In the months of January and February, the PTA Community Outreach Sub Committee undertook and/ or supported the following initiatives.
MCOP – Fun Day
Every year the DP kids organize a special fun day for children of the MBIS Support Staff. This year it was held on Sunday, 22 Jan 2017. Around 80 children under the age of 16 took part.The whole event was planned and executed by the DP students. The PTA Community Outreach Sub Committee supported the event by sponsoring return gifts, which were vouchers from the stationery store Venus Traders from where the children can purchase their school supplies.
Snehalaya – Wheelchairs for Children
The Leveraged Freedom Chair is an off-road sports chair designed by Amos Winters for the developed world .The chair won first place at the MIT IDEAS Global Challenge, won a Wall Street Journal 2010 Technology Innovation Award, won an award at the 2012 MassChallenge and the Patents for Humanity award in 2015.
After obtaining approval from the PTA, we procured 3 Leveraged Freedom Chairs for the children of Snehalaya. On Saturday 4th Feb, a few reps from the PTA, teachers and students went to Snehalaya. A special performance was put up for us. Mr Hector, Secondary School Principal cut the ribbon and handed over the chairs.
Medical Camp
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s part of the Community Outreach initiative of the PTA, we organized free medical camps at 2 schools. One at Peepal Tree School in Pimple Nilakh and the other at the Dr. Hermann Gmeiner Center in Shivajinagar on the 8th and 9th of Feb 2017.
The planning, organization and execution was done by Dr. Rajni Chattaraj, Aparna Joshi and Dr. Dimple Chheda. Dr. Rajni coordinated all the technical aspects of the camp and Aparna and Dimple were the contact persons for coordination with the schools.
At the Peepal Tree School, eye and dental checkups of about 80 children from the ages of 4 -10 was done and at the Herman Gmeiner
Center, 50 children between the ages of 6 – 17 took the benefit of eye, dental check up and basic blood tests.
A talk on general Health, dental hygiene was presented. At both camps the PTA Community Outreach Sub Committee gave out a basic dental hygiene kit consisting of a toothbrush and toothpaste along with some goodies.
The team has evaluated the reports and have presented a summary of the cases that need further investigations for Thalassemia, Dental interventions and refraction tests. A decision was made in the last PTA meeting to further support these cases that need interventions.
Many parent volunteers from the PTA, Ms. Bijoya Dhall, Ms. Shivani Satpute, Ms. Amruta Ujjainkar and Ms. Rita Jain assisted with the camp. The Eye checks was conducted by a MBIS parent, Dr. Sapna Kotwaliwale.
ResQ
ResQ is a not-for-profit organization that works towards the rescue and rehabilitation of sick and injured animals. The PTA decided to support ResQ by buying some non-consumable items for them.
Ms. Dipti Divekar along with Ms. Rita Jain liaised with ResQ to donate a much needed ‘large animal Trevis’. The Trevis was delivered to ResQ’s site on 13th Feb. Some members of the Community Outreach Sub Committee along with some MBIS students went to ResQ on 17th Feb to hand it over to them. Anya Divekar, an MYP5 student who has been working with ResQ for her personal project, cut the ribbon and handed over the Trevis to them.
The team carried treats of carrots, cucumbers, biscuits and yogurt for the animals at ResQ. They encountered some grumpy cats, Persian furballShamSher, two young bulls – one called Pepsi and the other Cola. Kids interacted with the 21 beagles which were recently rescued and put up for adoption.