Back to School | BTS - Jung Hoseok's Birthday Celebrations | Pencil Drawing | Thank you to @milesforsmiles182 | Giving out clothes | Acute Appendicitis | New Shoes | New Blog

Monday 21st February saw most of the children return to school for the first time in nearly two years. All the standards from 1st to 12th have returned, or will do over the next couple of days and it will certainly be a big change as they get back into a structured school environment. As its just a month since we saw a huge spike in Covid cases, it seems a little premature, but we will hope for the best.

The last few days we have been give out the children´s school bags and uniforms and making sure the uniforms still fit (as some have grown since they were last measured!!!). Thankfully the govt has not made uniforms mandatory for the moment, so we have chance to make a little adjustment for those who have grown a little.

Generally the children seem excited to be going back and being able to meet their friends, although there was a big �sigh´ with the news that exams will be offline ??

There are just a couple of months until the end of this school year and their end of year exams so please which them all well.

Happy Studying!

#Backtoschool #Goa #GoaNGO

We got a message that some friends who wanted to celebrate a birthday with the children on February the 18th, so we invited 30 children and when the girls (visitors) arrived Robert asked, "is it your birthday", they said no..

So they were actually celebrating the birthday of Jung from the BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan) group.

The girls brought a big birthday cake, chocolates, sandwiches, samosa and drinks for the kids. The afternoon did include quite a lot of BTS music to go along with the celebrations ??

#BTSARMY #BTSJHOPE

Our artistic older student continues to draw and I continue to be amazed by his fantastic work... Padmini???

Thank you to @milesforsmiles1827 for giving the children of Goa Outreach a talk and drawing session on Dental Hygiene. The children were definitely engaged in the whole session were given toothpaste and brushes for taking part. Thank you so much to Miles for Smiles for their time.

#communitydentaloutreach #goaoutreach

#goa #goadentaloutreach #dentistingoa

#commnunity #communitydentistry #brushfloss

#dentistryingoa @fishcurrygirl @sumitmalavade787

We have been lucky to receive some lovely clothes from local donors in the past week or two. Here are a few photos from our last giving out session on Saturday.

We are always happy to receive clean children's clothes that are new / look new, or slightly used so that when we give them out to the children it gives them a reason to smile!

A few days ago, one of our 8th standard boys had a safe and successful surgery to remove his appendix. He had been diagnosed with Acute Appendicitis and thankfully the operation was quick and successful. He is still recovering in hospital but hopes to be home in the next day or two.

I had to �Google´ it and apparently it is most common between the ages of 10 and 30, and infection seems to be one of the main causes. As the children haven´t really had any issues with this in the past, it seems strange that there have been 2 cases in the last 9 months.

Please wish him well in his receovery.

We were happy to give out 20 pairs of new (and some pre-loved) shoes at the weekend. Due to the current travel restrictions we haven't had many donations coming in, but where ever we can we do like to give out as much as possible. We bought 15 pairs of 'crocs' to go with 5 pairs of pre-loved shoes and handed them out to children living near Bambolim Hospital (Goa Medical College).

Its hard to get photos of faces and shoes in the same shot, so I hope the photos are OK

Thank you to Dr Ajit Nagarshekar who informed us about the children in need. Ishita and Robert have made two visits, the first giving out health and hygiene basics and this afternoon we returned with clothes, shoes and basic education items to get them started as none of the children attend school. (Who does at the moment!!!)

Ishita will continue to follow up with them and lets hope we can continue to support them.

When we arrived they couldn't manage a smile between them, but we managed to get massive smiles off all but one who really had no intention of smiling ??

Thanks again to everyone who donated the books, clothes and shoes. A few items which were just donated yesterday by Orange Oregano in candolim were given out - perfect timing!