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Thursday, July 09, 2009

Dream Stories - Balamandira Batch (6/7/2009)

The children at BalaMandira boys home are served early dinners everyday and they get nothing to eat until the next day's breakfast which is about 13 hours away. On this particular evening there were some donors sponsoring a special meal for the children. So the children from the football batch were asked to leave the session and join the dinner party. To our surprise the boys refused to leave the ground and were willing to forgo the special dinner. Knowing that this would mean they will go hungry until next day morning, we staff insisted that the children go have their dinner. But the children just refused to move. We cajoled, reasoned and tried to put on a harsh tone but nothing worked. "We don’t care about the special dinner or going hungry, we rather play football and the refreshments you serve will do for today", they said. We had no choice but to let them continue the game.



A social-worker needs constant reassuring that her work is meaningful. How do we know if what we believe about our programmes and their usefulness are actually true? How do we know if the children are really enjoying our sessions and not present out of compulsion? The above incident to me was very reassuring of the work I am doing. It showed how much our sessions mean to the children and that our work there is meaningful. Luckily, the football children's dinner was set aside and they didn't have to miss their special dinner either.

At the same session there was another touching dream story. The Balamandira ground does not have goalposts. Two 5-inches cones or some stones act as the goalpost during our games. So every time there is a close goal scored the two teams start arguing and the referee's decision too fails to convince them. The same thing was repeated on this day too when a close goal was scored. The coach could not decide because he was far from the goal and didn't get a good view. The children were having an arguement with both teams convinced they were right. That is when the coach asked one child, Annamalai, who was close to the goal to decide. Even though the goal was scored against his team, he honestly declared that it was a goal. It was not astonishing that he was honest about the goal call. What was astonishing was what followed. Every single member on the ground accepted the decision without even the slightest of complaints. I understood that for the children Annamalai is honesty personified. Someone on whom the coach relies to get the honest answer. Someone whose decision is completed accepted by the other children. And I would like to believe the Dream sports programme is helping children bring such inner qualities to the fore. "

Rakesh, Dream a Dream Staff