Ice cream!

In May of each year, the kids at Karunya Mane go home for a two-day visit if they have a home to go to (that we know about). Some of the kids without any parents or family stay at KM during these two days, and naturally they feel a little sad.

This year, we took the kids who stayed at KM to a very nice and yummy ice cream store in Mysore. There were sooooo many flavors, some of them had no idea what to order, so Aunty Anu told them to just try the chocolate (always a winner). Some of the older kids tried the more adventurous flavors, and they all shared their flavors with one another. Yum!

little Jeevan

Nanjunda

Renuka

Kartik, Sharath, small Sreenivas (smiling), Devaraj, Razak

little Venkatesh

Rachamma

We met Rachamma on the street in 2005, where she lived for many years with her kids and grandkids -- Venkatesh, Prema, Sumitra, Mohan, Latha, Jyothi, and Nanjunda.

Nanjunda enjoying lunch from his grannie Rachamma

 Today, most of her grandkids live at Karunya Mane. Nanjunda attends St. Francis School, and is doing very well in the English curriculum. He also stays in the school dormitory with the sisters who take care good of him. 

Rachamma
She's had a hard life but has always taken good care of her grandchildren

Rachamma visited Nanjunda at the dorm today and brought him a nice meal of rice and chicken curry, which he ate happily. Nanjunda's mother is very unreliable and unstable, and Rachamma and his Aunty Kumari have been the consistent support in his life. He gets temperamental and moody at times, not surprising given the torture he went through while living on the street with his mom, but otherwise he is doing well today and is much happier.

Little Nanjunda

A couple of years ago, we wrote about little Nanjunda, who has had a very difficult life even though he's not even ten years old. While on the street with his mom, he was often ignored and physically abused by her, and often didn't get enough to eat. Now, at Karunya Mane, he has had the chance to show us how smart he really is -- and he's pretty smart, getting straight A+s in school this past year.

Nanjunda has always talked about wanting to learn English, so we decided to give him that chance and are enrolling him into the nearby English medium school. So, Nanjunda and five other promising kids living at Karunya Mane will be attending St. Francis CBSE School this year.



Nanjunda is happier and more excited than we've ever seen him. He used to be a sad, unmotivated boy who, even though he excelled in school, he often didn't finish his homework and lost his books and pencils all the time.

During the two-month summer break, Nanjunda is spending his time with his tutor, brushing up on his English, and learning Hindi. He proudly shows us what he is learning every day!

Awards at school

This year, a few of our big kids and little kids won awards at school -- in categories like attendance, good behavior, cleanliness, sports performance, and citizenship...

Anand, Nanjunda, Vishnu, Pallavi, Sowmya, Tunmaya

After a full summer (April, May) of playing and some tutoring, the kids are all starting school again at the end of May.  

Challenges

A recent visitor to Karunya Mane asked us, aside from fundraising, what our biggest challenge is. Often, the answer is, sadly, the parents.

Many of our kids have at least one parent, a few have both parents, and several no longer have parents. The parents are unable to properly care for their kids, being destitute themselves, are often single moms, or are moms with a deadbeat husband who drinks whatever earnings they have.

Most of our kids have endured abuse, either physical or emotional, at the hand of a mom or a dad. This happens not necessarily because the parent doesn't care or wants to abuse a child, but because the parent was abused by his or her own parent, and knows no other way.

Little Nanjunda's story is heartbreaking and, at the same time, filled with hope.

Little Nanjunda, now eight years old, lived on the streets of Mysore for most of his short life with his mom and grannie. His dad left his mom years ago, and his mom begs on the streets to earn money for their food. She used to abuse Nanjunda quite badly at times, hitting him and often throwing him on the ground then stomping on him, and speaking to him very roughly. Grannie helped take care of Nanjunda, and she often fed and bathed him.

Nanjunda's mom did not stay in one place for very long. Instead, she went back and forth between the streets and her boyfriend's home in a village about an hour away. When she and her boyfriend argued (usually resulting in her being injured by him), she and Nanjunda returned to the street. A week or so later, Nanjunda would find himself back in the village when his mom and her boyfriend made up.

Last year, grannie wanted Nanjunda to live at Karunya Mane, so that he could start school and have a nice living environment. He was already seven years old and, given his mom's unstable lifestyle, had not yet started school. In May 2008, Nanjunda came to live at Karunya Mane, and both mom and grannie were satisfied and visited him once a month on Sundays. Nanjunda loved school and his after-school tuition sessions, and often talked about learning English so he could fly on an airplane to America.

little Nanjunda (center) with Pallavi (right) and Apu (left) in 2007

Then, mom's boyfriend, who has an uncontrollable temper when drunk, started demanding that the boy be released and returned back to his mother and their shack in the village. They arrived at Karunya Mane one day, jumped the gate, and stole the boy away.

Nanjunda stayed in the village for the next few months, missing the rest of his school year. Then again this May, we found mom and Nanjunda back on the street -- it seems that they were kicked out of the village. After a few weeks, mom asked us to take Nanjunda back at Karunya Mane, as he desperately wanted to live there again and continue school with all of his friends.

After reporting our process to the local police (as a way to discourage mom from causing trouble in the future), little Nanjunda returned to Karunya Mane, and is now back in school.

We are well aware that mom may reconcile with her boyfriend again in the future, come to Karunya Mane and cause a scene again to get her son back. We'll do what we can to keep the boy with us, as his safety and future are most important.

Summer cooking lessons

This summer (April/May), the kids had a few activities while on their school break. One was cooking lessons twice a week from Anu. They learned to make lots of Indian favorites, like upma, tomato bhat, idlis, vegetable palyas, and lemon rice. Their first lesson of course, was on hygiene in the kitchen and the need to clean a kitchen til it is spotless.

Sreenevasa, Asha, Kaleem, Nanjunda, Amita, Venkatesh, Lokesh, Vinod

Anu moved the stove to the floor so all could see and participate

Asha holding the end product, with Kaleem and Amita looking
on, and Nanjunda offering you some chutney!

Timing was perfect for the cooking lessons, as we lost our cook (again). We've got a new cook now (more on her later), and in the interim the older kids used what they learned and helped Saroja make a few meals.

Family visits

Every couple of Sundays, Jeevan's mom -- also Asha's aunt -- visits her son and niece at Karunya Mane.
Jeevan is four and attends nursery school with the other kids. He's a happy, mischievous little boy who loves when his mom visits because she brings him all kinds of yummy snacks. He was quite malnourished when he arrived but he's now gaining weight and his asthma doesn't act up as much in our cleaner environment.

Asha has had a tough life -- see more on her at our website here.

This past Sunday, little Nanjunda's mom, Mangali, visited her son at KM. She doesn't visit him often, and she is usually wandering from her husband's house to her mom's house, to the street. Before Nanjunda came to KM, she used to drag him wherever she went, and last year he missed out on school because she never stayed in one place long enough to enroll him.

Nanjunda, who just celebrated his birthday on September 1, was very happy to see mom. He sometimes wakes up at 1am, crying for her.

Trees and more trees (and an update on the garden)

In an all-day affair on a Sunday in August, the SOften team from Infosys arrived at Karunya Mane with 56 trees to plant on our grounds (we're so grateful), as part of their charitable environmental efforts.

Sreenevasa got to plant the first tree...
The kids and the SOften team worked together to dig holes and plant the remaining trees (mango, papaya, neem, and many others) both inside and outside of our fence.
Prema and little Nanjunda helped carry dirt...
And Kaleem and Manikanta made sure this little tree was comfortable in its spot.

On a similar green note, here's a recent look at the veggie garden, where tomatoes, okra, green beans, garlic, radish, carrots, and more... are flourishing.
Compare this to the site when we first saw it a year ago February.
Okra from the garden -- great for sambaar.