Bhubaneswar: Bakul Foundation kicked off its Daan Utsav celebrations today with a big bang despite the heavy rain on Sunday. About 400 volunteers and over 2500 children from about 50 slums braved the rains and celebrated the Day of Service with story creation and storytelling activities, craft sessions and games.
Daan Utsav, earlier called the Joy of Giving Week, is a festival like any of our other festivals, such as Durga Puja, Ganesh Puja or Eid. Like these other festivals, anyone can celebrate it individually or at home or the community or at school or college. Similarly, no organisation owns the festival. The festival has become popular through celebrations by different individuals and organisations. People have celebrated giving in this festival by donating or mobilising donations in the form of material such as old and new clothes, books, toys or money for charities or spreading joy through simple acts of service. Bakul Foundation, which started in 2007 to demonstrate the power of volunteerism and small individual contributions, has, therefore, been celebrating Daan Utsav in a big way every year.
The Day of Service has always been Bakul’s inaugural event to celebrate Daan Utsav, and Bakul follows it up with other initiatives like book collection drives to set up libraries, a full buffet meal at Barbeque Nation for children from slums as a reward for reading at the library.
Daan Utsav is typically celebrated from 2nd to 8th October, and Bakul typically celebrates the Day of Service on 2nd October. This year, however, because Dussehra also falls on 2nd October, and children in the slums would also leave for their villages during the puja vacation, Bakul celebrated the Daan Utsav a little earlier.
Shruti Kanungo, who has been coordinating the event for the last few years, said, “The rains did affect the activities, and we had about 100 volunteers and 1000 children, who did not turn up because of the rains, and we had to cancel activities in 2 slums because it was not possible to do it there. But the volunteers were not ready to give up.”
Payal Mishra, a young 19-year-old volunteer and coordinator of a group, said that she was almost on the verge of crying while pleading for activities to happen in one of those slums. And all the volunteers and children had a great time.
A big impact of these days of the service has been the initiation into volunteering of many young people, including high school children. Another 19-year-old volunteer, Sreyan, had volunteered for the first time in the Day of Service last year. This year, he was a coordinator of a group of volunteers at Nandini Palli Slum opposite Kalinga Stadium. Seeing the conditions in the slums in the rain was an eye-opener for many of these middle-class volunteers. As Sreyan said, “It is difficult to imagine that people live in such conditions in the heart of Bhubaneswar in rich neighbourhoods.”
He also got an insight into how individuals can change the lives of people in the slums. He was inspired by the story of how Nandini Palli got its name from the former Chief Minister, Nandini Satpathy, who had first given them land and a local teacher, Mir Khan, who has done yeomen service for the community and facilitated Bakul’s activities.
Soumendra Priyadarshi, Additional DG of Police, joined the Day of Service at the Bakul Library and motivated the children and the volunteers to develop the reading habit. He said he was inspired by how Bakul engages young people for volunteering and said that it was the best leadership training one could give them, in addition to developing empathy for everyone.
