AASRA - Because They Need Us

       A day of fun and joy: Sector-21 Picnic    AASRA primarily aims at educating the children of underprivileged localities. Besides, it also provides the kids many opportunities to smile. Annual picnic is such a day of fun and laughter with the kids.        Like every year this year too, we organised the annual picnic of Sector 21 on 14th of March at D'Souza school ground. The enthusiastic children and the members reached the spot by 9 o'clock in the morning.  All the arrangements were made properly a day before.       Members spent some quality time with the children playing cricket, badminton,ludo etc as the day rolled on. Then it was the time for lunch, probably the best part of the gathering. All the children thoroughly enjoyed the delicious dishes. After the lunch, some funny chitchat made the festivities even more amusing. At last, some memorable photos were captured and kids were sent back to t...

       HOLI-Festival of love              On March 10 th , at the end of a long tedious weekend was  a day celebrated as the biggest festival in India , that is  HOLI , the festival of colours . A day on which  we experience an artificial rainbow in air.   A festival that unites us, children and elders alike, t he colours on each other mak ing  love and bonds more ionic.            AASRA   celebrated this day at its respective workplaces i.e.  J agda,   S ector-2,  S ector-21  and S ector-6 . D ue to the C O V I D-19 pandemic we celebrated only at these four workplaces by taking safety precautions, but making it fun  nonetheless .       As a precaution for the  dangerous C O V I D-19, the   A ASRAITES of workplace J agda celebrated a   H oli  without colours  but with loads of love and...

          15 th  Foundation Day                 For the entire nation, the 26 th  of January is a day of national importance - it honours the date on which the Constitution of India came into effect in 1950. But for the members of the AASRA family (as we like to call it), this day also signifies our birth anniversary, the day on which AASRA was founded in 2005 by our alumni with the aim to help the underprivileged sections of the society.                  To commemorate the occasion, we celebrate our Foundation Day on January 26 each year inside the campus of NIT Rourkela. We call in kids from our workplaces and provide them with a platform to showcase their talents. In contrast to recent years, the 15th  Foundation Day was  celebrated in the Community Centre  entirely. The event was brought to life by a wonderful set of anch...

“Which party are you from, Sahaab…?” was the response we got when we asked for their verification IDs. As clichéd as it sounds, that’s the plight of the underprivileged people who are deprived of  basic amenities and attention living their lives in a vast ocean of misery.   Little Rohan hasn’t got the chance to hold a pencil yet, because he has come to believe that helping his family in earning some money is more significant than reading some scripts, while a tender Devaki has an uncanny sense of pride that she won’t be a burden to her family anymore as she is going to get married before her 16 th birthday. In the months of November-December 2018, members of AASRA visited 6 leprosy colonies based in the slums of Rourkela and documented the grievances of differently-abled people residing in these areas. Shri Sannyas Behera (OAS) had requested the members of AASRA to step up to which the members promptly acted upon. The places covered during this duration were Benga...

What is the most important thing you did today? Not many can claim to have saved a life. What if I told you it just takes an hour. Yes, of course, I am talking about blood donation. It is such a noble thing to do, yet so easy.      Contributing to this cause, AASRA in association with SHRADDHA FOUNDATION and SAMBAD- AMA ODISHA organized a blood donation camp at the CULTURAL ACADEMY, SECTOR 5 on 17th March 2019. It was subject to voluntary participation and was open to all. The drive achieved it’s intended success as 31 units of blood were collected, contributed by 30 donors. Here is how the event folded out. First up, volunteers from AASRA arrived at the CULTURAL ACADEMY by 9 A.M. to make sure the arrangements were all in place. They helped in the preparations as they were joined at the location by representatives of Rourkela Blood Bank. Donors started to come by 10 A.M. More   donors and volunteers from NITR arrived at 10.30 A.M. prior to donation the dono...

Holi is considered as one of the most awaited festivals of India, celebrated throughout the country. The vibrant and festive occasion was celebrated on 22nd March of this year. The colours are still prominent on some hands, the memories and experiences stacking up each year. It is a festival of colours, of cherishing love and strengthening our bonds.                      AASRA, the social club of NIT Rourkela, celebrated this occasion at its different workplaces. Like every year, on the day of Holi, the members of the club aka Aasraites, left for their respective workplaces in the morning hour. Sweets were distributed among the children and elders, there was music and the air filled with the different hues of the Holi colours. The elders were greeted by applying gulaal at their feet. The members danced together with the children, posing and clicking pictures. Time spent with ...

One of the most celebrated days in India, 26 January, happens to have an added importance for all Aasrites. Reason being, it is the foundation day of AASRA.            As is the norm, Aasra celebrated its foundation day in the NIT premises. Attended by 201 children from the workplaces, all Aasrites, several dignitaries and alumni, it was a grand success. Events and Happenings:     The children were brought into the campus by 7:45 via buses. Waiting for them at CC were full plates of Upma and curry and some gentle rain. They were then escorted to the BBA for the main event.     The event witnessed its sunrise as the chief guests Prof. S.K.Patel (Registar), Prof. S.K.Das , Prof.R.K.Biswal , Prof.S.Jayanthu, Prof.Saurav Chatterjee, Prof.S.N.Alam, Prof.Thirugnanam, Mrs.Sukhanti Maharana, Mr.K.C.Maharana, Mr. Suman Upadhyay (senior counsellor, SOS Village) and our alumnus Anup Agarwal (2012 batch)...

If you’ve ever visited AASRA’s Sector 21 workplace (formerly Leprosy Colony) on a Wednesday afternoon, you would probably have witnessed people resting peacefully in their huts, children coming back from school for a short afternoon snooze before their evening shenanigans. But the Wednesday of 13th March 2019 wasn’t like its average Wednesday. You could see people of all ages, from babies of the age of three to old people in their seventies, running to the entrance of the colony. Many men and women of the Naya Bazaar area immediately shut their shops to rush to the colony. People of the nearby apartments and offices flocked to their balconies to catch a glimpse of what was happening. Homemakers hurriedly closed the doors to their houses and gathered to witness something they never had. RITVIC, the cultural club of NIT Rourkela under Manthan, India’s largest street play festival had decided to perform a street play (Nukkad Natak) in AASRA’s sector 21. Here’s how it went down. The eveni...