Worth a Weekend

Volunteer’s Reflections: Sheela SR

“Smile, it is the key that fits the lock of everybody’s heart”

I would like to thank Samiksha Foundation for giving me opportunity to fit in someone’s heart. Yes, a worthy weekend spent at an oncology ward with children fighting cancer.  I’m really proud of Samiksha Foundation for their initiative of taking care of the children’s education while they are under treatment.

We with our volunteers have been visiting Samiksha at the oncology ward for the past few months. We spend time in teaching the little brains. They are really wonderful kids. Teaching from A, B, C for a 3 year old child to maths, science etc up to high school children is all a good time for us. The kids are all so active and eager to learn. Few kids are teaching us small tricky puzzles and few are upcoming magicians who are teaching us small magicsJ. We do spend time playing after our serious studies and most of the time we lose and the children win. The kids love and enjoy seeing such elderly people losing to them. Within couple of weeks the children have become our friends. They do recognize us by our names and we do the same. And, in fact some of my little friends there call me on my mobile and ask me when we are going to see them again. They are happy to be with us. The first time I went there and met them I was really upset thinking, life is so very unfair for the kids. But, soon I realized the reason for me being there and told myself we should make those children smile while we are there.

“Are we seriously teaching them?” I do ask this question to myself several times. The only answer I get is yes we do teach them written knowledge, but we learn about hope and how to smile in tough situations. It feels so very nice when a child grabs my hand with love as soon as I get in to the hospital. I’m thankful to theinnocent and unconditional love from the little hearts.

When I don’t see a child with whom I was interacting earlier, I miss them. But, that’s a real fact, Cancer is a difficult disease. Hoping and praying to see each child be cured soon and go back to their regular lives.

I read the lines below somewhere: