world and why IT is going to be the most important subject in future too.
- Many of the girls who are embarking upon choosing subjects for their careers then started seeking his advice and Abhishek obliged them with his valuable inputs.
Orientation Day 6
Outing
- Sessions were conducted in Mr. Sandeep and his lovely wife Ms. Neha's' studio, "The Bliss", in Belapur.
- The first session was of Djembe Drums conducted by Arvin David and his colleague Jitesh.
- Team building games were conducted. The girls were divided in teams and they had to work together to put the right balls in the right hole on a pool table but in a cloth form.
- The next game was blindfolding one of the team members and others shouting out instructions so the blindfolded girl doesn't step on any mine and crosses from one side to other collecting all the points spread around the mines.
- The second session was conducted by Mr.Sandeep and Ms.Neha and it was the session of Zumba Dancing. They dimmed the lights of the studio so no one feels conscious if they are not able to follow the dancing steps.
- All the girls participated as the songs chosen were all their favorites and they enjoyed every bit to the hilt
Orientation Day 7
Drama
- "Drama Workshop" was conducted by Ms.Aarti Patt.
- The session started by asking the girls why and how drama helps and how in drama don’t just use our brains, but we use our bodies too for improvising and sending out the messages that we want to.
- Aarti divided the girls in five teams and the first activity was of a "Still Scene". The teams were given the topics of school, picnic, railway station, beach & wedding. Only when she taps on someone's shoulder that person or object will speak her dialogue.
- The next two activities were using your body as a group to make one object or thing. First they had to become a bird as a group. Next they all had to become a tree as a group. Lastly they all had to become Ganapati Bappa.
- Aarti also spoke to the girls about nervousness and how to overcome it.
- Takeaways from this drama workshop for the girls are that they can be as innovative as they want to, and that they can do wonders when they work as a team.
Orientation Day 8
Self Defense
- The girls received a class on self-defense by Raunak Mookherjee of Combatant Sports Academy.
- Raunak started off by explaining the reasons that girls need self-defense. How being aware of every moment and situation is part of self-defense. He went on to give a lot of information about different types of martial arts and how each one of them have their origin in ancient India.
- He showed them a few initial moves of self-defense. He showed which body parts are more vulnerable to injury and how to hit that part of the perpetrator.
Orientation Day 9
Art
- The first session was on a Singing workshop conducted by Mahalaxmi Iyer. Mahalaxmi conducted a workshop on developing singing skills.
- She gave pointers on becoming a good singer. She started with the 4Ps.....Plan, prepare, practice, finally present. Next she taught some breathing exercises which are actually part of planning and preparation.
- Ms.neha who is also a singer and has agreed to come every week once and teach the girls a few songs.
- The 2nd session by Sudha Barshikar was about making greeting cards but with a difference
- She distributed A4 size colored paper and asked the girls to fold it in the shape of a card. Then they were asked to cut a shape of their choosing on the front page and stick a silk cloth to fit the shape.The girls were then asked to paint on the cloth in order to create beautiful greeting cards.
- Sudha showed them different techniques of painting beautiful flowers using paint brushes and earbuds. She told the girls that they could even use their hands.
Orientation Day 10
Learning German
- Sheela Shankaran Iyer who is the owner, Principal and teacher at Centura Linguistic Centre did this session with our girls.
- Sheela started with teaching the girls sounds of the vowels by comparing them to Hindi matra sounds and also English vowel sounds.
- Then the girls were divided in five groups and each group learnt to say "My name is ......." in German and also spell their name in German. They also learnt to say their mobile number in German.
Orientation Day 11
A day with the mentors
- The girls spent the last day of orientation with their mentors Vimala Ma’am and Kalylani Ma’am
- The competition of Impromptu speech was conducted. The girls had to pick a topic from a box, and no time was given for any sort of preparation. They had to immediately start talking about the topic for 30 seconds.
- The girls were divided into three categories. First were the newbies, all the 8th class girls and the new girls of IX class. Next were the IX class girls who already spent a year with us. The third category were the Shaktii alumni.
- Almost all the new girls showed the courage to come up before everyone and choose a topic to speak about.
- The prize went to new girl Sampada Monde of VIII class, whose topic was happiness; she floored us with the line "even while facing challenges we can find happiness".
- The prize in the IX class went to Aarya Bhalerao. Her topic was "Trends". Vimla Chowdhury won in the senior category with the topic "Fashion".
- The girls with June as their birthday month got to cut a huge Alpine Chocolate cake
Founder's Day'
10th Founder's Day
- A royal celebration was held at the Royal Tulip banquet hall called Sapphire.
- Mr.Manoj of BNI was ready with the screen and his projector before everyone arrived
- Everyone looked beautifully dressed, ready for the festive occasion
- Ms.Ujjwala Haware was the Chief Guest. The celebration started with a sweet and crisp program with a welcome address by Suhana Khan followed by a beautiful song "lakshya ko pana hai." by Shrikant Iyer.
- The IX and Xth class girls spoke a line each about the values they learnt at Shaktii. Vimala ma'am had this wonderful idea of using plush dolls to represent a value and each of the 9 girls held a doll when they spoke
- Miss best policy was all about honesty, Miss Know it all was confidence, Miss I am always with you was about compassion, Miss Sunshine was all about happiness, Miss Indebted was all about gratitude, Miss Prim & Proper was about graciousness, Miss out of the box was about creativity, Miss on the dot was about punctuality, and lastly, Miss always by the rules was about discipline. It was a cute presentation.
- We had encouraging messages for the girls from some powerful women who inspire everyone young and old. Ms.Kiran Bir Sethi, founder of Riverside School, Ms.Ujjwala Haware, Chairperson of Ujjwala Haware Legaccy and lastly Ms.Arundhati Bhattacharya, former Chairperson of State Bank Of India and now Chairperson and CEO of Sales Force India.
- Mentor Rupali Madan had an amazing gift for Shaktii, a beautiful charcoal painting done by her husband Mr.Gautam Patole.
- Ravina Lohar and Vimla Chowdhury had surprise bouquets for Kalyani Ma’am and Vimala Ma'am
- The vote of thanks was read out by Ravina Lohar and Vimla Chowdhury.
- The delicious luncheon was enjoyed by one and all and everyone had a gala time eating, chatting and taking photos with each other. The royal celebration was a grand success.
