The club meets fortnightly on Saturdays and is a way to engage the older girls in the home and teach them about leadership, community and team building. Through the club we help the girls to devise and lead a number of fun and useful activities in their local area.
Recently, the club embarked on the ambitious undertaking of cleaning up all of the rubbish in the backyard at Bal Mandir. Bec had introduced them to the concept of an Emu Parade whereby everyone forms a long line and together they comb the area with each person responsible for picking up the rubbish in front of them. The child club decided this was exactly what Bal Mandir needed so they rallied an impressive team of 55 children and even 4 staff members joined in!
If you have visited Nepal and seen the amount of rubbish strewn everywhere you will appreciate the challenge the girls had set themselves. And of course such a program would be futile if the children were not taught to use the rubbish bins placed around the home. So first the girls gave a short talk to the children on the importance of placing rubbish in the bins and taking pride in the appearance of their home. Once everyone agreed and committed to keeping the place tidy, the Emu Parade began.
The children were given gloves and plastic garbage bags and there was a prize for the team who collected the most rubbish. There were lolly wrappers, plastic bags, bricks(!), broken toys, food scraps everywhere but the team collected it all. By the end of the day the yard looked like a new place and the children were rightfully very proud of their achievement.
We visited the home last week and whilst there were a few wrappers lying around the backyard still looked pristine compared with the front area which is like a public park. We are so proud of all the children and especially proud of the girls in the child club who led this fantastic initiative. Hopefully their example will spread to their neighbours and local community and we can see more of this type of activity in the future!
