Arnab Barua - Helping the Underprivileged Children in India

Welcome back to my journey in helping underprivileged children. Today, I continued my effort in educating the children in Lotus NGO. The passion and curiosity that the children had yesterday motivated me to continue my sessions with them today. After meeting up with the children, who were all gathered inside the study room, we decided to start our day by reflecting upon what we had done over the course of three days. While in retrospect, we shared laughter, joy, and the personal experiences we had endured in the past three days. After our time on reliving those moments, I decided to get back on track and start my sessions with them .   The topic I taught them today was on History. I figured that since History is both a general and fun topic, it would be best suitable for the children. Many of the kids claimed that they already knew about majority of   the Indian history, so I decided to shift my focus to the US once again. The children seemed to be very interested in the political

Welcome to another remarkable day of me helping the underprivileged children around me. Due to summer vacation, none of the children had to go to school meaning they had a lot of free time in their hands. I was greeted by the children with the same energy once again, and I told them that we would be going in the study room. Today, I had the pleasure of educating the children myself, as well as telling them stories of my personal life. All twenty-two of the children were very enthusiastic in listening to me and asked plenty of questions on how life in the US is like. I tried to answer as many questions as I could, and then I moved on into more academic concepts.   I first decided to ask how good the children thought they were at academics. I got a mix of responses consisting of a few ‘good’, a majority of ‘okay’, and a handful of ‘not good’. I had taken in mind that the age range for the children was eight to thirteen years old, so each child had a different level of knowledge and

Welcome to another day of my journey in helping underprivileged children. Today, I decided to spend my time with the children in Lotus NGO by playing a few sports with them, along with a few board games. I realized that playing sports with them would let me get to know them better as individuals. Since it was a sunny day, I thought that it would be the perfect day to indulge in physical activities.   When I walked into the building, I was immediately greeted by the energetic children and some of the staff members. I asked the children if they wanted to play any sports, and the immediate answer that came from them was badminton. I was surprised by the sole answer and I got to know that almost everyone in the group shared the same interests. I helped the children unload the badminton supplies and went outside with them. There, I stood and watched some of the children play and I was amazed by the skill they showcased. One of the staff members told me that each child there possessed a

Entering the vast environment of Lotus NGO was an astounding experience.   My first view of the site consisted of a horizontally-integrated house with plenty of trees surrounding it. I could see some of the underprivileged children inside the house immersing themselves into their studies. While I was walking closer to that building, I noticed that there was grass all around with no sidewalks to walk upon. As I proceeded further into the campus of the NGO, I noticed that it was nothing like I would have expected. The trees towered over the building covering the sun, which provided shade that engulfed the entire place. As I walked and planned my 5-day journey with the underprivileged children of the NGO, I envisioned different ways to lay out my time with them. Despite having many ideas, I wasn't quite sure how I would categorize them. As I walked closer to the building, I was greeted by some of the gratifying staff members of the NGO, who all led me to the office segment of the ho

There were many things I could have done this summer, but out of all the options, the DOC NC Project seemed to be the most exciting. At the earlier stages, I was wondering about what I would be doing for the project. Many ideas came up in my mind, but all of those ideas required funds from my parents. I didn't want to use my parent's money for self-credit, so I kept thinking of more ideas that involved only my help. After thinking through for a couple of days, I finally thought of a good project plan and topic. Over the years, I had earned prize money from numerous events which was deposited into my dad's account. I decided to use my prize money for an earnest cause to help underprivileged children.      Thinking of a project plan was not easy. I had to think ahead of time since I was visiting Assam, India. Furthermore, I had to think of a plan which I could fulfill with only my budget capacity. I wanted to make sure that this summer program would make a big impact for the