So what did you get for Christmas this season? For a bunch of kids in the city, their Christmas gifts came straight from the White House.
So what did you get for Christmas this season? For a bunch of kids in the city, their Christmas gifts came straight from the White House.
Their Santa for Christmas was the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama. And the lucky children belonged to Make a Difference (MAD), the NGO that made Michelle Obama dance to their tunes, quite literally.
The gifts arrived via the American Consulate and the first lot was distributed to the children at Fr Agnels’ Ashram, Bandra, on Wednesday. The gift packages included sketch books, subject books (notebooks), colour pencils, markers, glue and magic pens. “We are quite overwhelmed by their generosity. They sent the children a lot of gifts, around 400 in all,” says an excited Tanmay Arora, Mumbai president, MAD.
The 26 children at Fr Agnel’s, who got their gifts after class, were understandably excited. Vicky Ganatra, 14, a Std 7 student, is entranced with the magic pen.
“My friends in school could not believe it when I told them who sent us the gifts,” he says. Similarly the magic pen has found favour with Jhonny David, 13, a Std 5 student. “Everyone in school knows that the first lady sent us gifts now,” he says.
The rest of the kids were excited that there were no ‘study books’ in the lot. “They really loved the gifts, and kept thanking us for them,” said Karthik Reddy, TY computer engineering student and MAD volunteer. The remaining gifts will be distributed to children at the other four centres this weekend. In addition to the gifts, Arora also received a personally signed note from Michelle Obama saying that ‘it was a joy talking and dancing with the kids … all children regardless of circumstances, deserve the same chance to build a successful life’.
Around 33 children from all MAD centres had met Michelle Obama during her visit last year. Besides interacting with the children, Michelle Obama also played hopscotch and danced with them. To celebrate the visit, Maddies Suresh Triveni, Deepan Mankad, Ghopal Krishnan, Kevin Jason Crasta, Shruti Naik and Chandrashekar Parab produced and directed a documentary called One Hell of a Mad life.
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