Just joined Living Raaga - By Savita Thakur

I always wanted to help people and give back to society.  I came across article of Living Raaga which Vinutha was running. I got inspired and wanted to participate but because of family and work I couldn’t make it. Vinutha mentioned that they need helping hand in selling their products.  That really clicked a thought in me; I knew I would like to do that. I took a huge lot of products and I started to show products to my friends and apartment folks.  They were encouraging and did buy quite a bit of materials.

My friends too gave ideas to improve on products, and with those ideas we launched new high end kundan rangolis !!!

 Most of the products came from Nava Jeevana (APD); there has been an impressive sale within a month.   I am trying to use my friend’s network to increase our sales. My 9 year son is very enthusiastic about this and he keeps giving idea for attracting more people.

I am very happy that my dream came true finally!!!!

New Kundan Rangoli design

Rachina Doddi - Revisited

By Divya

We visited Rachiana Doddi in Sept 2010 (blog article), after that we were unable to go to the village for a long time. We finally revisited the village on 27 July 2011. This time we had done lot thinking on what kind of products to teach and markets for them. Soroptimists International volunteered to take up marketing for the products.

In spite of the long gap, when Matilda and I went to the village, the ladies in the village were very enthusiastic about the session. We had brought material for side-hangings and we wanted the village women to gain expertise in it. There were about 15 women and we started our session in the village school. All the kids gathered around us out of curiosity seeing all the glittering material.

Communication was a problem for me but sign language and translation put me in a comfort zone. I started from making the flowers for the hangings and inspected everyone's flowers so that they could understand the importance of perfection. I made them redo many times till they made flowers with closed petals. Next I had samples of the rejected lot from our last visit, I told them about the mistakes they had made. Slowly they picked up and everyone started making their side hangings. The kids too made flowers. By around 11:30 a.m. we were done and we gave them material and instructions for the new order.

It was a fruitful session which the village women and we thoroughly enjoyed. Hope they are doing practicing well. Matilda hopes to find a market in U.K. for the handicraft when she goes for a conference later this year.

Stall at Salarpuria Silver Woods

We had a stall at Salarpuria Silver woods, Bangalore on March 18th 2011, 6pm to 8pm. Deepa co-ordinated the effort of talking to the apartment management and fixing a date.

Anitha, Deepa and Me were at the stall on 18th and we had a wonderful experience. The response was encouraging and positive.

We put the stall outside the clubhouse on a huge round table, we displayed all the products on the table and the wall. Soon we had people at the stall.Quilled magnets, Quilled earrings and greeting cards were the ones that got picked up first.We had put up photo albums / scrap book for first time on the stall, all the little girls just fell in love with it. Not only did they get sold out but we got significant order for that!!!

We closed our stall at 8 p.m. and left the place richer in experience.

Class on making Bracelets

It was very nice of Sandeep, to drop by APD  (Association of people with disability) on 12th Feb to teach us wristbands. Anitha coordinated this entire effort.

He taught us to make them with the waste bottles and wool!! Folks at APD were excited about learning the new art and quickly lapped it up. Once the bracelet was made, it looked very pretty and no one could guess from what it could have been made.

 

New Center "Shishu Mandir" - By Anitha

Meera got to know about Shishu Mandir through Suman, and proposed we start classes there. We visited Shishu Mandir on Jan 29^th, met the heads of Shishu Mandir – Mr. Seshagiri and Mr. Anand. We decided to start off at Shishu Mandir.

Anitha started our regular classes at Shishu Mandir from 10 Feb 2011. She had nearly 6 girls (studying in 8th and 9th std) and 8 older girls (who come to learn

stitching) in this batch.

Anitha started with quilling and all girls were very keen to learn. Six young girls were very quick to learn and one girl with whatever shapes she had made a face with it.

The man was standing and watching these girls work. Suddenly he came to Anitha and asked for a quilling strip and started rolling the strip !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anitha be going every Thursday to Shishu Mandir from 8am to 9.30am. Anyone interested to join can do so.

 

Birthday order by Suman

Meera showcased the photo frames and fridge magnets to her colleague Suman, who was planning for her daughter's birthday on 4th Feb 2011. Suman, liked them and ordered 10 big photo frames, 36 small photo frames and 82 fridge magnets as return gifts for Zara's class mates and teachers. We were really excited about this order.

We got the parent's wing of Association of People with Disabilty to work on it. This was their first big order for photo frames. But they did a very neat work of the entire lot of the photo frames; I sat with them for about 6 photo frames so that they learn the quilling and assembling it. They did a very neat work of the entire quilling work on the entire lot of photo frames.

Anitha, Lakshmi and me got together and made the magnets so that the money goes to “Living Raaga” funds.

Suman was really pleased and happy at the products, quality and packaging of the products. She did send out a note to her team about “Living Raaga” and our products and also recommended us. :-)

At the end, it was a lovely experience for all of us.

Living Raaga Stall at Rotract on 26 Dec

- Article by Sindhu


As 2010 was going to end, on Dec 26^th Living Raaga had a stall in Rotary Udyog's Dashamanotsava function, Peenya, Bangalore. This event was organized by a group of young Rotractors. Anand, who is a rotractor and a member of Living Raaga was the brain behind putting up a stall at the event.Kavya,Kokila,Lakshmi and Sindhu managed the stall, scheduled between 4pm-6:30pm.

The stall was a small classy set-up with bright posters and colorful products. It drew a few people to the stall and they wanted to know about Living Raaga. Volunteers explained to them about L.R's birth, objectives and how it functioned.

About 1k worth products were sold. Though the sale was not as expected, it was indeed a great platform for Living Raaga and there was an unbelievable encouragement from the club members.

Rotract had organized a talk on "Managing Money", after which Anand spoke about "Living Raaga".The Rotract President was very encouraging, he bought some products too.

Finally it was a great experience for each one.