KYS 2016 – Throwback To The Year Of Many Milestones
Mentor India 1.0
The year started off with Team KYS announcing its Mentor India program. The pilot class was held in January, in a rural government high school in Chikkarasinakere near Maddur in Karnataka, about 100 km from Bangalore. We were successful in getting early support from some volunteer teachers, who have grown to be associated with us as constant Mentors. The pilot lasting more than 30 hours spread across 6 Saturdays ended with a bang, with the world’s fastest speed painter – Vilas Nayak agreeing to join us on our mission and coming to the school to perform for the students. It was a dream come true for all the students to see their hero from the book come to life!
We were soon featured on YourStory, Bangalore Mirror, Janaagraha, Eenadu among other mentions for the steady progress and impact noticed.
Mentor India 2.0
With the printed books in hand and the steadily growing volunteer mentor network, we started off a renewed Mentor India 2.0 at Chikkarasinakere High School with extended hours of new content in the month of July. We also organized a Hackathon in the school to fix the computers in the school’s untouched lab.
On the occasion of Teacher’s Day and Ganesh Chaturthi in September, we inaugurated our first workspace in Banashankari, but we let it go after 3 months, because we thought the money being spent on rent would be more useful when invested in the mission we have set out on. But we also unveiled our new logo on the same day, which we hope you all loved!
November was a very busy month for us. Two SAP teams took up Mentor India and taught more than 250 underprivileged students in two schools run by the HOPE Foundation in Bangalore, as a part of their Month of Service and CSR activity. Team KYS trained the trainers before hand, and the curriculum was successfully delivered to the students by SAP employees. You can read what the SAP employees had to say about their experience mentoring the students with us!
Here’s what one of the first-time volunteers, Jaishree Garg, had to say about her first-time teaching experience. She was so happy, she started a fund-raising campaign of her own and raised more than INR 25,000, which she used to buy sports equipment for the school kids, since the school had none. Ripples like these make all the efforts worth it for us at KYS!
The Mumbai Chapter
New Columns By New Writers
Our readership tripled within a month after we quit our jobs and directed our energy towards KYS full time, and is growing more as we speak, and we couldn’t be more grateful to you all!
KYS is now a 4-member strong dedicated team, with more than 50 volunteers. Inspired by Vinoda Bhave, we believe in Seva (Service) / Ahankar (Ego)= Punya (Good Merit). To attain infinite Punya, we need to maximize Seva and Minimize Ahankar (1/0=infinity), which is the backbone of our actions and initiatives at KYS.
We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year from the entire team of KnowYourStar. We pray that this year awakens among all of us the bug of more service, compassion, kindness and generosity. May this year be the year of giving!
