What are the big stones in your life?

Friends,

We would like to share a very simple yet meaningful story. Hope you enjoy it.

One day, an old professor of the School of Public Management in France, was invited to lecture on the topic of “Efficient Time Management” in front of a group of 15 executive managers representing the largest, most successful companies in America. The lecture was one in a series of 5 lectures conducted in one day, and the old professor was given 1 hr to lecture.

Standing in front of this group of elite managers, who were willing to write down every word that would come out of the famous professor’s mouth, the professor slowly met eyes with each manager, one by one, and finally said, “we are going to conduct an experiment”.

From under the table that stood between the professor and the listeners, the professor pulled out a big glass jar and gently placed it in front of him. Next, he pulled out from under the table a bag of stones, each the size of a tennis ball, and placed the stones one by one in the jar. He did so until there was no room to add another stone in the jar. Lifting his gaze to the managers, the professor asked, “Is the jar full?” The managers replied, “Yes”.

The professor paused for a moment, and replied, “Really?”

Once again, he reached under the table and pulled out a bag full of pebbles. Carefully, the professor poured the pebbles in and slightly rattled the jar, allowing the pebbles to slip through the larger stones, until they settled at the bottom. Again, the professor lifted his gaze to his audience and asked, “Is the jar full?”

At this point, the managers began to understand his intentions. One replied, “apparently not!”

“Correct”, replied the old professor, now pulling out a bag of sand from under the table. Cautiously, the professor poured the sand into the jar. The sand filled up the spaces between the stones and the pebbles.

Yet again, the professor asked, “Is the jar full?”

Without hesitation, the entire group of students replied in unison, “NO!”

“Correct”, replied the professor. And as was expected by the students, the professor reached for the pitcher of water that was on the table, and poured water in the jar until it was absolutely full. The professor now lifted his gaze once again and asked, “What great truth can we surmise from this experiment?”

With his thoughts on the lecture topic, one manager quickly replied, “We learn that as full as our schedules may appear, if we only increase our effort, it is always possible to add more meetings and tasks.”

“No”, replied the professor. The great truth that we can conclude from this experiment is:

If we don’t put all the larger stones in the jar first, we will never be able to fit all of them later.

The auditorium fell silent, as every manager processed the significance of the professor’s words in their entirety.

The old professor continued, “What are the large stones in your life? Health? Family? Friends? Your goals? Doing what you love? Fighting for a Cause? Taking time for yourself?”

What we must remember is that it is most important to include the lager stones in our lives, because if we don’t do so, we are likely to miss out on life altogether. If we give priority to the smaller things in life (pebbles & sand), our lives will be filled up with less important things, leaving little or no time for the things in our lives that are most important to us. Because of this, never forget to ask yourself,

What are the Large Stones in your Life? And once you identify them, be sure to put them first in your “Jar of Life”.

With a warm wave of his hand, the professor bid farewell to the managers, and slowly walked out of the room.

Palamalai tribal village and YFS School kit distribution

Happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction, pride, delight, and still I can add many more words to describe my feelings. The YFS school kit drive has crossed great heights so far, but in Coimbatore it is something different! Before going on to the formal descriptions, I’d like to express what Palamalai is all about.

Very small group of seven villages with nearly 400 families, situated at distance of 4KM from the foot of the hill and about 30Km from the core part of Coimbatore. Adventurous roads with lack of public transports, fear of elephants, lush green herbs and awesome sceneries for your cameras are some of the unique features of the Palamalai village. But real life visuals are different and pathetic. I could see many teenage girls roaming with the holy thread (Mangalyam) in their neck. It was really shocking to hear many girls are forced to get married at a very young age. Many men are addicted to alcohol and most of the youngsters being school dropouts. These are some real facts of the Palamalai tribal village.

Here is our targeted location - With so much hindrances, the Palamalai middle school is giving education to 70 students with a meager, 5 faculties.

Our crew of 20 members started the distribution of school kits with 3 cars and several two wheelers also took part in our journey. On the way, many people resisted the toughness of the road and shared their experience of “romance” with elephants. We too had to face the fear of elephants in many a place, still we reacted bravely, more than that we had no other options to do! There were ten hair-pin bends to reach the destination. One of our cars (Omni) started to dance at ninth hairpin bend and its engine failed to serve from there on. Immediately all the kits in the car were shifted to other cars and we again started our relentless journey to the location. This time some of us needed to walk till the destination. Finally we reached the Palamalai middle school, but it we were very late! Many parents were already waiting from morning for the 11’O clock. We reached only at 11.45 Am.

Fortunately few of our friends Pradeep, Karthick, Amal and Vinoth had already reached the place and started to coordinate with the parents. Our hopes of serving were helped out by their presence and at last we entered the school.

It was time for distribution. Formally, flex banners were pasted and Headmaster of the school started welcome address. Immediately, after his speech he told one of us to address the gathering, one strange voice from our crowd initiated my name without my permission. At last I was the victim; I started my conversation with parents and children. It is really a tough job to handle children and motivating the parents at this level. I started “How many of you are going to send your children to college?” no reply came from the crowd. Again I made them realize by stating “I am speaking to you, please reply”, but there were no answers this time also. Before starting my next question, they started to chit chat! One of the faculties understood my situation and raised his voice to control them.

Finally, by collecting all my strength I started again. But this time I clearly understood their wavelength and told “Don’t worry I will finish within 5 minutes”, Now I witnessed full of joy in their faces. I extended my speech up to 10 Minutes but did not face any reluctance; unusually they started to acknowledge me. I am not a good orator! But conveying truth doesn’t require any skill, truth always remains the truth.

Starting from headmaster all of us joined in distributing the school kits to children. That is the moment I experienced the ultimate joy, happiness and excitement in their faces. One of the kid shares its word with classmate “Yai I got a red bag same like you!!”. “Yes me too” the other kid replied. I started to observe their attitude after distribution; they touched the bag gently, started the process of exploring what was in it. Whenever we clicked the camera they exhibited happiness and smile. The reaction of the parents was also different. They can be considered as big children. First time every one of them received a gift from aliens like us. Yes! That is the thought process of the children till we started our distribution. Afterwards the scenario changed completely, they started to interact with a fair amount of shyness.

Distribution happened without any confusions and error. Each and every aspect was already decided, the crew of NIN Society has already got a fair bit of experience in conducting such events systematically. In a nut shell our crew worked instrumentally to make things done.

Believe me; most of the children are going to carry the school bags first time in their life. All credits go to YFS and its volunteers. Every one of you contributed to that remote location. Your name, destination etc. might not be known to them but they would feel proud about you. You did something that they needed!

Lastly, we started our car to the famous Palamalai Renganathar temple which is on top of the hill, the priest started his chanting and every one of our eyes were closed, our mind started to pray for the children of Palamalai automatically.

Jaihind!

Vignesh

School kit distribution at Vyasarpadi

It was a perfect day for lazing around and people were gearing up for the much awaited Euro cup final doing nothing which is speaking about me literally :-). 

Suddenly I got a message from my YFS chief, saying today is the last day of the SKD would you be joining ??

At first, I was tempted to say no firstly cause I was really tired doing nothing and secondly cause my parents were busy planning an outing. But a divine voice in my head told me to say yes,else I would regret later.. Said the divine voice.

You'll understand why I use the phrase divine voice,when you have read entirely. Believe me I am not calling myself divine.

Well to continue, I reached the Seva Bharathi office at about 4. And we reached the Vyasarpadi temple-school area at around 5. To elaborate on the area, it was very similar to what I had seen only in the movies congested,dirty and mainly scary for me as I had heard that North Chennai was very famous for what I believe they believe is bravery ?or a Tamil euphemism 'gethu'?? 

Okay , so we reached the school-temple and we saw the kids sitting patiently listening to an old man talk with few in the back giggling and passing comments. I recalled my older school days,when we used to sit in line patiently bearing all the cramps for ages for some sort of an illuminating speech. I was as excited as they were and waved them a big-hi which they all reciprocated to all of us. The community head was a really good source of encouragement for all of them as he told them all the importance of studying and getting ahead in life. YFS volunteers Omprakash,Senthilgave a briefing on YFS and it's activities and also restressed the role of education in life and achieving success. Omprakash gave a very important and apt example of the master-blaster Sachin who is an immense source of inspiration and determination personified.I sincerely believe that the kids absorbed a lot of what was spoken and was over whelmed to heights when kids hardly 11-12 years old came and told me that they too would work for an IT firm in the future. They reiterated a saying in my head -"dream dream dream, dreams are the reins for shaping your future". This holds true for each one of us. The kids were all given a bag,5 notebooks and other geometry items. They were all pretty excited about the bag I must say. The ones who dint get a bag (due to shortage and a huge number of students who turned up) wore long faces masking huge disappointment. But they soon forgot their loss when they saw that there were pictures being taken. Another lesson to learn - 'small things in life make up for the bigger losses.' I was more than happy to obligingly take pics ,pose for pics myself. :-) and the kids had a terrific time posing. One small kid cldnt stop himself from hugging me when I told him he looked as gethu as actor surya in one particular pic. 

To sum up, it was a beautiful journey with loads of lessons to learn for everyone. The kids happiness us the true spirit of giving and the abundant joy that tags along. The kids have learnt the importance of education,how it shapes their future. I sincerely hope that we put our lessons to good use.

Thanks to Shiva who played a major role in identifying this place and hats of to all the YFS volunteers who made it that day. And my special thanks to my YFS chief s message and the divine voice who made me break my monotonous routine and helped me in achieving bountiful of happiness. And a sincere thanks to YFS for bringing a bunch of beautiful people with similar thoughts and aims together.

Shreya

School Kit Distribution in Thiruvanmiyur

On a slightly hot Sunday evening - on the terrace of a house in a congested street in tiruvanmiyur - the event of school kit distribution jointly organized by YFS and Sevabharathi Tamilnadu started at 6 pm. Around 150 children studying at the three Sevabharathi's tuition centers were present. The event started with great vigour and enthusiasm. Will there ever be a shortage of enthusiasm when kids are around?

The event was presided over by YFS coordinators Priya and Deepa, Kumar ji of Rotary Club, Rajesh Vivekanandan ji of Sevabharathi Tamilnadu.

After a small prayer, the welcome address was given by Sevabharathi's Thiruvanmiyur area coordinator Radhakrishnan ji. He explained about the Children's Savings Scheme through which the children are taught to make small savings and this year they had saved upto Rs. 22,000. A perfect example of how every long journey starts with a small step.

Sevabharathi's Thiruvanmiyur tuition centre coordinator Ramalingam ji then explained some of the activities organized by them. Their first tuition center was started in 2000 and they have been teaching kids for the past 12 years. Now they have centres spread in areas like Thiruvalluvar Nagar, Besant Nagar, MGR Nagar & Velachery too. Apart from regular tuitions, the children are also involved in 'culture classes', 'mangal deep classes', etc. One of the most important and interesting aspects of the tuition centers was that the children who studied at the tuition centers have graduated and have come back to teach the younger students.

Some children studying in these tuition centres spoke about their experience of studying here. They stressed on the importance of being neatly dressed and being clean in their appearance, being punctual to the class, saying prayers and having a helping attitude. 

Next we had a speech by YFS coordinator Deepa. She had been teaching basics of Computer at the Thiruvanmiyur tuition center for the past one year. She talked about how teaching at this centre helped her personally and the joy she experienced in spending time with them. She said she looked forward to teaching there again and this time she will bring more volunteers like her who have a similar desire.

Next we had a speech by our chief guest Kumar ji (Ex President of Rotary Club of Mylapore). He shared his thoughts by beginning with Swami Vivekananda's powerful quote "Give me 100 youngsters and I will change India". He said that it gave him immense pleasure to see so many youths who had come to the event as part of YFS. He stressed the importance of serving our fellow humans.

YFS volunteer Senthil interacted with the children to explain about why YFS was doing the school kit drive. He explained that by serving everyone we are helping ourselves. If we serve today's generation they should, in turn, serve the next generation and this process should continue. This, according to Senthil, is the main goal of this event.

We then had the school kits distributed to the children by the YFS volunteers and the chief guests. The event got over after the 'thank you' address.

Some happy moments

https://picasaweb.google.com/105381076763032818795/YFSKidsNotebookDriveJune242012

Valliappan

YFS Chennai Anniversary Celebrations

I registered at Youth for Seva last year and was waiting for the right volunteering opportunity. I got the email intimation about the 1st Annual day meeting at Ramakrishna Mission, Chengelpet on 1st April. Wanting to initiate my involvement with YFS i decided to enroll in for the event. We were supposed to assemble at the Mambalam railway station at 7.30 which was preponed to 6.45 and changed to Guindy railway station. I almost changed my mind of not going when i saw the revised earlier timing as that meant i had to start real early from home. But since i had enrolled in i did not want to back out of it and started real early to the station.Was pleasantly surprised to see that 27 of us were going to Chengelpet through YFS that day. We had people with years of service experience like Mr.Chandrasekar (a volunteer of RKM) and kids like Deepika and Ashwanth who were travelling in our group. We  boarded the 7.35 am train to Chengalpet.

We reached Chengelpet at around 8.50 am.  Most of us had not had any breakfast so we had breakfast at a local restaurant where we also had an informal introduction session. Then we started to the the Ramakrishna mission. It is 1.7 km from the railway station and it was a bit hot but most of us did choose the walking route. Mr.Chandrasekar from Ramkrishna Mission , Chennai guided us to the Chengelpet mission. On the way he showed us an old Ramar temple and the Ramakrishna mission run Boys and Girls school.

We reached the Matt at around 10.20 am. It was very quiet and peaceful at the mission.A complete contrast to the streets we walked through on the way there. We first visited the temple/prayer hall. It was very peaceful inside. Then we went to meet the founder of the Mission who gave us his blessings and also gave us a copy of the book Karma Yoga. We then had tea  in the dinning hall.

After that we were told about the history of the mission in Chengelpet and shown a tour of the garden/farm where we saw a variety of trees including orange, lemon, chicku, coconut and even a nagalingam tree. We were told that the earnings from the farm provided for the mission’s activities of providing schooling to underprivileged children and other activities.

Right after the tour we went to freshen up and rest for 30 mins. Then there was a prayer followed by lunch. The lunch served was pretty good. After lunch we had a short reading session with Mr.Chandrasekar who read us a few pages from Karma Yoga, regarding service.

Then we met Savithri amma who has been working in the mission for around 30 years. She talked about the activities of the mission relating to providing medical help, educational activities and general improvement of the lives of the Irular community (Scheduled Tribe) that lived in the surrounding areas.The daughter of one of YFS Volunteers, Deepika who is a 7th standard student told us a few words about our day at the mission which she did with amazing clarity.Then we had a few group activities/games organized by Mr.Sundaresan from RSS . 

After that we had a small speech by  the Chief Swamiji about Karma Yoga and About Swami Vivekananda and Shri Ramkrishna Paramahamsa .We then had tea and evening tiffin and then a speech by Priya regarding the School Kit Drive. We started from the mission at  around 5.50 pm and reached the station around 6.40 pm and headed back to Chennai. We all reached Guindy at 8.00 pm and that ended our day with YFS.

It was indeed a great oppotunity to spend time with a variety of people from different backgrounds. I am sure everyone had a great time at the 1st annual Celebration of Youth For Seva. Though everyone had work or other engagements the next day it was refreshing to see people come forward on this occasion. Kudos to Priya & Amit for organizing the event. And thanks to Mr. Chandrasekhar and the other members of the Mission for accommodating us on Sunday.

Booma

Journey Begins

Friends,

As we cross the first anniversary of YFS Chennai chapter it becomes increasingly relevant and important to spread the mission and vision of Youth For Seva. Although in its infancy as compared to its buddies in other cities, Chennai chapter has attracted good number of Samaritans within short period of time. Probably this underlines the basic principles to which YFS attributes its foundation. The mission of YFS is to inspire youth to volunteer, connect them to the grass root projects, and provide support and training to the volunteers. 

Formed on March 20th 2011, YFS Chennai began its journey from Seva Bharti office in Chetpet. Priya joined as first full time volunteer in May and naturally became the co-ordinator taking lot of initiatives and trying to bring together people who wished to serve. In fact even before the chapter was formed there were lot of queries from Chennai volunteers on the YFS website to know how they could take part and contribute. It seemed people already had inherent willingness to come out of their comfort zone and work for the society yet they did not know where and how to start. YFS tends to provide that platform and volunteers are free to initiate any activity or take part in the ongoing projects.

After a slow start Chennai chapter saw volunteers quickly getting involved with various activities. A weekly computer training for children was started at a tuition center in Thiruvanmiyur. This involved imparting basic computer knowledge along with activities that would help develop the personality. Volunteering in ICH (Institute of Child Health and Hospital for Children) also popularly known as Egmore Children’s Hospital, started with the initial idea of doing a cleanliness drive not as a one time event but as a sustainable program with the involvement of local community and the hospital staff.

The activities were not just limited to Chennai city but at times volunteers took extra effort to travel distances on the outskirt of the city. A vision pre-screening was conducted on behalf of Sri Perumal ITI of Palavakkam taluk, for the school children studying in standard 6th to 8th of Kodandarama School Oothukotai Village. Total about 300 children were screened and those who reported some kind of vision problem were further recommended to qualified ophthalmologist.

Some of the individual volunteers conducted reading sessions for the visually challenged students at PSBB school and Nethrodaya. It was an effort from their side to travel every Sunday and help the students prepare for their exams. Apart from all these events one of the major initiative was School kit drive which was inspired by similar project conducted by YFS in other cities. 

Overall Chennai chapter found lot of avenues of initiating new activities from time to time. As the volunteer base started to grow it was decided to have a monthly team meet to update everyone with the latest news about all the projects, discussing new ideas as well as introduction to new volunteers. On the occasion of first anniversary of YFS Chennai a visit was planned to Ramakrishna Mutt, Chengalapattu around 60 kms from city. The intention was to bring all the volunteers together and spend a day at the Mutt. The Mutt is part of the Ramakrishna Mission which is keenly engaged in lot of philanthropic activities. It was indeed a day well spent in the spiritual atmosphere of the Mutt.

Although one can find plenty of ways to help and support the causes essentially it is vital that Seva has an impact. Now that there are many helping hands YFS Chennai plans to start and sustain the momentum of various projects rather than doing it as a one time activity. To achieve this, recently different groups were formed who wouldl pursue & manage dedicated activities such as Children education, environment awareness, health & hygiene. This would be possible with the help of volunteers who already bring experience of working with other NGO's or similar organizations.

After more than one year and having its own share of contribution towards various activities Chennai chapter continues to take inspiration from YFS motto "Experience the joy of sharing".