Tuesday, February 7, 2012

The Family Behind EKATVA - Part 2: Nilamben

Wonderful Big Sister - Nilamben

You can see the spirit of paying back to the community alive in her and being put into practice each day through her work. As a young child, she always dreamt of joining the army and serving her motherland. With her family not being supportive enough to her aspirations she took up teaching.

She has been a Teacher to 1st through 4th graders of the Balsanskar project and 5th to 7th graders of the Ashramshala Residential School based in the Gandhi Ashram for over 2 and half years. She has introduced creative methods of teaching and is currently designing the Value-based/Education curriculum for all Manav Sadhna education projects.

Being a constant learner, with a quest to recognize her inner potential, she always tries to grow through her involvement in various projects. Presently she is actively involved with ‘Swagyan’(self understanding) project, an experiment in alternative education initiated by Stanford University in collaboration with Manav Sadhna.

In EKATVA, her caring and consistent support has created a healthy developmental environment for the EKATVA kids. She understands the behavioral changes our kids are going through with the onset of puberty and sensibly handles issues related to it. She manages and supports all of their educational needs including having personal relationships with all of their teachers and principals. When on tour she personally prepares study schedules for all the kids wisely managing their time so their academics do not suffer.

She has proved to be an amazing, multi-tasking bask stage specialist as well as  'wardrobe supervisor’ maintaining all costumes and jewelry, ensuring their proper labeling, storage, laundry and dry cleaning between performances. Along with Naynaben, she is the main backstage support for the 8 girls in the show - A challenging task when 8 girls are changing costumes back and forth for a 90-minute non-stop show.

2 comments:

  1. And she's one of the most wonderful gals you will ever meet! Miss my little sis!

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  2. Awesome job, Nilamben !
    Would like to come and assist sometime....

    ReplyDelete