{mosimage} Apr 2 2009
All through these years at MaxIndia we have been trying to make the agenda of our meetings as different and varied as possible from the previous ones in the hope that these new experiences will help and benefit our patients and caregivers as well as us. In 2007 we had celebrated Max’s birthday in the company of some of the street children from Mumbai. For Max’s Birthday celebrations this year we had some children with special learning disabilities join the Friends of Max meeting that was held on 25th October 08. These children with learning disabilities are from a special school in Mumbai that caters to their all round development. They spent the whole day with us and enjoyed Max’s Birthday Celebration along with the Art Therapy session we had for our Friends of Max. The love and warmth they received from the FOM made the little children want to do something for them in return and help contribute in their own way.
It was decided that the children will come to our TMF Mumbai office and spend two hours interacting with all the patients visiting the office during that time. Accompanied by a school teacher and a parent, eleven children came to our office on the 14th of January.
As the children settled down in our office adding a lot of colour and fun with their happy and enthusiastic voices, Viji read to them out of a story book which caught their attention and also broke the ice with the many of children whom we had not met earlier.
Since their teacher from the school had informed us that he would like the children to have some interaction with the patients, we had decided upon an activity for them that would help do just that. It was our plan to train them as little journalists knowing that they would enjoy the role. We prepared a small questionnaire related to some general questions related to the likes and interests of each patient. The children were thrilled to be asking these questions to the patients and filling them out in the form we had created. Soon the office was buzzing with the “Interviews” .Our patients who interacted with the children in turn enjoyed the time spent in office as it was a totally different experience for them. Each child got to spend time with a patient and a member of the MaxIndia team in attendance making a difference to the normal routine day in MaxIndia too.
At the end of the afternoon the children handed out a contribution that they had raised for the Friends of Max Trust. They donated a share of the funds to our Adopt a Buddy project and also made hampers for distribution to the children that would visit our office. The hamper contained colouring books crayons and some other stationery material.
We hope to see these children over the years to come and interact with us more often. They spread joy and cheer in the office and I hope these pictures do them justice.