Newsletter

Dear Friend,

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year and Happy Makara Sankranti. There is a very beautiful article in this Newsletter and we strongly feel that every parent must take out 2-3 mins of their time to share it with their children. We are sure it will have a huge impact if conveyed properly to the children. Please do spare this time in the interest of the children.

We are extremely grateful to Ms. Shubhadra Vedula for helping us out bring out this newsletter so meticulously quarter after quarter.

Team Unnati

Volume 1: January – March 2014 | http://www.unnatiblr.org

WELCOME NOTE

Team Unnati wishes all its friends, patrons, well- wishers a very happy and prosperous new year.While the new year comes with lots of hope, anticipation and expectations for a bright future, the passing year leaves us with a sense of achievement, accomplishment and success. The new year means a fresh start, looking for new activities, resolutions and happiness. That brings us to the question “what is happiness?”.

A 9 Year Boy went to an ICE CREAM shop.

Waiter : What do you want?

Boy : How much does a cone ice cream cost?

Waiter : Rs.15/-

The boy checks his pocket and asks the cost of a small cone ?

Irritated Waiter angrily says Rs.12/-

Boy orders a small cone, has it, pays the bill and leaves

When the waiter comes to pick the EMPTY PLATE, tears roll down from his eyes.

The boy had left Rs.3 as tip for him.

Moral of the story is “MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY WITH SOMETHING YOU HAVE”. That’s the real secret of happiness in Life..

With that note we wish you all a very Happy New year once again. May you have loads of fun, happiness, health, wealth and success in the year 2014.

” Maturity is not measured by age, it is an attitude built by experience”

Editorial:

Maturity is the ability to think, speak and act your feelings within the bounds of dignity. The measure of your maturity is how spiritual you become living in the midst of your frustrations- Samuel Ullman..

Maturity is a virtue that is very rare to find in today’s times. With the definitions and boundaries of values, morals and ethics getting blurred by the day it is very difficult to dwell on what is right and what is not. Changing outlooks towards money, hard work and having the right attitude seem to be challenging. Our age old philosophy has been to work, earn and enjoy the fruits of the earning. Maturity is one important trait which helps us to stay grounded, understand the different aspects of life with a wholesome perspective and enjoy the success of our labour.

Maturity is achieved when a person postpones immediate pleasures for long-term values said Joshua L. Leibman, a very famous American author. It is an age agnostic virtue that begins to grow where you can sense your concern for others outweighing your concern for yourself.

A recent anecdote shared by Ms. Maithili Basrur ‘in her own words’ goes like this:

“One day, my mother and I, were travelling in the local train in Mumbai. We saw two small kids got into the compartment, one of them looked like he was from a decent middle class family in a neat school uniform, clean school shoes, neatly combed hair and a cool school bag whereas the other small boy who looked younger than the other boy, was dressed in a shabby school uniform fitting his thin and lanky structure, rubber slippers, oiled hair and a tattered school bag on his little shoulders

The well dressed boy was standing in the corridor of the train and jumping around here and there whereas the other small boy came and sat beside my mother. After sometime, the little boy beside my mother started feeling sleepy, started doxing off despite his efforts to stay awake.

My mother felt very bad for the poor little kid and asked him, “What happened child, you are feeling sleepy? Tired of attending lectures in school? Which standard are you in?”

To that the child replied, “No aunty, nothing like that. I love to attend school. I am in the 5th standard and I study in the municipality school. This other boy with me is in the 6th standard and he studies in a very good school nearby my school. My father is a laborer, who works at construction sites and my mother is a house maid. She does house chores of washing utensils, clothes, mopping and cleaning to earn a living.

My father doesn’t have a steady income and my mother works hard to earn a living. My mother has told me that I have grown up now and I must also help the family in some way or the other to earn a living. I stay in a hutment and there are many such hutments around my house. We get water in our locality from 12:30 am in the night to 5:30 am in the morning. After that we don’t have water for the entire day.

People usually fill and store the water to utilize it for the entire day but they have to sit overnight to do that work. So I do that work for them. I sit overnight from 12:30 am to 5:30 am in the morning and fill water in buckets and other storage containers in many houses. I get paid 50 rupees per month for each house. Like that, I fill water for nearly 30 houses every night. Also, this boy with me is the son of a person where my mother works as a house maid. I drop him to his school and pick him up every day as his school is near to mine and the timings are also the same. His mother pays me 200 rupees a month. In this way I help my parents in a small way. I didn’t get proper sleep yesterday night that’s why I was dozing off”.

My mother asked, “So when do you study and do your home work? When do you sleep?”

The little boy replied, “I sleep after 5:30 am till about 8:00 am. My school timings are from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm so I go home and sleep for 2-3 hours and I finish my homework and studies after that. My mother feels bad for me because I get tired but I told her that my school teacher says fruits of hard work are always sweet.”

Hearing this all the people sitting around us were dumbstruck. We all were astounded looking at the maturity and sense of responsibility of a 5th grade boy. Our hearts melted. My mother gave him 2 oranges from her bag which she carried for us to eat and some people who were sitting around us gave him some money. Looking at this, the boy panicked saying, “No!!! I don’t want money! My mother will beat me up and think that I might have begged in the train. She will ask me where all this money came from and also my dad will get angry with me! I don’t want any money or anything please. My mother has told me, no matter whatever the situation, we will never beg but will earn money only through efforts and hard work. ” Saying so, he did not even touch the money which the ladies were giving him but since my mom insisted that he must take the oranges, he took them with a big smile and thanking us got down at his stop.

That boy left a permanent memory in my heart. The maturity and sense of responsibility demonstrated by the 10 years old is hard to find in grown-ups. Someone has truly said maturity is a high price to pay for growing up and has no age. Maturity may be shown by some people because of life events/consequences, some may display it after years of preaching, bur for some like our young friend here life creates certain situations for them to grow up quickly.

In today’s times it is hard to find satisfaction and contentment and people like these stand really tall with their virtues and attitude. Indeed, such small incidents teach us so many different things and we truly learn so much from them…

We at Unnati would welcome such youngsters and in turn help them grow into successful adults in society….

” Maturity is the ability to reap without apology and not complain when things don’t go well ” – Jim Rohn

Events at UNNATI:

1. Invitation from IICA:

Unnati was identified as one of the training centers in the South by the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs(IICA), Manesar, Delhi for imparting training for CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). Four of our team members (Mr.Ranga, Mr.Padmanabhan, MsGirija& Ms Anitha) underwent the screening process for trainers.

Program

2. Finishing school training:

30 students of Kauvery College of Arts and Science ,Gonikoppal underwent a month long intensive ‘finishing School’. Skills such as Basics in computer & internet applications, Spoken English, Life skills were handled in detail. College management evinced keen interest in the program. At the end of the course the students as well as the management expressed their satisfaction that the course was able to bring in change in their attitude significantly. The management wanted Unnati to conduct more such programs at regular intervals, which is under our consideration.

3. Training for ‘Ground Strokes’- Tennis coaching Academy 7 tennis coaches of this company were sent to Unnati for training in Life skills & Spoken English, from 11th Nov 13 to 12th Dec 13. The participants were happy to have undergone the training and Unnati noticed a visible change in them.

4. Life Skills Training:

14 participants from different replication centres of Unnati including volunteers from Bangalore participated in 5 days TOT programme which includes English and Life Skills, which was conducted by Mr.Ranga and Mrs.Kanthimathi.

5. Participation in Nasscom Foundation Meeting:

NASSCOM Foundation along with IBM’s Corporate Citizenship program organised a one day Conclave on ‘Evolving Employee Engagement: Key game changer for driving CSR’ at Hotel Leela Palace on 17th December 2013. The event was designed to celebrate the spirit of volunteering and how volunteering has a key role to play in Employee Engagement. Ms.Madhuri K.V and Ms. Lakshmi represented Unnati in the meeting.

6. Intership:

Mr.Farrid from Germany was with Unnati as ‘intern’ for a period of 3 months. During his internship, he significantly contributed his time in various areas such as shooting videos of various vocations to promoteUnnati, general administration, training, developing of website, etc.

7. Leadership Workshop: As usual 40th& 41st batch students of Unnati underwent a day’s leadership workshop conducted by Mr.Shashidhar of Rotary club.

8. Additional curriculum: Tally has been added to the existing curriculum of Admin Assistant students for better employment opportunities.

9. Practicals for students:

It is well known that as part of skill training, students of Unnati work in malls, hotels during weekend, to know the practical aspects of work. Towards this Total Mall (one of the malls where our students go for on-job training) has been conducting one day orientation for the students on various Sales Techniques.

10. Out reach activity – Participation in KaushalyaMela:

Mr.Ramachandra, our volunteer created awareness regarding various vocational training courses available at Unnati for underprivileged youth that gathered at KaushalyaMela on 24th November, organized by The red compass public charitable trust along with Streejagritisamhiti.

” To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity. ” – William Arthur Ward

Placement Record

All the students from this batch have been placed with 100% placements. The details of the placement are as follows:

Shoppers Stop, Mr Soup & Mrs. Salad, First Source, HGS, Fun Dreamz, TTK, Shell, Aubon Pain, Fasoos, Safe Harvest, Bilent, Vatsalya Foods pvt ltd, Khivraj Motors, Cycler City, Fubrit Online Solutions Pvt Ltd, Fortune, Pan India, St. Marks hotel, Manipal County, Katherine’s Gallery, Miracle Touch Beauty parlour, etc.

We are grateful to all the corporates who have stretched their support in placement of our candidates.

” Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension. ” – Joshua L. Liebman

Teacher/Volunteer’s Corner

Name: Poornima, M.Sc

Poornima was inducted into Unnati as a Public relations executive as Unnati required better publicity and visibility. With her penchant for meeting people and connecting them and her great interest in photography, she fitted the bill and a new ‘era’ was born at Unnati where due to her relentless efforts, Unnati started getting a lot of publicity in both print and electronic media. Her contribution during the ‘UTSAV’ programme (Gokulashtami concerts) has been immense. She has been instrumental in increasing the web presence of Unnati through social network. .

Poornima is an avid blogger and a free lance writer too. Her favourite hobby is to chase butterflies in the wild. Unnati wishes her well.

” I guess real maturity, which most of us never achieve, is when you realize that you’re not the center of the universe. ” – Katherine Paterson

Name: K.V.Madhuri: M.Sc. Applied psychology, PGDHRM

Madhuri has been with UNNATI since Apri.2012 as CENTRE MANAGER. Having years of rich experience behind her, she naturally fitted the role. During her stewardship, Unnati climbed great heights – be it student strength or her admin abilities. She brought in several welcome changes and streamlined the administration. She took additional responsibilities not because Unnati imposed on her but because she genuinely cared and her great commitment made her do that. No doubt very soon, she became very popular with the staff. Being Tech savy, she quietly made inroads to adopt technology as a tool for better work culture. This made her more efficient and effective. She is an asset to Unnati. Unnati wishes her all the best in her future endeavours.

” You become mature when you become the authority of your own life ” – Anonymous

Students speak Name : Ramana Gowda Batch : 40th Batch

Ramana Gowda. T, an Unnati student, hails from a poor family from Krishnapuram near Bellary.He is a specially abled youth. Despite his great financial and physical problems, he could complete PUC, after which he thought he should earn a living. But he could not get a job as he is specially challenged. He started losing hopes. Ramana says, “at one point of time I wanted to commit suicide as I thought I will be a burden to the people around me. No one respected me. I was unwanted. At this point of time, my friend Ganga , an old student of Unnati, of the 40th batch told me about Unnati. Initially, I did not believe. Though I came to Unnati for interview (admission), I was not sure whether I wll be given admission. Unnati with open arms accepted me and has given me an opportunity to pursue training”.

“First week at Unnati was difficult for me to adjust to the environment. Later, as the classes started I became more interested. First thing I liked about Unnati was that all the teachers motivated me and gave me confidence that I can do things like a normal child. I was very weak in English, now I am picking up slowly and showing improvement. He says, “I have improved my life style”. Now I feel I should live longer and prove to the world that even I can do things like other normal children”. ” Before joining Unnati I was lazy but now I have become very active. Life Skills has taught me the value of life and the importance of living. Ramana says” Unnati has given me confidence to live and to stand on my own feet. Unnati has given me a 2nd life to live. I will definitely take up a job through Unnati and make my own living”.

student

Name : Deepika. J. E Age :18 years Batch :41st Batch

Deepika hails from Chikmagalur District. She has seen her mother’s struggle as a bread winner despite her poor health, as father has been alcoholic and was never of much of help. She could not continue beyond her SSLC due to utmost poverty. When she learnt about Unnati through one of her friends, she joined Unnati with intention of getting self employed. One of the milestones according to her after coming to Unnati is ” she overcame the fear of talking to people, and is now able to take responsibility and take rational decisions”. She wants to become an entrepreneur by starting her own beauty parlor. She wants to earn money to support her mother and is confident about meeting / achieving her goal in life. She thanks unnati for all the support /guidance they have given to make her stand on her own feet and become independent in life”. She says ” staff are very friendly, supportive ,motivating which made me a positive person”. She says ” Unnati is a stepping stone to success”.

” Youth is not immortality, more than anything, youth is the power to make choices. “.

Reminiscences

Valediction:

Valediction for 40th Batch students happened on 23rd Nov 2013. Mr.Chinnappa, President-Kauvery College of Arts & Commerce, Gonikoppal was one of the Guests of honour along with others Mr.Ramana. G.K (Retail Volunteer Faculty from inception – Former all India sales & trainer for Brookebond), Mr.FaridDarraji (Cultural Scientist, Film Maker volunteer from Germany), Mr Jagannath (Area Manager, Operations, Aditya Birla) , Mr Uma Shankar Shenava (Philanthropist from Mumbai), Mr YashodeepDeodhar from Derrick Petroleum and Mr.Anjan Kumar from Alcatel Lucent . They lauded the achievements of Unnati towards the underprivileged section of the society. Mr Ramesh Swamy, lead trustee briefly explained the activities and future plans in expansion.

It is worthwhile to note that this batch is the largest batch in terms of number of students with 166 students passing out.

” Maturity is perseverance, the ability to sweat out a project or a situation in spite of heavy opposition and discouraging set-backs. ” – Anonymous