Longest Meeting of YATN

Yesterday was the longest meeting ever of YATN. The agenda of discussion was the final draft of MoA of YATN. Gagan, Danish, Hitesh and Nitish had volunteered to formulate the MoA and did the job very well. The entire idea of registering as a society is a very big leap for YATN. We had begun as a small group who went to interact with the kids of IISERm labors' and we realise by number of people interested in YATN that it is much more that that.

The best part of the entire effort is that now we have been able to mobilize a lot more IISERM students into the effort. Now we are a group which has all MS, PhD and faculty of IISER - all performing different activities of YATN and contributing to the cause. It has become a community effort.

Due to the efforts of IISER students and Yatn kids (read the Ravinder story!), we have been able to convince the school Sikhya to begin special classes for age inappropriate students. By the first week of May, about 50 of our kids will be going to school (many of them for the very first time!!:-)).

This raises many other responsibilities. We have to ensure that their going to school goes on. It is very easy for the students to get disinterested if the school teacher scolds them. This is very common and I have been called by the school many times to ensure that the kids dress, bathe, brush their teeth before coming to school. Some of our kids were cleaned and bathed in school. This was so embarrassing for them that they did not go to school the next day :-(. These are very small problems compared too the ones we have overcome as a group and I think we need to seriously think about ways to solve the problem.

It is important that all of us realise that for most of the kids, we are the motivation to go to school. Their parents might not think it as important and a yatn kid might even stay at home and look after the young/cook/fool around. We are the only people who tell them it is important and we need to ensure we keep doing that so that they are encouraged to go to school everyday.

Our YATN is looking concrete now :-)

I hope the ideas with which it was begun are propagated to our junior batches because as Keshav puts it ;-) -

"हम जाने वाले हैं :-("