Toybank turns 5!

Yes indeed! Toybank turned '5' on the 15th of August! And we are planning to make this 5th year anniversary a fantastic one. Here are some upcoming events in Pune and Bangalore!

Toybank Bangalore
Our last event in Bangalore was with kids at IAR summer camp in May. It's time to gear up for the next distribution event and this time in rural Karnataka - a first of its kind for Toybank Bangalore.

On the 6th of September 12 of our volunteers will be distributing toys to the kids from Govt. Higher Primary Secondary School in Siddarahalli village of Belur, Hassan district. Toybank is working with 2 other social welfare groups to bring in more cheer to the children during the event.

JoinUs2Help - will be sponsoring a parade drum and copy-writing books for the children.
Aakanksha - would also participate and engage the children in coloring, drawing and some craft activities.

We also had a toy collection drive in ANZ, Bangalore. The employee volunteers have collected the toys and they are now going to be wrapped and distributed very soon!

Please mail in at bangalore@toybank.org for any queries.

Toybank Pune
After the 1st toy distribution event in Pune with Gyanankur School, Toybank Pune is back in action!
Toybank donated 350 toys to 300+ kids and to the toy library of the school.

We have few events planned to celebrate the 5th year anniversary. But these have taken a set back due to the swine flu attack in Pune. A toy collection drive is planned in one of the societies and dates are being discussed with the management to arrange the drive. Also we are planning for a toy distribution event with one of the schools run by Akanksha with the help of PMC and other MNCs.

Please mail in at pune@toybank.org for any queries.

Join us in making the rest of the year an amazing one by reaching out to more kids with Toybank. Join Toybank on Facebook & Orkut and spread the word. Get instant updates about our events on Twitter!

You can also send in any suggestions and feedback to us on our website!

Oh Yes! am alive and blogging!

I hate to realize it every time that it's been almost 6 months since my last post now!
I was caught up with a few things at work, home and Toybank. But none of these are any kind of excuses for not being in the scene.

In the past 2 weeks I was down with fever and cough, you know the kind of sad cough - I don't even remember having one of these in a long long time! I had sleepless nights in spite of taking all kinds of antibiotics, syrups, home-remedies and now homeopathy too. Don't you worry - I don't have 'the flu'. I am working from home for a couple of weeks now and hoping to get back to the work routine soon.

These days I mostly wait for weekends more than anything else to have some 'me' time. EPL's back with a new season! Though we haven't had the best start am sure things will get better very soon.

And yeah there was 24 to our rescue after we had finished watching Lost season 5. And now that we have successfully finished watching all the 7 seasons of 24 as well, all we can do is wait until January arrives for some action on the small screen! Meanwhile I was exposed to a sitcom - Frasier, a delightful show with unique characters! Hope I can munch on this for a while. We did try Entourage but somehow after 2 episodes I didn't crave to go back and watch more. May be will try it when we run out of all options some day :)

Alright too much of TV there! Let's move on. You know by now that Pune is on the world map for being a swine flu hot spot. All thanks to this, that in the past one month I did hear some really dumb and weird things people did because of the swine flu scare. Definitely the city was under a panic attack for the first couple of weeks after the first casualty. But with the media and newspapers taking swine flu out of all their headlines I must say that things are back to normal now.

I know I have been lazy in updating the blog. But I have been in action on Twitter though. You can catch me here!

3 cheers to 'me coming back to blogging'! Toybank updates will soon follow this post.

Let's get started!

Here are some of the action points from yesterday's meeting in Pashan.

Toy collection will go on for a month's time in Panchvati which is home to many societies/apartments in Pashan. Arvind who runs One Life activities has offered Success Club as the toy storage space for the drive. And we already saw two bags of toys donated by yesterday :)

Everyone will send in their recommendations of any NGOs they have worked with in and around Pashan (and elsewhere in Pune). This'll help us during distribution of toys.

Initially our target will be to do one distribution per month depending on the toys collected and hence reach out to kids in Pune.

And guess what I was thrilled to see some special volunteers at the meeting. Around 6 kids joined us in the meeting yesterday :) . They are willing to be volunteers for the drive as soon as they are done with their exams!

Toy drive in Pashan, Pune

Volunteers in Pune - get ready to join us for toy drives in Panchvati, Pashan.
Toybank toy drives will be on in various buildings/societies in Panchvati.

We'll be collaborating with volunteers in Pashan and One Life to kick start this toy drive.
We have a meeting scheduled today at 2 PM.

Date:	Saturday, February 14, 2009
Time:	2 - 3 PM
Location:	One Life Activity Club,Near State Bank Nagar Society,Panchvati
Street:	Pashan Road
City	Pune

Here's the agenda for the meeting.

(1) Chalk out plans for toy drive in various buildings/societies in Pune .
(2) Discuss how we can get volunteers from Pune who can help us in collection, gift-wrapping and distribution with the help of One Life and also by spreading a word across all societies.
(3) Involve Volunteers from One Life in our distribution events and hence encourage inclusive play.
(4) Identify NGOs in and around Pashan so that distributions can happen in same area.
(5) Discuss on how we can schedule monthly or fortnightly meetings/follow ups.
(6) Discuss any other ways how we can collaborate with One Life to spread the message.

Please mail us at pune@toybank.org in case you have any queries.

Also there are toy drives happening in Juhu Vile Parle, Mumbai starting from 16th of February till 7th of March. Find out more here.

This is a toy collection and distribution drive set up all through JVPD Scheme, Mumbai. Students from the MBA Tech program from the Mukesh Patel Institute are initiating this Toy rally all through mid February and March. People living around these areas can fully support this activity if interested. Please write in to mail@toybank.org for more details.

Let us give back the right to a childhood!

Toybank's in town!

Toybank's first toy collection drive is on!

I thought it's always nice to get started by creating awareness in the neighborhood first. Hence the first toy collection drive is happening in my society next weekend :)

Hope we get loads of toys from everyone. These toys will be segregated according to age groups of 1-3, 4-7, 8-12 and gift-wrapped. They'll be given to NGOs providing non formal education to kids in and around Pune. We have already identified a couple of them who have expressed interest in taking the toys.

Anyone in Pune who's interested in volunteering for Toybank or anybody who wish to donate toys, gift wrapping sheets or stationery required for gift-wrapping, please contact me on toybank-pune@toybank.co.in.

Volunteers from Bangalore, please write in to us at mail-bangalore@toybank.co.in and if you are in Mumbai write to us at mail@toybank.co.in

Watch this space for more!

Akanksha Literary Fest 2008 - Pune

Well finally, I think things have started to fall in place.
I had thought my volunteering stint had taken a back seat in 2008. No, not anymore!

The Akanksha Literary Fest took place at Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies, Range Hills, Pune on the 30th of August. Few of us from Tech Mahindra volunteered for this event through the CSR.

I had to leave for Bangalore the next day morning and I was so looking forward to an amazing drive with Kunal. So I packed all my stuff on Saturday itself! And then I headed for the event in SIMS at 2 30 a cloudy noon.

Akanksha is an NGO working with children on non formal education. Akanksha works primarily in the field of education, addressing non formal education through the various Akanksha centers in Mumbai and Pune and also formal education by initiating school reforms.

Children between level 1 and level 6 at Akanksha are taught English, Maths and value education. And children between level 7- 12 are taught career skills, leadership skills through programmes like Learning to Lead, Social Leadership and other empowerment programmes.

I had met Anupama and Reeves from Akanksha a month back when they’d visited one of the Tech Mahindra offices to let us know about mentoring opportunities in Akanksha. I was looking forward to meet them at the event as well!

I reached the venue by 3 PM. The event was scheduled to start at 4 PM but the volunteers were asked to be there earlier to help Akanksha arrange the event.

When I reached there, I saw a colorful display of various poems, stories, pictures and artworks written by kids from Akanksha hung up in one corner of the auditorium! I was smiling when I was reading through many of them :)




All the kids from various centers assembled at the auditorium at 4 PM. The event kicked off with a Drama which was about a Bookworm meeting various characters in a library :)



The exciting bookworm played by a member working at Akanksha thrilled the audience while meeting and explaining the characters like Birbal, Aladdin, Little Red Riding Hood etc who were all dressed up in the attires of the characters they played!

Bookworm also stressed the importance of a library and how we should ensure that we kept increasing the knowledge everyday.

This interesting drama was followed by poetry and drawing. Children were taken into the nearby 5 classrooms which were all named with different colors. The children were given various topics to start with their spot poetry. The volunteers helped the kids by giving them tips on writing and also by giving various ideas on the given topics.




After a 45 min poem writing session, there was Author’s chair where kids would read out few stories to the audience in their classrooms.

This was followed by the best bit of the event – the Lit Circles Skits, short for ‘the Literary Circles Skits’! A group of kids performed various skits like Wizard of Oz, Four friends, sending an important message on moral values that hard work & honesty are the only way to reap benefits.



After watching the wonderful skits performed by various groups, all the children came back to the auditorium. The wonderful literary fest ended with a story telling session by Sonali Adkar from Twist & Tales, Aundh, Pune.






Isn't it an amazing way to get back on track?
Pune...Here I come!!

Cruising through NH-4

Last week I and Kunal went on our first trip to Bangalore after our wedding. It was an amazing trip. All thanks to NH-4 and our new possession - a brand new Red Swift LDi :)!

We started off on a Sunday morning at around 5 30 AM. Kunal had all the essential R&D done about NH-4 for our drive from Pune to Bangalore. We made our way out of Pune in the early morning and hit the NH-4. Soon we drove through Satara & Kolhapur.

Reached the Karnataka border by 9 AM and then we came across a huge, wide reservoir near Nipani, Belgaum district. We stopped for breakfast for about half an hour and we were back on the road!



The Belgaum-Dharwad-Hubli stretch of NH-4 is awesome! It's a treat to cruise through this stretch at around 120 kmph. I was remembering the roads in Muscat for sometime :)

Like every good thing even NH-4 comes with its set of pros and cons. The bad part of NH-4 was here. This was from Haveri-Ranibennur-Davangere-Chitradurga. We saw some bad unfinished roads and too many diversions as well.

On this stretch we spotted huge number of windmills everywhere and sunflower fields adding to the lush green scenery with clouds in the background!









We stopped for lunch at Davangere and continued our drive hoping the road further on would be good! After a 3 hr drive, we stopped for coffee at Kamat, Hiriyur and yes the stretch till Bangalore was great!

We refrained from entering the Bangalore city through the usual route and instead tried the new Mysore Corridor and reached home at around 8 45 PM and our 15 hr journey came to an end!

Over all, this was truly one trip that I will remember for a long time now. With airfares being where they are and domestic air travel almost becoming out of reach, this experiment to try NH4 was definitely cool! All credit goes to my husband for making the smart move :)

After a 4 day vacation, we cruised through NH4 again and came back to home sweet home :). Its always good to be back home!!

Say hello to Toybank Pune

Hey all!

How's everybody doing??

You must be wondering if Toybank shut down its Bangalore operations. We apologize for not being in action for close to 5 months! The last event in Bangalore was on 21st of Dec for kids from Annanya.

Time for a quick recap!

Coordinators for Toybank Bangalore:
Vinay D R and I are the coordinators for Toybank Bangalore. The Bangalore Chapter started on 18th Aug 2007.

The journey so far:
We had toy distribution events with Nele (18th Aug) and Makkala Jagriti (8th Sept), Swanthana , Suraksha Makkala Rakshane (2nd Dec) and amazing toy collection drives in Raheja Residency, Koramangala (22nd Sept) and Akme Harmony (5th Jan 2008) . We celebrated Children's Day with kids from Balajothi Centre for the Disabled, Benson Town. Also we had a fantastic time with kids from Annanya where we celebrated Christmas on the 21st of Dec!

A lot of changes have happened at Toybank Bangalore in the past 7 months.

I moved out of Bangalore in mid October last year to Mumbai and then to Pune in December. Since then I have been caught up with work and then there was my 'marriage':-). Now we are working on building up the Toybank Pune Chapter!

Vinay works for Motorola, Bangalore and has moved to Pre sales a year ago. His new role requires him to travel extensively abroad and hence he too isn't able to give a lot of time for arranging more events.

Till now we were using iVolunteer's Bangalore office for the gift wrapping sessions as we don't have an office in Bangalore. We thank Prarthana and iVolunteer immensely for giving us the space! Even now I guess there are a lot of toys lying around at their office :-)

We are now looking for active volunteers in Bangalore and also a couple of coordinators who would arrange toy collection drives/ toy gift wrapping sessions and toy distribution events.

If you are interested to coordinate or volunteer for Toybank Bangalore, please write to us on mail-bangalore@toybank.co.in

Also volunteers interested in volunteering for Toybank Pune, please do write to us for volunteering opportunities and any queries at toybank-pune@toybank.co.in

Be the reason behind their smile.

To 'a happy beginning'

Yeah...finally am back! That was indeed a long break, completely away from the world of blogging.

But the bestest things happened to me in this long break. Many of the questions that haunted me a year ago have now been answered. Not by someone else but by 'myself'.

Though to a large extent still the way the world works wrt to marriage continues to be ridiculous, I answered few of those questions and I am so happy I answered them at the right time.

Enter 'Kunal Dua'. Into a life which was wondering what was going to happen in the years to come. In over a year and a half he was given a challenge of performing various roles. He has so far tried his hands at being a good friend at work- to being my love - and then currently he's doing the toughest job he would've ever done - being my husband :).

I am glad I met the 'right' person at the 'right' time.