14 Good Deeds. Good deed A Day…

Challenge14 

As time draws nearer for the completion of mid-term examination, my students had their luggage packed for the vacation, but I have for them a simple social project. A project according to Encarta dictionary is “a task or planned program of work that requires large amount of time, effort, and planning to complete” but the project I have designed requires no formal planning or effort, all it needs is a loving heart to share and ready hands to help.

This idea just stuck my mind while I and my class VIII ‘B’ students were arranging our class for the exam as instructed by school examination committee. After the job was done we sat for a while to wish each other best wishes and had talks on what we would be doing in the fourteen day break. Almost 90% of them would be helping their parents in cardamom field (cardamom/elanche has taken over as the number one cash crop recently) and this is one best thing we see in rural Bhutan where students pick up spades as soon as they rest their pens for vacation. Some would be rushing to continue their town lives even if it’s just for two weeks while some are desperate to see their parents in the far east of the country. Then I just asked what good things they have in mind for vacation other than helping their parents and friends.  Its then I felt pin drop silence in the class.

For a while we were sharing nervousness in silence, then I said; ‘Do you think good for others?’ yes we do, is the immediate answer. I explained to them a little I knew of the virtues of good thinking termed as “Menpa Jangchub Sem” in shanti Deva’s book the path to bodhisattva way of life. The talk of “Jukpa Jangchub Sem” followed our brief session; it’s here that we thought of ‘one good deed a day challenge during the break’. Before we finalized our decision I informed them that it should not be made an obligation or term it a  religious, I just told them to do it once with their true heart to experience the true bliss.

To make it even clearer I provided them few simple examples as follows:-

1.      Helping old/aged person to get on or off the bus, or helping someone to load or unload luggage if you traveling.

2.      Picking few pieces of stone/gravels and fill up pot-holes in the road, or getting footpath or steps in your village fixed.

3.      Uprooting grasses and weeds nearby lhakhangs/chortens/mandirs, or making a flower garden for the same.

4.      Comforting a crying child/fetching a jerry can of water

Teacher and students like two hands at close proximity we agreed to take up the challenge in unison and reminded ourselves that it should be a complete voluntary help we should render to community or individuals and not something of an involuntary one to complete the project.

Since then I had been designing a record sheet for them and finally came up with the following.

“Good Deed a Day Challenge”
Personal Diary for the summer break, 2015

Name…………………………………………………..

Sl.No.	Action (particular help rendered to community/individuals)	Date	Brief description of how the community/individuals respond to your kind gesture (verbal/facial expression/body language)	A brief description of how you felt after rendering your help (happiness/satisfaction/any other feeling)	Name of community or individuals you helped	Signature/thumb print of community head/individuals you helped

Signature of candidate                        Signature of Class Teacher                                    Signature of Principal

NOTE: - This project won’t fetch them or me any marks our reward but a simple satisfaction. plz give me your valuable feed backs