Vibha Diary: First Meeting

After joining Vibha, we started receiving mails regarding a team meeting. Vibha members were planning to meet on the coming weekend at a CCD in Koremanagala. Meeting was called to decide the calendar of the next month. Mr. Ashish confirmed his gracious presence in the meeting and decided to drag me in with him. After his confirmation he received a call from Venky who summarized Vibha's work and methodologies. At the end, Venky made sure to invite us for the meeting as an introductory session for Ashish and me.

Without resisting much, I accompanied Ashish. As we did not want to leave bad impression in the first meeting so we reached before time and waited other members to join us. Other folks were late due to traffic chaos in Bangalore. Within sometime few members, including Venky, arrived

Though things were little off track but Venky, without losing much time, summed up everything about Vibha. In his short introductory speech, he introduced us with the history, objective, functionary, and work in India. He told us about the organization structure and heads. He was not shy about narrating the reason of choosing CCD over any Vibha’s office.

This was my first visit to CCD and I was not aware of different kind of coffees available. So I ordered the cheapest one. Rest expected folks joined us within some time and we started planning for the next month and it was decided to conduct at-least one event, in continuation with the previous events, in Hope School.

This event included entertaining the kids, knowledge sharing and promoting moral and social ideologies to kids so it was necessary to plan according to their grasping powers and understanding capabilities. Before I joined Vibha, other volunteers had conducted 2-3 successful events and this proposed event was for kids who were studying in 5th standard.

In the mean time our coffee arrived. Everyone got their coffees. Some were cold rest others were hot; some had chocolates others had cookies and so on. I expected my coffee to be as tempting as others but waiter shattered all my dreams of tempting coffee. He brought a small cup with some black substance i.e. espresso. In-spite of not getting as tempting coffee, I was still hoping for some milk so requested waiter to bring some milk which he denied with courtesy and weird smile. All others were enjoying their coffee whereas I was staring at my cup. I emptied 3-4 sachets of sugar and somehow finished the sweet poison without seeking much attention.

This meeting lasted over an hour and we concluded this meeting after deciding the agenda for the next meeting. Each of us had to come up with innovative gaming ideas for the kids, try to bring in more ideas on table to make event more interesting, propose something better in snacks and last but not the least the gifts for the games. After that we all paid our shares and moved back.

This meeting set the tone for both of us. We were excited and happy with the idea of doing something real.

So stay tuned for next meeting and further updates.