Come alive with others on Joy of Giving finale

On October 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and the last day of the Joy of Giving Week, the Social Leadership Programme (SLP) of the Akanksha Foundation and sister organisation, Teach for India, is hoping to shake up the people of Mumbai, urging them to ‘Come Alive’.

Come Alive is a one-day event which invites people from all walks of life to participate in an activity they are deeply passionate about, and share their joy with others. Mansi Shah, manager of the SLP programme, explains, “In our past interactions with diverse groups, we found that strangers are most likely to open up when they share something they deeply care about. The idea for Come Alive sprang from this understanding.”

The activities are based on popular hobbies to ensure maximum participation. Each activity will be led by one child from the Akanksha Social Leadership programme and an Akanksha staff member, and aided by a budget of Rs500. Last year, the cooking team led by Seema Ambokar, a product of the Akanksha teacher fellowship programme, made its way into the by lanes of Dharavi. With the ambitious goal of making vegetable pulao for their team of 20 and the local residents, what seemed like a tough task was made easy by unexpected helping hands. “They gave us big vessels, a place to cook, opened up their water taps for us, and two aunties actually helped us cook the pulao,” says
Ambokar.

“We organised four teams of eight members each, and each team had two girls. Some girls didn’t want to play but we insisted,” laughs Dheeraj Gupta, leader of last year’s football team and another Akanksha teacher. All in all, it was a great day, barring minor injuries and a disputed final result. “I still believe my team won,” quips Dheeraj who will head the sports team this year.

“People should come for this event because on a public holiday there is not much to do, and this is a good way, especially for bachelors living alone, to make new friends,” he says.

Venil Ali, 24, a Teach for India (Akanksha’s sister organisation) fellow led the Random Acts of Kindness team last year. From treating a group of taxi drivers to tea to distributing sweets to street children to feeding biscuits to stray dogs, Venil says the acts were certainly random but pointed to the uniqueness of the Come Alive concept. She adds, “Besides actually giving you a day to come alive, by becoming part of a group, you’re able to do a lot of good things which you’d have shied away from if you were by yourself.”

(With inputs from Apoorva Dutt)