Celebrating the joy of life
Games, sport and colour for children in government schools and orphanages across Bengaluru East — the children who almost never get any of it. And one wish each, written down and taken seriously.
A child who is bored at school stops coming to school.
Government schools and children's homes in Bengaluru already do the hard part. They teach. They feed. They keep children safe. What they rarely have room for is the part that makes a child want to turn up on Monday.
So we do not build anything of our own. We go to where the children already are, with a bag of things brought from home and enough volunteers to make it a proper afternoon.
It is small on purpose. Small is what can happen every weekend.
Wishbox
We ask a child to write down one thing they wish for, and why. Then we try to make it real.
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A form, and a reason
Every child gets a form. Not just what they want, but why they want it. The writing is as much the point as the wish is.
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The name comes off
Before we read anything, names are separated from forms. Each form keeps only a number. We never learn whose wish we are reading.
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The school holds the key
The slip matching each number to a name stays with the class teacher, in the school. It never leaves the building and never reaches us.
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We read every single one
Every form is read, and judged on what the child wrote. The wishes we can grant go back to the school by number, and the teacher matches them to names.
And the rest of the afternoon
Everything below fits in a bag brought from home. No venue to book, no budget to raise — nothing between a free Saturday and a session.
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Games that need nothing
Kho-kho, kabaddi, lagori, relay races. A flat patch of ground and a bit of chalk, and thirty children are suddenly a tournament.
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Books, pens and colours
Notebooks, pencils, crayons and storybooks, bought in bulk and handed to the school for the whole class. Never to one child, never as a prize.
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Making things by hand
Paper, clay, colour, glue. An hour where the only measure of doing it right is whether you like what you made.
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Music, movement, noise
Rhythm, song and dance. The loudest hour of the school week, and for a lot of children the only one where being loud is the point.
Where the name comes from
JIVULLAS = Jiva + Ullasa
Two Sanskrit words in one: celebrating the joy of life.
- Jiva
- living being, life, the living essence
- Ullasa
- joy, delight, exuberance, radiance
If you have a few hours, come and run a session
You do not need to be a teacher, a coach, or good at sport. You need to be able to get to a school on a Saturday and be cheerful for three hours.
Volunteer with usIf you run a school or a home, let us come to you
We bring the volunteers, the equipment and the plan. You tell us what your children would actually enjoy, and what your rules are.
Partner with usBe here at the beginning.
Bengaluru has more children who need an afternoon than we can reach alone. There is room for you in this.