By Girish Kulkarni | Founder, Snehalaya
Since we last wrote to you, many of you have donated as part of the Just Bollywood event in December. The team at Imperial College London Indian Society’s annual inter-university dance competition saw 10 universities battle it out at Queen Mary’s People’s Palace, displaying an amazing range of talent and raising over £5,000 to support our projects. As well as raising funds, the event gave us a unique opportunity to directly engage with the Indian diaspora in the UK and established and emerging talent in the dance world.
Our Snehalaya UK trustees Harshna Karsan and Phil Hudson were able to attend the unforgettable evening sharing information on our projects to the audience and having the honour of announcing the winners. Congratulations and a huge thank you to all taking part.
Our children were also able to participate, submitting their own dance videos as part of the Mini-round competition which they loved taking part in and proved popular with the competitors! We were absolutely thrilled to have been able to take part in such a dazzling, energetic and fun event and are extremely grateful to the organisers and dancers for choosing Snehalaya to support in such an entertaining and unique way.
Donations to events like this and this project are helping young women like Geeta. Geeta lost her father at such a very young age she doesn’t have any memories of him. While her mother was alive, Gita and her sister were supported by their relatives and lived first with their maternal uncle and then with her paternal family. She was still in primary school when her mother also passed away and her relatives stopped supporting the girls. Her grandfather had left home to follow a spiritual calling and so their grandmother was left to care for the sisters alone. The responsibility and financial burden was overwhelming for her and she did not know how she would manage.
When Geeta’s sister also died, things turned from bad to worse and her grandmother who was getting old wanted to find a safe and secure place for Geeta who was now almost 16. They both visited our Rehab Center in 2017, just after Geeta completed her 10th standard, and felt that this was the right place for her. Geeta adjusted well to life in our Home of Love, enrolling in junior college while simultaneously completing our bedside nursing assistant course and joining in with clay art at our Earth Studio. After completing her 12th Standard in arts we helped her to enroll for a degree in social work at a college in our neighbouring district of Beed. Then the Corona pandemic hit and Geeta was forced to return to Snehalaya and continue her studies through online classes and tutorials. At the same time, she also volunteered to help our Snehadhar warden in her daily responsibilities.
On a visit to our community radio, Radio Nagar 90.4FM, she was fascinated by the way the radio jockeys talked and how the songs were broadcast and she loved the way things worked there. As a regular radio listener to she felt that she could also be a radio jockey. She discussed the idea with her hostel warden and some senior staff who readily agreed to give her a go.
Geeta joined the radio team as a full-time intern and she was a fast learner soon getting to grips with all aspects of running a radio station. Geeta says, “I realised that becoming an RJ was not that simple and required a lot of understanding and hard work. I have since learnt how to find information on the net, write scripts and speak like an RJ. This requires a lot of reading and exploring, modulating my voice so that I don’t sound boring and even keeping my talk precise.”
Since joining the station in August, Geeta has developed so many skills and is now independently recording a program which shares information about the latest happenings at Snehalaya. She also gives her voice to social promotions and on 25 October, Geeta broadcast her first live program and was really happy with the way it went. Being a radio jockey work has given Geeta a lot of confidence, and the skills to be independent and move ahead in life. She still aims to complete her BSW followed by a Masters in Social Work, but she is also excited to follow her passion to be a successful radio jockey. With her strong determination we are sure that she will achieve both. Her hope is that she will become financially independent and able to support her grandmother who she still misses a lot.
Thank you so much for chosing to support our inceredible women, it means so much to us all!
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