Round Square International Service Project

King Constantine medal Kareena Shankta

This year DAIS awards King Constantine medal to Kareena Shankta. Every year, the King Constantine award is given to that student who shows exemplary work in service to the community, thus creating a long-lasting impact. Our focus was to look for deserving candidate who demonstrated determination and tenacity to pursue service despite the pandemic.

 

Kareena Shankta's initiative:

 

Kayasha: Kayasha was Kareena Shankta’s first charitable initiative to connect contributors with those who are urgently in need of help, through the emblem of art. Her philosophy was that buying a Kayasha painting helped facilitate a lifeline to people who have no means to support themselves during the crises of the pandemic and droughts and to people in remote and far-flung villages whose only sources of food and incomes had dried out.

 

Before the world was shadowed by this pandemic, her time was consumed by school and swimming. But the onslaught of the lockdown put an end to everything. This inflection point made her delve into the reality around her and it dawned on her that she could use her time to bring about a small change in these tough times: to alleviate the situation of those who were less fortunate. She revived a passion that she had put on the backburner for a while and started painting.

 

 

 

Her objective was to sell these paintings and donate all the proceeds to mitigating hunger and supporting the needy during this extremely difficult period in Chennai, Srinagar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and other states. In Saranda and Latehar districts of Jharkhand, the project managed to sustain food ration for 163 families and 82 families respectively, while 120 families were supported in Medinipore, West Bengal. For her efforts with Kayasha, she was recognised by the Hindustan Times in an article titled “Hues of Kindness.”

 

 

Birsa Munda Service Club: During Kayasha, she had the opportunity to meet the most inspired children from Birsa Munda School in Jharkhand. The school accommodates both residential and day-scholar students. Majority of the children belong to the poverty-struck tribal and Maha-dalit communities of Manika and are taught by teachers who are mostly part of the same community. The school was introduced to her by Dr.Veenapani Seksaria, currently heading the COVID-19 relief project The Shakkar Paara Project. Akash Ranjan, ex-BSF officer and coordinator of the Right to Food and Brother Markose are currently running the school.

 

The school required a dire revamp in terms of extracurricular structure and vocational exposure. The project had 15 DAIS student volunteers conducting 6 activities for a total of 110 kids, namely singing, dancing, storytelling, volleyball, football, and badminton over the virtual platform of Microsoft Teams every Friday between1:30-3:00pm

 

The club not only exposed the young children to numerous opportunities and help them realise their dreams but has also played an integral part in enhancing the communication and leadership skills of DAIS students by giving them exposure to a wider society. Over the summer of 2021, Kareena also conducted a series of online drawing classes and competitions with the children who were staying in the school due to the lockdown. This was not only a creatively enriching experience for the kids but also a steppingstone towards promoting self-sustenance through commercially selling artwork.

 

 

Currently, plans are underway to carry out a donation drive to provide the school with more sporting equipment. Moreover, they are designing a curriculum that promotes self-sustenance such as handicraft and textile making.

 

In an initiative to promote environmental sustainability, the school has been fitted with solar panels and they are conducting monthly collection drives to collect water bottles to create eco-bricks for infrastructure expansion. Finally, to bring the children to the technological platform of the world, the team is trying to donate computers to the school in order to implement coding classes.

 

 

Quote from Veenapani Sekhsaria, project leader of The Shakkar Paara Project and Kareena’s mentor: “Kareena heard stories about the community, the children, and the school and I remember her spending sleepless nights because of a story I had shared. She converted that into something extremely meaningful. She kept saying she wants to be involved with the school”. And I told her, “Kareena you can volunteer and add value.” She went one-step further. She wrote a well-researched proposal and presented it to the teachers at Dhirubhai Ambani International School (DAIS). For the entire academic year, 15 volunteers, under the supervision of their teachers, were involved with the school children of BMHS for 6 activities. This was the transformation of Kayasha into the Birsa Munda Service Initiative – something more sustainable, impactful, and enriching.