Beautiful Flowers in her hair | Thank you for the donati...

We were delighted to be contacted from a shop owner from Porvorim who was having a clear out of old stock. They very kindly gave several bags worth of beads, flowers, sequins and craft items which the kids have already started putting to good use, they made bracelets and earrings and added the flowers in their hair

Thank you to Penny, Ralph and the girls for giving us LOTS of notebooks for the kids, an amazing 420 Notebooks in total!

Notebooks especially long and A4 size notebooks are ALWAYS needed as the children get through a lot of them. Depending on the school/college they can need up to 16 books per student! Thankfully Penny has gone a long way towards preparing for the new school term, so thank you so much!

As well as the notebooks they also bought A Box of Soap and 8 boxes of Shampoo, that should be enough shampoo to keep the kids going for 5 months (we give out 16 sachets to each of the 100 children every month).

We really need the support at the moment so this has really helped with the necessities which we would have had to buy otherwise. If you want to help then do please get in touch.

School has started back after the Diwali Holidays and the children have lots of assignments and projects to do, but it always makes me proud as I have some talented students, Here is Savita's three dimensional diagram of a flower which she spent the afternoon creating.. It looked even better in person

A huge thank you to Purple Martini and their staff for feeding and looking after us on Sunday for a Diwali lunch. They served the children a traditional Indian meal and finished off with Ice cream and chocolate. Each of the children received a goodie bag to take home with sparklers and a box of Catherine wheels which the children got to take home. It was a fabulous gift and all the children loved celebrating in the evening with them with their families.

After the lovely meal the children walked the few hundred meters to the beach where they spent the next 2 hours playing on the beach and dipping our toes in the sea. A couple of the girls were lucky enough to get a free ride in one of the boats as a cousin worked on the beach and gave a free ride.

Thank you so much to Purple Martini and all their staff for their kind support.

Happy Diwali!

@purplemartinigoa

#purplemartinigoa #purplemartinisunset #diwali

View On Youtube : Dance class with Encore just before Diwali

Thank you to the fqantastic Encore team from brightening our day, oh and for the Pizza! The children reallly enjoyed it....

It was a pleasure to have the wonderful Kalki come to visit the centre yesterday. Kalki performed in the Spotlight Monologues alongside our own superstar Fiza, she is also well known for her roles in Bollywood hits like "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara" and "Dev D"..

She spent nearly two hours chatting with the kids, many who seemed a little star struck, especially a couple of the older ones.

When she's not working she lives in Goa so we hope that she'll visit again. Thank you so much @kalkikanmani for your time and visiting our small NGO.

We have been delighted to have the 37th National Games on our doorstep at Pedem Sports Ground, Goa, and honored that the Government of Goa and Thomas Cook India Ltd have graciously provided us with meals to distribute to those in need.

Each day we have visited the games and brought back between 100kg and 200Kg of cooked food which we have packed into parcels to give out to the families we support and local daily workers.

The meals have been a mixture of Veg, Chicken and Fish dishes. Today, the last day we took Chicken Biriyani, Fried Fish and Vegetable Bhaji. Yesterday there was a huge amount and had fish curry, Potato Bahji, Chapatis, Roti, Rice, Salad and more.

Each day there has been huge amounts and it has taken hours to distribute to the families but has made their lives that little bit easier.

Thank you to The Government of Goa, Thomas Cook India Ltd, all the chefs, staff, volunteers and coordinators who organised the food for us each day and to Gopi (one of my old students) who has been a huge help collecting the food with me each day along with many of the kids who came to help at the ground and helped divide it up into parcels at the centre.

It has been exhausting, but fulfilling experience. Sadly, no good photos as it was a rush to get the food out as soon as possible and we often finished distributing after 8pm.

A couple of the girls spent an evening at the Museum of Goa as one of the girls was part of the production "Spotlight Monologues" and she brought a friend for support. The two girls had a great evening seeing the theatre space getting prepared, taking pictures with the other actors and being part of the show. After all the buzz had died down and the show had come to an end, they girls said they were in a rush to get home (as it was quite late).

However, this was a ruse, as their main intention was to spend some time exploring the exhibitions in the main halls of the museum.

They had the place to themselves so went to each and every exhibit and posed for photos. They really had fun!

Thank you so much to all the Museum of Goa staff who looked after us while we were their guests and of course to all the team from "The Spotlight Monologues" who helped raised over £1700 in total in ticket sales! Thank you!