Bhubaneswar: Bakul Foundation celebrated Daan Utsav today with a Day of Service in which more than 500 volunteers went into 22 slum clusters of Bhubaneswar to spread joy among 3000 children through fun and learning activities such as 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 school or college. Similarly, no organization owns the festival. The festival has become popular through celebrations by different individuals and organizations. People have celebrated giving in this festival by donating or mobilizing donations in the form of material such as old and new clothes, books, toys etc 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, without any institutional funding such as the Day of Service. Bakul’s Day of Service has been an initiation into volunteering for thousands of volunteers in the last 16 years.
Amitabh Thakur, Additional DG of Police, joined the Day of Service at the Bakul Library, and told stories to children about how he captured a notorious gangster much to the curiosity of the children. He also offered to take the children for a tour of the Commissionerate Police office.
Shruti Kanungo, PhD student of Sociology at KIIT University and the Chief Coordinator of the Day of Service said “The objective of the Day of Service is to spread joy among both children and volunteers. I myself started out as a volunteer after my experience in the Day of Service organized by Bakul in 2018, when I was still in school. For the last 5 years now, I have been coordinating the event.”
According to Bishal Mohanty, who has one of the chief organizers for the last 5 years as well, the purpose of the Day of Service was to initiate youth into volunteerism. Many people continue their journey of volunteerism after that. To sensitize the youth to issues faced by people in the slums and by children and the elderly when they go to conduct activities, to bring joyful learning to children through activities around art and craft, storytelling and story creation, and games and creative expressions.
21-year-old Arpita Sahoo, who coordinated at Hatiasuni Slum in Salia Sahi was excited about coordinating her father and her sister, both of whom were volunteering in her group. She said, “It was fun and hilarious to boss my dad around. It felt like a reflection of my childhood while watching my father play with kids. What made it even more special was we had the oldest volunteer in 78-year-old Subha Aunty, our oldest volunteer as well as the youngest, my 14-year-old sister”.
