Today we held the fourth day of our ongoing educational programme. As Nivedita explained, we wanted to capitalize on the work we had done in our last visit to Ramavaram, where we had the children draw pictures of what they wanted to be when they grew up. We thought this would be a good idea to explain to them what people did in various careers, so as to inspire them to think big and to be positive. Some of the kids drew about doctors, and since most of us are medical students, we thought this would be a good place to start.
The day got off to a good start. One thing I have noticed is that it is taking less and less time to get the children organized into a group and they are more attentive. I chalk this up to the fact that we have been able to come regularly over the past month and the kids are getting more used to the format of our programme. We started off with Dr. Thinesh explaining to the children what doctors do. Our goals here were twofold. One aspect of it was that children are very afraid of doctors, and we wanted to do our best to get rid of this fear so that kids wouldn’t be afraid to go to a doctor when they get sick. The second aspect was to raise interest in the profession so that some of them might hope to accomplish it themselves. The kids were very involved in this and they had a lot of fun participating in this programme. Some of them explained to us what we should do to stay healthy and to avoid seeing a doctor.
The highlight of the day, for the kids at least, was a chance to wear a lab coat, pretend to be a doctor, at least for a few minutes, and to listen to heart sounds on a stethoscope. This was a wonderful idea by Dr. Thinesh and they kids had a lot of fun learning how to pronounce ‘stethoscope’ (which was quite a challenge) and using it to listen to the heart sounds of me and Nivedita. We had them learn that the sounds came from the heart, and where the heart was in the body. The kids were very excited about this – many of them wanted to try it for a second time. I had a lot of fun teaching the kids and they loved being called ‘Dr.’
After some of the kids tried auscultating, we had them all sit back down again for the second part of our programme. Nazneen and Vandhana did a teamworking lesson with all the kids. We handed each of the kids a small piece of straw from a broom. We discussed with them how when the sticks are held separately, they are quickly broken; but when combined together, they become impossible to break. Nazneen told them a wonderful story to accompany this about teamwork and we had one of the children stand up afterwards to explain what he had learned to the rest of the group. It was wonderful to hear their ideas about how to help people. Some of the children volunteered that it was important to give water to the thirsty, help people who got injured, and to help blind people cross the street.
This concluded our programme for the day. The children who didn’t get a chance to auscultate did so after we had finished; and others got a chance to hit the cricket ball. The emphasis for today’s programme was on positive thinking, health education, and teamwork. We really hope that some of the kids were able to gain something in that direction.
Thanks a lot to everyone for coming out and participating with the programme, and we hope to follow up with another day next week!
Click here to view the rest of the photos from this event.
On yet another note – thanks to the 400 people who’ve joined our facebook group!
