The Bay Area successfully organized the Dream Mile in June this year. Hats off to the participants, the volunteers and the sponsors for another Herculean effort at raising much needed funds for Vibha’s deserving projects.
All good things come in small packages and the Sacramento Action Center which is small in size but big in intention also organized the Dream Mile for the first time this year. Associated with the Bay Area Dream Mile was the innovative project, ‘My New Red Shoes’.
Learn how Vibha is helping to transform public education in India. Read about all of these in this month’s Xpressions.
Dream Mile 2008
Starting On The Right Foot
This year's local beneficiary of Vibha Bay Area's Dream Mile was My New Red Shoes. My New Red Shoes is an organization with a mission to empower homeless and very low-income youth to succeed in school by providing them with brand new clothing and shoes. The goal is to help these youngsters start the important, first day of school with pride. Since 2006, My New Red Shoes has dressed over 950 underprivileged children for success on their first day of school. This year, the hope is to dress around 1500 children. Many other Vibha Action Centers organizing The Dream Mile this year plan to donate part of the proceeds to charity organizations that benefit local children like My New Red Shoes .
Vibha Bay Area has committed to donating part of the Dream Mile 2008 proceeds towards this worthy goal. Vibha also hosted a shoe donation drive at the Dream mile event to support the cause. Volunteers and runners donated new pair of shoes to help the kids begin a new school year on the right foot. Every July, My New Red Shoes packs hundreds of gift bags with brand new shoes and gift cards from major retailers. These gift bags are distributed to over 25 local shelters to give these disadvantaged children the opportunity to greet their school year with pride. Vibha volunteers will also help with packing these gift bags. These efforts are in line with Vibha’s long standing tradition of giving back to the local community.
The Dream Mile 2008: Bay Area
650 registrants; 90 volunteers and 5 months of hard work – these were the ingredients for success for the 2008 Dream Mile in the Bay Area. The prize ? A resounding $45000 gross of which $25000 came from pledges $8000 from sponsorships; $9000 from registrations and donations and the rest from matching contributions from corporates. Impressive statistics for an event that winners completed in 20 to 35 minutes…
The Day of the event started with 5-6 volunteers providing wake up calls to their peers; so that set up could start at 6.00 a.m on schedule. The 8 volunteers at the registration booth worked their magic and managed to sign everybody in, in all of one hour. Fitness club ‘Maximum Core’ got the adrenaline flowing with their warm up exercises and got the walkers and runners pumped up and raring to go.
The customary big breakfast awaited the crowd after the walk/ run- a mouth watering array of South Indian fare sponsored by the Dosai Place, Santa Clara, accompanied by fruits, bagels, sandwiches. What with the swinging music, the pithy and informative emceeing by Preethi Chandrasekhar the carnival games (musical chairs, lemon & spoon) for the 100 or so kids and the Henna, the face painting the raffle goodies and the price distribution, the crowd – participants and volunteers alike had a whale of a time. The morning raced by and the event wrapped up at noon.
Vibha is proud of volunteers Mukesh, Subhash, Sneha, Kamakshi, Swetha, Sunaina and their large and committed team that was able to put together and pull off an event of such great magnitude so smoothly and effortlessly.
We would also love to list the men, women and kids who ran the Dream Mile – you can find them on http://wiki.vibha.org/Dream_Mile_08:Bayarea_Home
This is the second year of the brand The Dream Mile – this year 9 action centers are hosting the Dream Mile, through which Vibha is gaining more and more prominence in the Bay Area and in the rest of the country. Through a common website and consistent marketing and publicity material Vibha hopes to establish this brand in the minds of its target audience so that the commitment to the cause grows by leaps and bounds year after year.
The Sacramento action center deserves a special mention as they carried off their own Dream Mile which in spite of the fact that it coincided with a big ticket race downtown attracted 75 participants and was organized by about a dozen volunteers. This can truly be counted as a success, and it sets the stage for something bigger and greater next year…
Some photographs from The Dream Mile in Sacramento
Improving Public Education
Recently, the New York Times ran an article about the sorry state of government schools in India. The article cites the result of a Pratham survey, ‘Among children in fifth grade, 4 out of 10 could not read text at the second grade level, and 7 out of 10 could not subtract.’ It goes on to lament, ‘Education in the new India has become a crucial marker of inequality.’ Read the full article here.
Many other surveys and articles have pointed to the same issue.
More than 60 years after India’s independence, it is a shame that the quality of public school education is abysmal and does not offer any hope for the children of the poorest of the poor, children who are first generation school-goers in their family. Sure enough, there has been an increase in the government funding in the recent years but the issue is not just with resources. It is a multi-faceted problem that involves corruption and lack of accountability. Recognizing the issue and lamenting about it is only the first step. Devising a solution, however small and implementing it would be the real deal. Teddy Roosevelt once said, “"...the man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere critic- the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly”. And yes, there are doers. The 825-member strong Vibha volunteer community wants to make a difference. The thousands of Vibha patrons want to make a difference. Some of Vibha’s partnering organizations on the ground want to make a difference. Let us look at two such organizations, (1) Gandhian organization for Rural Development (GORD) in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh and the Sivastri Charitable Trust in Karnataka.
GORD approached Vibha in 2003 for funds to build a compound wall in the government school in Mulakalacheruvu in Andhra Pradesh. This grew into a longstanding relationship. GORD has a practical and participatory approach to enhance the quality of the schools that will result in the reducing the drop out rates of children. By providing supplemental teachers, lab equipment, sports equipment, computer education, and the minimal facilities (toilets, water), and by taking the students on excursions the organization is bringing the excitement back to the school. Upon the request of the District Education Officer (a senior state government official), training is provided to teachers and students from nearby schools as well. GORD is an excellent example of bringing the public schools from the depths of despair back to centers of learning and excitement.
The Sikshana project coordinated by the Sivasri Charitable Trust in Karnataka is yet another example of non-governmental organizations working hand in hand with the government to improve public education. Sikshana started out by adopting three public schools in 2002 and as of January 2008, over 10,000 children are covered via 36 public schools. Using structured problem solving methods Sikshana has created a cost effective solution to address the shortcomings of individual schools, by spending about $12 per child per year to augment the government expense of $130 per child per year. Vibha's involvement currently is at 11 of these public schools, where the entire funding for the development programs is taken care of by Vibha.
To learn more about GORD and Sikshana, write to projects@vibha.org
Your feedback is important to us. Vibha welcomes any comments, suggestions or questions you may have about our projects, programs, products, monitoring etc. If you are particularly interested in a topic and would like to see Vibha showcase it please let us know.
Together, we can do much more!
Dream a Little! Do a Little!
Vibha 1030 E El Camino Real, #424 Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Phone: 408-997-9992 | Fax: 775-593-1061
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