CRY stall at Kshitj 2011

The merchandise had just come the day before. We were excited about having a CRY stall at Kshitj 2011, Asia’s largest Techno Management fest. We thought that this would be a perfect opportunity for spreading awareness and make an impact among thousands of people. We had just opened up the stall at 10 am. And we had many curious onlookers already staring at us when we are preparing the stall. Me, Sangitadi,Faizan, Miriam, Geetika and Anuja were just deciding which merchandise to put where and make the designs more holistic and attractive to the eye. We had put up Child Rights posters shared by CRY. Plus we decided to take the printouts of some of the best pictures that we had got in the photography contest last year. Needless to say it was striking to the eye. We felt like entrepreneurs about to open our first venture together.

There was a sense of passion in everyone to do something good for the society. Niharika and Meena just came with a beautiful collage that they had done of a girl and a boy sitting in a large pencil with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan written on the top. Both of them had put up a lot of effort at the collage and it clearly showed on the detailed collage. Saptak and I were the first customers. We bought a T shirt each and wore that over our T shirt and it looked nice. Niharika was so bowled over the soft toys that she said she and her friends would buy the entire stock themselves. I felt like I went back to art school when everyone used to put up lots of effort in their items and designs.


People started pouring in and started asking and inspecting the child art products.. We were excited when we made our first sells. The people were enthusiastic and kept asking questions about CRY. We explained about CRY plus the work we had done like Access Audit, Mirpur school success and the many entries that we got in the photography contest enthralled them. More and More people started pouring in and within a few hours we had sold most of the products. We had sold out all the wares in a few hours that we thought we will sell in three days. There were happy smiles in all the volunteers’ faces that came from the success we had. We all planned to take more such initiatives and make a bigger impact this year. We couldn’t have asked for a better start this year for our volunteer chapter than this.


Himen Doley
IIT-Kharagpur