It takes a whole village to raise a child

It takes an entire community to raise a child. A child has the best ability to become a healthy adult if the entire community takes an active role in contributing to the rearing of the child.

This week, grandfather of a BeMe child visited us and shared his passion – sketching by gel pen. One mother was live station expert and shared about the usage of an eco-friendly menstrual cup. One grandma made lemon pickles and besan laddoos and put them on sale during Vegetable Mela on Friday.

This semester, one parent is offering elective: Exploring history through film and literature. Two parents are offering elective on playing cards. One parent is taking computer programming through Scratch, HTML, M S Excel. One parent is driving BeMe book club. She has in past spent long hours with children talking about literature. One parent is helping us with observation documentation through ODK – a quick way to log observations. He has also set up a framework that can be used by children for creating a website for BeMe Utsav. One parent is coordinating the weekly Vegetable Mela.

During summer vacation, one parent connected us with two software companies. Two children visited the companies, interacted with employees in different roles. One parent invited the two children to visit his advertisement firm and allowed them to explore about different roles/stakeholders in the advertising agency and also gave them a taste of coming up with a small advertisement.

The list goes on. In past, many of the parents have offered electives, have been live station experts, connected us with experts, recommended ideas, involved in projects with children etc.

As parents, we all have different professions and have different family value systems. And of course, facilitators are there with their full time. They come from different backgrounds. Each one of them has different personalities. Children know whom to connect with depending on their needs.

Over all 56 children, 10 staff, 80+ parents, and friends in our network together form a community that can nurture each BeMe child.

We request all parents to make themselves available and spend time with children in some way or the other, at your convenience. You can come in as an elective expert, you may come for one-time interaction in the form of a live station or you may come and do a project, come and sell something, or simply hang around in visitor area at the gate and say hi to children. And you are most welcome to connect with your neighbors, friends, colleagues who can bring in some exposure to our children.