Movie day, we watched 'Iqbal'

I was supposed to post this a little earlier, however, its never too late for an update.

We watched the movie 'Iqbal' In the second interaction we had with the local youth (early August), we screened the movie Iqbal and followed it up with discussions on career aspirations and the determination of the title character in the movie who rises from a very ordinary background to overcome all odds to achieve his aim of being a national cricket player. Qualities such as will power, discipline, practice, belief, talent and persistence were discussed. The importance of support was also discussed, in the case of the coach of the main character, as well as his sister and mother.
Many young people also talked about role models from the current cricket team such as Ishan Sharma, Pravin Kumar, Irfan and Yusuf Pathan, some of whom are from very modest backgrounds, and yet today they have become national level cricket players.

In the same session, we had also invited a guest speaker to share his experiences of working in the BPO industry. He had a discussion with the young people on skills and expertise required for accessing jobs in that sector. We also circulated a questionnaire asking the youth to list what are the other careers they are keen to know about, so that we can call relevant professionals for such career awareness sessions in future.

In this month (August 2009) itself, I have identified a space for establishing the classroom where I would like to conduct the learning modules. It is a modest space, but it should be appropriate for right now. I am in the process of establishing the facility, basically organizing the infrastructure required (furniture, fixtures, renovation, computers, softwares etc. ) and hope that the place will be ready by end August in order to enable me to begin classes from September 2009.

CYC friends in my backyard

The beginning of the month came with a pleasant surprise. As most of you don't know, Rajpur has been getting endless buckets of rain, making the place extremely damp and moldy. It was one of these 'raining like cats and dogs' days when I drove past the famous 'Haathi ka dukaan' tea stall (which apparently is decorated by ITC) located in the Shahenshah Ashram area. I waved "Namaste" to Sunil the owner and then I heard someone shout "Joshua!" and there sitting on wooden benches, sipping hot chai and eating bun omelette's were Afaq and Prakash. (Afaq had mentioned something about coming to Dehradun, but I didn't know it was this soon)

Now that I think of this unexpected rendezvous, I was again 'driving' on Rajpur road when I thought I recognized a face. As I turned the car around to pursue my curiousity, I shouted, "Sangeeta!" Oh! well, she didn't hear me, so I stopped the car and ran towards her, and guess what? It was Sangeeta Maurya! We exchanged greetings and tried to meet up later, but Sangeeta had to catch a ride back to Udhamsinghnagar.

Afaq and Prakash were attending a conference. We had dinner together and the next day I invited them for breakfast at my house and we caught up, discussed our CYC plans and enjoyed each others company. They saw some of my work before heading out to Delhi

Here are some pics!