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!!