Summer camp at Sristi Village
During the long Indian summer holidays a group of almost 40 children from one of the 40 SOS children’s villages in India came to visit Sristi Village. Their SOS village is located in a village near Pondicherry. The SOS villages were founded by the Austrian Hermann Gmeiner who established these homes for children who were left orphans after the Second World War. Today there are villages in over 133 countries.
The children arrived at Monday, 11th May and stayed for 5 days. Because they were too many to stay at our hut on the land they rented a big room in Kunamangalam Village where they slept, cooked and spent the hot hours during midday.
In the mornings they helped on the land while our community member Angeli prepared their breakfast. We were happy how the children involved with our work and the community members.
When there was not work for them on the land or the weather was too hot, they played volleyball with our volunteers, stayed in the rented room to improve their chess skills and conducted a Cricket tournament.
On Monday, three of the boys and one of our community members, Shekila, had their birthdays so we celebrated it with cake and good food. It was a nice evening and we had a lot of fun.
On the last evening, there was a party at Sristi Village where we made a bonfire, listened to music, danced and all in all had a very good time.
We are very grateful for the work, help and commitment, the children showed in the five days they spend with our community. It was a great time for us all and I hope they enjoyed it as much as we did!
At the same time, three volunteers from Germany, Sonja, Franzi and Lea who are in India for eleven months and used their free time during their projects’ holidays to help working at our land supported our team for three weeks. We were really happy about their help during the camp with the 40 children and with there 2 weeks worth work on our land where they worked under Thatha’s instruction.
For us it was also a good experience to organise everything because the Sristi founder and director Karthik is in Europe for six weeks, extending our overseas network, meeting friends and supporters and spreading the knowledge of the Sristi Foundation and especially the Sristi Village. We are happy to say that after few problems at the beginning, everything worked out very well!