Latest Update from Rani Patel

Here is an e-mail from Rani Patel; founder and driver of Aarohan NGO:

Take a moment to read what she has to say about the work Aarohan is doing:

"Your mails are the greatest motivation for me. Even if there is no mail, I wait to hear from you.You remain my highest inspiration and the certificate of our work. Your understanding and support with full care and concern despite of the distance is my greatest strength.I have no words to express my feelings. I wish that I could spend even a few moments with you.







I would like to share our greatest achievement with you. Our children who struggle from scratch, who do not have even two square meals per day, proper clothes or shelter, have proved and certified Aarohan's work with their stupendous results in class 10 Board Examination. Out of 16 students from Class tenth, 13 students have scored more than 85% marks, six students have secured over 90%. Some students have scored 100% marks in Maths and Science. Nishchay, a shy young boy whose mother has passed away and father has abandoned with his two siblings to avoid household responsibilities, is our highest scorer with 96% marks. I would write to you in detail about Nishchay. I have attached the report cards of some of our students with this mail.





As you are aware, we have replicated our work at Baripada in Odisha state which is a remote and needy area. If we can take care of this region through our work, actual development will be projected. It is very challenging to develop this region because of the tough topographic and living conditions. Due to widespread poverty and illiteracy, it is hard to raise funds through local action. We are trying our best but not finding any help here. To gain their trust, we need to prove that we are the real well wishers to the beneficiaries. Apparently, they had bad experiences in the past with community workers and now they have lost faith which needs to be regained.We are following Aarohan's model by alluring them with their requirements like food, utensils, clothes etc to the students to encourage them and their parents to partner in our work. Presently, over 100 children are benefiting from this project. I have constant command over this project. I am assisted by Shashi Sahai ( Treasurer) and Itismita Mishra ( Project Manager).

If you have any other queries, please feel free to write.

Thanking You
Rani Patel"

Winners and Runners Up - Aarohan Essay Competition

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL FINALISTS AND WINNERS!


All winners and finalists, you have won an Aarohan/CDL T-shirt. Therefore, please send an e-mail to ckt@ddocs.ch with your name, telephone number, grade and class teacher, and the requested T-shirt size as soon as possible. We have kid's sizes 7-8, 9-11, 12-14 and adult sizes Small, Medium, Large and XL. If we get your e-mail soon, we can give you your t-shirt before school ends. If not, we will call you to arrange further.















We are delighted to announce the winners and finalists of the Aarohan essay and picture competition.


As you know, the best-selling children's author Ian Whybrow, who has written over 100 children's book and is published in 27 languages in 28 countries, and who visited CDL this school year, had agreed to judge the competition.


Our job was to choose and send him three entries for each year. That was a most difficult assignment as we had never imagined that CDL students would come to this task with so much imagination and hard work.  What impressed us most of all is that, at each grade level, we could see that the children had genuinely begun to think about what it would be like to be born in a situation that is very different from their own.


This is difficult for children to do.


It is also important.


Only if we use our imagination and try to understand others -- how they live, what they feel -- can we hope for the world to become a better place.


The children of CDL have certainly started on the road of understanding and empathy.


We are extremely proud of you.


Here is what Ian Whybrow had to say about the competition:


“The rules of the competition meant that the students had to think long and hard about what to do. And they had to have the sensitivity and imagination to understand how other people living in very different circumstances might feel.

I have only seen the work of three finalists in each grade and I congratulate the organizers for their dedication. It must have been very tricky (from us: it was!!!) to choose from such a mountain of entries, many of them displaying great talent.

Others might have chosen differently, but here are my chosen winners.

Very many congratulations to you all.”




And the winners are….


Grade 1
Students were asked to draw a picture to include the word Ararohan, a sun, a child with a book


WINNER: Leo


Ian’s comment: “Leo’s drawing is my favourite. He was supposed to include a book and it’s hard to see where it is, exactly. Still, I think I can see clues to it all over the place. I’ve decided that the book is definitely there in spirit. I love all the intricate patterns and the bright colours that capture the magic of India. The people and the elephants are full of happiness. You sense that they can feel the friendship and kindness of the children from CDL who want to help them. Scintillating!”


Finalist: Jo Fairman
Finalist: Samuel Wang


Grade 2
Students were asked to draw a picture to include the word Ararohan, a sun, a child with a book and also short text starting "Today I, ..."


WINNER: Dara


Ian’s comment: “I admire greatly the genius of Laith’s very moving picture of the boy reading. Sadly, this talented work doesn’t follow the rules of the competition. So the one I chose as the winner of this section is Dara’s. It’s lovely to think that after all her hard work, the little Indian girl has a picture book by Jill Murphy to relax with, a book that will make her laugh and feel happy. By the way, the little girl’s sari is glorious.”


Finalist: Laith (see comment above)
Finalist: Alex Reid Bezyak


Grade 3
Students were asked to draw a cartoon strip with dialogue showing how they imagine a day in the life of a child at Aarohan

WINNER: Chandler Norling


Ian’s comment: “Chandler’s cartoon is my winner. It tells a story with complete clarity and simplicity and a great deal of charm. That’s a hard trick to bring off, but Chandler managed it perfectly through planning and thoughtful design. Terrific.”


Finalist: Mayu Odajima
Finalist: Alexandra Riley


Grade 4
Students were asked to draw a cartoon strip or an essay describing a day in the life of a child at Aarohan

WINNER: Sarah Levitt


Ian’s comment: "Ishta’s entry was attractively hand-written and I was impressed by the trouble the writer took to spell and punctuate correctly. I admired Ishta’s discipline and control. “My Life in Words” is passionate and appealing and obeys the rules; it’s a worthy finalist.
The other two pieces were from the same writer. The longer story, “The Dream Helper” is not really on the subject set. Even so, you can’t help being astonished by it. It is amazingly intense and strikingly original. How about this?


I had a pair of thick woolly socks and I had glued leaves and plastic on to the bottoms of them.


And what about this for an attempt to get across what it’s like to get inside somebody else’s mind and share her feelings?


A feeling of rage that wasn’t mine burst inside me.


“Slum Life” sticks more closely to the task, but loves to wander.


If it were Sarah Levitt’s only entry, I’d have chosen Ishta as the winner.

Still, there’s such an outpouring of effort and such a desire to communicate feeling from Sarah that one would have to have a heart of stone not to declare her the winner."
Finalist: Ishta Dube (see comments above)
Finalist: Lucy Craig


Grade 5
Students were asked to write an essay describing a day in the life of a child at Aarohan. Illustrations were optional.


Because the Grade 5 task was so difficult, and so much hard work was put into the essays from the whole of Grade 5, we decided to have three winners and three finalists:


WINNER: Evgenija Nuneska
WINNER: Andrew
WINNER: Sebastien G 5/4


Ian’s comments: “Andrew does an excellent, lively job in conjuring up a very detailed day in the life of his hero, Raja, and writes with tremendous energy and spirit.


Evgenija’s essay goes one step beyond what you might expect from a writer of her age and experience. She manages to get into the body and soul of a poor child who lives a very different life from her own. She sees feels, hears, smells and touches things, as Aarsi, her Indian narrator, might well experience her world. Aarsi has a hard life but she is gifted with spirit and a rich imagination that is nourished by what Aarohan brings: a new school, regular meals and the possibility of a better life.

I can’t imagine a more encouraging incentive to donate gifts and books and schooling and friendship to others than this exceptionally sensitive and persuasive appeal.”


Our comments.


Sebastien: We loved the way Sebastien described his relationship with the little brother “it takes forever to get my little brother out of his mattress. His mattress is more comfortable than mine, which I think is really unfair”.

Sebastien doesn’t make his hero a goody-goody, but a normal boy who loves his brother, but who would also like to have the best mattress!!

Sebastien’s story is a diary-entry; he describes the endless hours of walking and the heartlessness of the man who employs him and who can simply send the boy away and say he has to come back tomorrow to get money.

Sebastien’s hero is a little boy who is jealous of his brother, but also a worker who has to argue to get his salary and who empathises with his father who has a long walk across town to get his two sons.

The boy goes to Aarohan after school and at the end of the day comes home: “Once we reached home, I was exhausted. I collapsed on my mattress. I was tired and fell asleep almost immediately. Well, I can’t think of anything else, but I do, I'll write it down”.

You should, Sebastien, because you write very well!

Evgenija: Evgenija’s story shows that she has listened very carefully to what she has been told about Aarohan and about the life in the slums.

As Ian says, she manages to get into the body and soul of the child, Aarsi, who is playing with her friends: “they all got in pairs and pretended they weren’t wearing dusty sandals, but unique boots made by someone famous. Aarsi had fun but it was starting to get dark”.

Evgenija also shows that she cares. Working with this project has made an impression on her, and she has become aware of her power to help, and of the many extra things we have in our part of the world: “You too can help Aarohan and all the children in it by sending donations, clothes, something you bought, but you are probably never going to use… “

She ends with a great message: “CDL Cares!!!”

Andrew: Andrew’s contribution immediately brings us to the slums: “Hello may name is Raja and I am 10 years old”. The reader cannot ignore this person, he is right there, next to us, insisting that we get to hear his story. The story also shows great maturity: “the people in the school persuaded my parents to let me come to the school”; Andrew understands and shows with his sparse, but insightful writing what conflict may have been in the family when making the decision to educate their child. He is not sentimental, but matter of fact, probably quite accurate of how the child he is writing about would describe his own life.


Finalist: Jacob Legallais
Finalist: Jenny Jarvis
Finalist: An Ting Koh


WELL DONE EVERYONE!  While you are here, please become a follower of our blog so that we can send you periodic updates about the lives of the children you are helping!