This Sunday was a momentous day for MAD Mangalore. The day Rakesh the Thunderman sent us all an emotional msg stating that this was the day we’ve all been toiling for, training for, waiting for…and lo! Here it was already! The Icebreakers for the kids and thus, the start of MAD classes atlast!!
The volunteers were grouped according to the two orphanages we were to look after… One in Ullal and the other in Jeppu.
The orphanage heads in Jeppu, Meghana and Nikita, divided the kids into batches of 10 and allotted …

11 girls from St. Mary’s were taken to the Casino Hotel with Niki, Brijesh and me on saturday as part of MAD’s placements initiative to get them acquainted with the opportunities available in the hotel industry. The girls were shy and quiet but i believe they learned a lot today.
We left from St. Mary’s by 9:45 and got to Casino hotel in an hour. We were taken to an office where the head of training and recruitment, Ms. Devi met us. She told the kids and us that we would …

MAD has established a tie up with Rajagiri School of Engineering and Technology(RASET) through its volunteers studying in the institution. Being offered an opportunity for an educational trip by RASET, MAD spread its sails for a two-part journey towards developing a child’s awareness regarding the field of engineering.
PART ONE

The first trip to Rajagiri was arranged for the children from Valsalya Bhavan and St. Joachim’s on July 25th, 2009. The students were taken to the college in buses by Vijay Roy, volunteer for MAD. The welcome address was followed by a …

 
Once upon a time a ‘Xavi’ calls me up and – “Dude Oberon has a Rock Fest-”  Me: “Hey cool. When is it ? I’ll be there”. Xavi: “Its an acoustic gig. My friend’s band is playing. We can carry out some PR stuff ” Me: “Hit Me!”
And the rest is history. (Current Emotion *Awesomeness*)
Sorry for the delay in writing this post (Negative Creep *When are you on time anyhow ?*). Minus Six was to play at TimeOut …

(I know it looks like too many words but do read till the end till I beautify it in a li’l while)
The VP-Training sent out a mail with details about the Teacher training and also a request to all volunteers to mail any kind of issues they faced to their mentors. The replies were consolidated, brainstormed over and classified into 5 categories:

Volunteer responsibilities
Class Control & Recognition System
Syllabus
Teaching Techniques
Miscellaneous (which were mostly home-specific issues)

The mentees were divided into two batches. The training for the 1st batch happened on Saturday …

We have a forum in place at – http://makeadiff.in/forum – Its still in beta. All volunteer based activities, announcements will take place here. Guests are also welcome to post/reply to topics; ask anything regarding MAD etc. Cochin & Bombay have successfully been implemented the forum. Other cities to follow suite soon.
The placements cell has successfully organized field trips to science park, engineering colleges etc. A post on the events will be put up soon.
The first edition of the newsletter will be out on 15th August. It will be published on …

MAD Cochin held an assessment test for the kids at all centres over the last couple of weeks. It was a baseline test which was held to see how much of English the kids already knew (as suggested by EzVidya who comes up with our syllabus).
If examinations can be nerve wracking for the students, it can be quite the same for the teachers as well – or so I found out. We were not just testing the kids, we were also being tested ourselves. Though I was initially supposed to …