Parents’ Day with a difference

Parents’ Day with a difference
Dr.P.N.Narayana Raja, Facilitator.

It is common that we celebrate Fathers’ day, Mothers’ Day and not much about Parents’ day in our natural home which itself indicates that there is somewhere some mistake occurred where we have missed celebrating a joint function for both the life givers i.e our father and mother till 1994. In the year 1994 President Bill Clinton of the USA had felt that there existed a void in the absence of a celebration of a day that commemorated the contributions of both the parents in the lives of their children.  It was at his initiative that a resolution was passed that said that the fourth Sunday in the month of July every year would be celebrated as a Parent’s Day. Of course, Indian tradition had certain days meant for celebrating the joint functions for Parents like Sastipoorthi day where entire family jointly celebrate the 60^th birthday of father and the marriage ceremony of parents is performed once again in front of all relatives’ including great grand children. A Similalr programme happens for 80^th birthday also.

What about a Parents day in a Non Governmental Organization where youngsters who have no parents, have single parents, poor parent, have large family where such celebration is a luxury, have separated parents etc. It is the occasion to share the joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, success and failure of youngsters, caregivers, teachers, parents, systems in practice etc

Boys Town society, a largest Child welfare charity in south India celebrate Parents day with a difference. It serves around 2,000 children, both residential and non residential, in four districts of Tamil nadu.

The day starts with an introduction of project to the parents, guardians or guests by the youngsters in the project, explaining the routine activities, educational system, personality development programmes, parliament systems etc. An in camera dialogue between teachers, parents or guardians and care takers to share the respective view points in the development of the youngsters and the formulation of further programmes for the betterment of youngsters in future. Sharing also includes the bottle necks in the project implementation like non availability of suitable trained staff or technical knowledge on agriculture or deficit budget or behavioral problems of youngsters or need for local volunteers etc. Parents’ day serves as an eye opener and provides exemplary ideas to ease out the bottled necks. 

This year Parents day in our units helped BTS to develop a model of skills mapping among parents or guardians of Youngsters. BTS could obtain a promise from these stakeholders that their skills will be spared for the development of BTS in the forth coming year.

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