ADVITYA 2022
Advitya is an organisation and creative centre for those with Down’s syndrome, Autism, Cerebral Palsy, and other conditions. Since the August of 2000, Advitya has aimed to improve the lives of these people by building their confidence through vocational training, providing their families with support and spreading awareness about this cause. All the students of the Advitya family are over 18 years and face challenges such as the inability to interact with large groups of people; so, they require additional individual attention.
Our role, volunteering at Advitya, involves planning weekly sessions to help promote educational learning along with recreation amongst the students at Advitya. The sessions target a variety of skills, including, but not limited to basic mathematics, art, dance, and memory.
Every week we follow a similar process to make sure that we can prepare for and execute our sessions successfully. The sessions are planned 2-3 days in advance so the NGO can make the necessary arrangements and the work is divided so all of us are ready with the necessary resources like PPTs on the day of the session. Although we initially divided work to our strengths, in the second semester we all are trying out new activities and learning new things!
Through our time with Advitya we have been able to conduct different activities of varying complexity with the students. We have played odd or even to build understanding of basic mathematics, guess the animal/person/object and memory games for general skill-building, and hangman for vocabulary. We have also conducted yoga for general wellness, have played antakshari, have had dance sessions, and have done arts and crafts. Possibly our most engaging sessions were the festival themed ones: we celebrated Holi, Christmas, Republic Day, World Disability Day, and Diwali with the students. During these sessions we made festive arts and crafts like Christmas trees for Christmas and pichkaris for Holi, conducted fun themed quizzes like a quiz on freedom fighters and patriotic songs for Republic day, and sang and danced with traditional songs.
Working with the students at Advitya has been an enriching process for all of us and has inculcated important skills such as communication, organisation, adaptability, teamwork, creativity, and planning. Although we did face a few challenges at the beginning with communication gaps and time management, we soon got more comfortable with the students and sessions flowed smoother and were more enjoyable! Reflecting as a group was therefore extremely important and useful for us, especially at the beginning. Through reflection we were able to identify our strengths and weaknesses as well as the activities the students enjoyed, and therefore plan for our next session better. We have loved all the time we’ve spent with our students at Advitya, but for us, the best part has been all the fun we have had dancing, doing crafts, and playing together!
