By Faraz Farooqui
On the 7th of October, 2018, members of NCSC took off for the Aghosh orphanage, hopeful that they would make memories and learn lessons that they would be able to carry with them for a very long time. Volunteers were also super excited, considering that they were going to help organize a sports gala!
Members waited anxiously as they planned the things they would say and the activities they would help supervise. They wanted to make sure that these children would be able to enjoy the experience and look forward to the next visits as well. In order to do this the members of the OKM visit were divided into houses (Red, Green, Blue & Yellow). After this division, house captains were decided and children were allotted to each house accordingly.
After arriving at Aghosh, we let the children know about our decision and they absolutely loved it! We started off by interacting a bit with the kids by asking about how they’d been doing and what they’d been up to since our last visit. After a short discussion, the rest of the members arrived and we began splitting the children up into teams. We expected this to go very easily, but it was a much harder task than expected. This was because the children seemed to be too excited. They were all over the place, running here and there and not taking a break for even a second. We enjoyed the process however, as we were glad we were able to let them expend their pent-up energy.
Eventually we managed to organize the children, and started the sports gala off with football matches between the various houses. The matches were held at random and ended up being very entertaining for everyone involved. These matches had a few main rules governing them, just to make sure there was no unnecessary aggression during play. This led to chaos that was especially entertaining for anyone that regularly played football.
A few matches went by and it was obvious that the Blue House, headed by the NCSC President himself, was the strongest team there was. To celebrate this, we had brought along props so that the winners and losers could have a photo-session with the members of the visit. This went well as the children smiled and posed which honestly made every little effort worth it right then and there.
The next event on the agenda was a tug of war competition in which all members of a house were allowed to participate. Both sides pulled with all their might however it was obvious that once again, Blue House was emerging quite superior in terms of ability. To commemorate this, we arranged the houses according to their positions in the Gala and had a photo session with all the children that were there. Shortly after, we began to wrap things up and head inside to spend some quality time with the children. This involved playing games and reading books with them in order to entertain them and maybe teach them something in the process.
This lasted quite a while and eventually we were able to call it a day. However, considering that most of the members hadn’t had a meal, we decided it would be a good idea to sit down and discuss the various aspects of the trip over a hearty meal. This is because we wanted to make sure we continuously improved via feedback from the members themselves. It was a long day, a very long day, but it was worth it. We learned a lot, mostly about how lucky we were ourselves and we planned to make sure that these children feel just as lucky in the future! This is because Orphans truly do Know More; they just aren’t aware of it!
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