birthday party...

After a long time, went for the Sunday Breakfast Activity with Aashayein Foundation. Have been wanting to go for quite some time but every Sunday, something or the other (laziness included) used to come up.

Today's venue was a family house tugged into a corner of some unknown street of the city. It houses 30-odd kids. The kids are a mix of orphans, semi-orphans and street-kids whose parents are too poor to have their own house or raise the kids with even the basic provisions. Here, the kids stay together, go to school and are taken good care of. One of the gentlemen of the family that owns the house takes care of the facility and with help and sponsorship from other is somehow running the place. He said there are still a lot of things that are not yet supported. Kids seemed happy and excited to have us among them. We played, chatted, spent some good time at the venue. Two of the volunteers had birthdays in the week. One of the got a big cake and the other sponsored part of the breakfast for today. There was a family among the visitors. A grandmom, mom and the 4-year old young boy. Though initially reluctant, he later participated actively and helped with the breakfast serving. Good to see parents getting their young ones for such events.

The place somehow was not too accommodating about taking too many pictures. In fact, there was an explicit notice on the wall about not clicking unsolicited pictures/videos. I didn't question the request; just waited for the care-taker to come by so that I can get the permission. He requested not to take too many. I didn't question that either. Just snapped a few quick ones and the camera went back into the bag.