Valentine's Day event with children in Thane!!

Hello!

Toybank with the help of some 'super' volunteer employees from Accenture BPO has organised a Valentine's Distribution event for around 300 kids at Thane!!

Event is on Saturday, 13th Feb, 2010 !

We have tied up with 2 centers of Mobile Creches at Thane for this event. There will be a short volunteer orientation at sharp 10 am at the Lodha centre.

Anyone interested in participating please email us at mail@toybank.org

Thank you,

Happy Toybanking!

Toybank features in India Today's Aspire!

Toybank featured in the Feb 2010 issue of India Today's Aspire! Shweta Chari, founder of Toybank talks about importance of play, the journey so far and Toybank's future plans!

Read more -  http://tinyurl.com/yfu76ug

Toybank is the 'Official toy supplier to the TATA Cancer hospital'

Toybank has now set up a toy library in TATA Memorial Hospital. Simran Halwasiya and Bela Gupta of the TATA hospital donated these toys to the toy library! 

Here are a few snapshots of the brand new toy library!

Toybank goes to Ratnagiri!

IBM's On Demand Community(ODC) in Pune has various initiatives running under it's umbrella. Help and Educate is one of them. Through this initiative IBM's employee volunteers work with Shri Vithalrao Joshi Charitable (VJC) Trust in providing health, support and education to the people of Dervan, a remote village in the interiors of Konkan region of Maharashtra.

Help and Educate kick-started the year with a toy distribution event at  VJC Trust's English Medium School in Dervan on 30th Jan. The toys collected through ODC's toy collection drive from Nov 2009 were distributed to children from Dervan.

Participating Volunteers were Abhay A Ratnaparkhi, Balamurugan Subramaniam, Dhandayudhabani and Rakeshkumar D Sahu, with  Avni Pattani taking the lead.

Here's what Avni Pattani who's also a Toybanker had to say about the event -

"IBM volunteers started from  Pune in the early morning on 30th Jan for Dervan situated in Ratnagiri District. Volunteers reached the school in Dervan around noon in the vehicle provided by trust. On reaching the school Mr.Praful Godbole welcomed the volunteers and arranged for refreshments. After a quick lunch the volunteers interacted with the high school Principal Ms. Parkar, pre-primary school Principal Ms.Shirodkar and other staff members to understand children's interests and also to explain the objective of the distribution event.

The toys collected as a part of collection drive at IBM were distributed amongst 129 children from the pre-primary school. Volunteers interacted with the kids and involved them in activities such as reciting poems/ rhymes, playing games, story-telling, drawing and dancing. One group of children from senior kg also performed a dance for the volunteers. After playing with the children for about one and a half hour volunteers distributed  toys and biscuit packets to every child. Both the children and the volunteers had a very memorable day!

We would like to thank the Shri Vithalrao Joshi Charitable Trust management for providing us an opportunity to carry out Toy Distribution at the school and prompt arrangement of transport and meals for volunteers.

We would like to thank Pune ODC and Toybank Team for all the support in wrapping toys and managing logistics .

Help & Educate also thanks each volunteer for enthusiasm and valuable time spent with the children."

Here are a few glimpses of the event: http://picasaweb.google.co.in/helpneducate .

Slumdog Secret Millioniare - Video is OUT now!

Toybank was featured on Slumdog Secret Millionaire on Channel 4, UK on Sunday 17th January at 9 PM. The video is now available on Channel 4's website. Take a look!

A young Toybanker's musings

This was written by a young Toybanker named Nishant. 

My views on poverty:

   'When I see a poor child knocking at my car window it really arouses a lot of sentimental feelings. It makes me wonder why these children are in their positions. Along with sadness I also feel a lot of gratitude for all the various things I have that I take for granted and do not appreciate enough.

           Poverty in India is escalating every day and not much is being done about it. Everyday we hear about several Indians going abroad and succeeding in their professions. It is not very often that we hear about Indians who actually prefer to work for the benefit of India. It makes me feel that we could be a far more prosperous nation if more of our own resources were used for our own betterment.

          Speaking of the government, I do not think it is doing enough to cure the plight of the poorer classes of India. One probable step for the government would be to make primary education compulsory. This will at least ensure a strong mental base for all children in the country.

           Education can even be imparted through toys as all children will learn quickly if they enjoy the learning process. Toys which teach toddlers the alphabet or the numbers from 1 to 10 and other such informational toys can be very useful in imparting useful information to children at the right age.

       The future of India is looking bright as new youngsters are entering politics wanting to make a change.Ideas like unemployment benefits which exists in the united kingdom presently whereby every unemployed person gets 50 pounds a month as  compensation. It may be surprising but it is a fact that terrorism arises from poverty. Poor people do anything as long as they get paid. Thus the eradication of poverty can cause a drastic reduction in terrorism.

These are a few ideas that should be pondered over for a while.'

Nishant Jhaveri

14 years, Cathedral School

Toybank knows no borders - A day out with Borderless World Foundation!

Toybank had an awesome start to 2010! We had a toy distribution event with children from Borderless World Foundation (BWF).

Nimesh Sumati is one of our mentors and he invited BWF and organized their stay and travel in Maharashtra.He is also involved in activities at the Caring Friends. Here's what Nimesh had to say after our event -

"The event on Sunday 3rd Jan went very well, thanks to Mr Pravin Tulpule , the amazing magician cum entertainer who was kind enough to do the show. The event was organized by Toybank which was here to distribute games and toys to the girls at BWF.

The TISS students and Toybank volunteers played wonderful hosts too. The children were glued to Mr Pravin's every word and had a great time. A big THANK YOU to Shweta and Vikram of Toybank and Pravin. We also saw some performances from the BWF girls. Though they sang in their mother tongue we could see the happiness on their faces.

Our friends from 'Caring Friends' who attended the event - Mrs and Mr Ashok Tamnhe, Rama and Dharini, Narendra , Dhiren, Dhanesh, Prashant, Dharmendra, Naresh and Meena, Samir, Amul, Smita, Nikunj and others  also interacted with the girls over dinner. Over all it was an event which touched us all. The volunteers got a chance to speak briefly with Mr Adhik and Gaurav who are the trustees of BWF.

On 4th Jan we had a  Bazaar where a sale of some products was arranged and the girls were allowed to buy from the pocket money given to them. This was an oppurtunity given to the girls to inculcate a practice to learn how to make transactions and involve themselves in decision making.

This event was also an oppurtunity for the girls to learn a thing or two about saving the unspent money in their individual Money Boxes. Since the event went really well it was a very good thing to notice thatalmost all the girls got a chance to save a major amount. One girl bought a small bracelet and gifted it to Satya, a TISS student who had visited them earlier. Satya was was moved by this gesture.

It was an event which left us with many mixed emotions which were touching, moving, entertaining and inspiring. "

Children's Day in Waki & Dabhon Schools, Dahanu!

This Children's Day we had a blast!

14th Nov 2009, while some of our volunteers teamed up with TCS in Mumbai, few others were visiting the children in Waki & Dabhon Schools in Dahanu, Maharashtra. The Waki School (10 km from Dahanu) is a day school with 60 children and the Dabhon School (33 km from Dahanu) is a residential school with 140 children. The schools have recently completed two years of functioning.

Find all the smiles here  !!