Service Project

I didn't have to go to work today. Instead I went on an activity with some of my coworkers. Every year we get one day to participate in an organized service project. I thought it would be more interesting to do it here than in Salt Lake. There were about 15 of us on this project. We met at the office this morning and then got on buses to go to Rakum School. It is a school for blind children. The owner gave us the lowdown on the school when we got there and it was pretty incredible. All of the children are orphans, but not all of them are blind. In fact less than half are blind. About 45 boys live in the school and more than 100 girls live in a building behind the school. Each blind child is assigned a seeing child from the very beginning and they are responsible for each other. That was the most amazing part of the whole day...watching how the seeing children took care of the blind children. We picked up about 35 children and 2 teachers and took the buses to Sandhya Kiran which is senior citizen center. Elders come their for the majority of their day to interact with other elders and continue their livelihood. The point of the day was to have the children and the elders interact. We played a game and both the children and the elders sang and danced. We had lunch and snacks and then they did some more performances. We had different activities planned for the afternoon, but all they wanted to do was get on the stage with the microphone and sing or perform dramas. As I said, watching the children interact with one another was so tender. One of the teachers from the school said the seeing children learn how to read and walk and just function as if they were blind so that they can always be of help to their blind partner. They just served each other constantly. One of the little boys even wanted to serve the elders their lunch while everyone else was eating their own. The elders were really great as well. They just loved the children so much. There was one little boy who was obviously the favorite of the children and he easily became the favorite of the elders as well. He was blind and he loved to sing and dance. The elders picked him up and kissed his cheeks a billion times. It was such a wonderful way to spend the day.