Goal of the event: WACAP, the World Association for Children and Parents, is an international adoption agency whose goal is to provide a home and a family for every orphan. They’ve been doing great work in many countries, particularly Russia, China and Ethiopia. They try to find families for orphans in their own home countries, but if this is not possible, they bring them to families in the US who want to adopt kids from outside. Over the years, a fairly large number of orphans have been adopted by families in the greater Seattle area. The WACAP annual kids day aims to bring together all these kids and their families for a picnic, giving them a chance to have fun together, get to know each other, and help the families connect to other families facing similar challenges of raising a foreign child.
On the day of the event: A group of about 20 Hindu Yuva volunteers, reached woodland park on the morning of the event, around 9:45 am. After the initial introductions, we were assigned different tasks, ranging from directing families to the registration desk to setting up tents, play areas etc. At around 11 am, the picnic got underway. There were various fun activities for the kids, including Hula hoops, spin art, tattoos, face painting, magic shows, a jumping jack etc. Our volunteers were involved in all these activites, making sure that the kids have fun and are safe. From 12-1 pm, we organized lunch (sandwiches/chips), making sure all the 300+ kids and their families get enough to eat, and also made and served cool lemonade to give everyone some relief from the summer heat. After that, the activities continued for some time, and we helped make sure that all the leftover food was taken home by someone. Finally around 2pm, we helped wrap things up, clean up the picnic area, take down the tents and transport all the equipment back to the vehicles. We had a final group huddle to celebrate the successful completion of the event.
Feedback and Take-Home Message: Interacting with the orphans of diverse backgrounds/ages and watching their happy faces at the picnic was a memorable experience for all the volunteers, everyone enjoyed themselves thoroughly. The WACAP organizers were very pleased with our team, they commended us on our enthusiasm and readiness to help out with everything. The SEWA event was also a very good platform to get in touch with people who aren’t directly involved with Hindu Yuva. About half of the volunteers were new, and all of them really liked the event and said they’d like to be involved in the future as well. We plan on making this a regular thing, having one SEWA event at least every other month.
Potential Future Project: We also got a good idea for a potential future project: WACAP has a program in India as well, albeit a little smaller, and there are many families in the US who have adopted kids from India. Many of the families, and WACAP themselves, would like the kids to remain connected to their home cultures, and having some platform to do this would be very valuable. I think this is one area where we can help a lot and its worth thinking about, both here and for other Hindu Yuva Chapters across the country.
Pictures of the event
. All in all, it was fun to play around with all the paint in a school gymnasium, reminding everyone of their school-days. Post this, we had some pizza/donuts for lunch, after which we got to the real hard work: Shoveling gravel to set the foundation for the play area. There’s no question about it: Shoveling is hard work! But as we discovered to our own surpirse, its a lot of fun too, and working with your hands (an alien experience for most of us!) was really satisfying. The enthusiasm was kept up with chai breaks and enthusiastic naaras, ranging from the shakha naaras to cries of “Mazdoor Union Zindaabad” 
