Dear All,
Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who made the NSS Youth Festival the fantastic show that it was, and to those who couldn't join us - we missed you!
It was an exciting two days, which opened with everyone from Dr. Lyall, Programme Coordinator NSS to Dr. Usha Rao, Chairperson NSS, saying wonderful things about Pravah :-). The VC, Dr. Dinesh Singh also spoke straight from the heart, and inspite of a tight schedule, stayed on to listen to the guest of honour - Arjun Shekhar, who not just floored the students and teachers, but also the VC equally! Thanks Arjun!
We organised a panel discussion by young leaders - Jayant Singh, and MP, and a friend, Suhail Akram, from the media and of course a former GXr and Pravah intern, and our own Meenakshi Bhanjdeo from PJI. The panel was moderated by Shraddha and Sonal S., who were absolutely excellent. We were told that this was the first time the panel discussion had been so interactive with such a strong audience participation - and truly representative of the youth!
That afternoon we ran parallel sessions facilitated by Ponni (gender), Ravi Gulati (Sustainable Development - Lastasica) and Lokasish (Peace and Conflict). Again these sessions offered something new to the students and each of the sessions had an average of 30-40 participants.
The second day again had a host of parallel activities. The NSS annual debate is a huge attraction for students, and this time, with one of the topics being centered around development programmes, we invited Gopal Jain from Oxfam to be one of the judges. He was around for almost 5 hours and seemed to have enjoyed the debaters. At the other end, we also hosted our mini Music for Harmony, with film screenings, and a host of young musicians, from Manzil, SMILE, and many musician friends. It was a great precursor to our main event on 21st Jan and has hopefully managed to build up enough excitement.
The festival ended with presentations made by various NSS units on their activities through the year. Focus was brought on the 4 colleges that were a part of the NSS-Pravah Pilot Programme and the students did a great job of sharing not just their work, but also their learnings, challenges and celebrations. Their presentations were a testament to how Pravah's interventions supported their learning and action and we hope they were inspiration to many other colleges that were there listening to them.
All in all, what a wonderful two days and a result of real synergy created across Streaming and YI. A big thank you to everyone who has supported the inception and development of the partnership with NSS and of course everyone who made the partnership programme and the NSS Festival what it was. Thank you Meenu, Sonal C., Shraddha, Lokasish, Neha, Sonal S., Pooja, Astha, Shilpa and so many SMILErs for being an integral part of the partnership programme and for making the festival something all of us here, and many from the campus will remember for a long time :-)!
Love
Kanika
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