Snapshot - Dec '21

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE LAST FEW MONTHS

We look back at this year and thank God for walking us through a lot of tough times and allowing us to get through to 2022.

Chennai saw some pretty serious rains in the last couple of months. However, our families were safe and none of them suffered from any major problems due to the rain.

School Programme

The schools - 'offline' - opened up in September it opened up for 11th and 12th students of both schools. Classes for all remaining classes started in November. The children were back to routines such as, after school tuitions and in-school tuition for Anita school students.

We had an intern from Chennai who spent a month with us in September whose remit was to help us train our smaller kids of class 5,6, 7 students in English and Science.

Students of the Anita Methodist Matriculation School

Students of the St. Thomas Matriculation School

The Artist in our midst, Kavya

We try to identify talent and help our kids build on it and one such story is Kavya of class 7 of St. Thomas school. After the summer drawing class, she was encouraged to take part in a 4 day training session on four different kinds of Indian folk art. Below are some samples of the work she has done.

DISCOVERY classes

We continue to engage our children with Role Plays that help them understand and discuss issues on morals through our discussions using Biblical characters.

College Programme

Our Sunday sesssions for the college kids were lit with group discussions on real-life topics. We continue to invite a speaker on one Sunday a month to talk about a topic of interest.

During the week at the office we teach them basics in Excel, PowerPoint and Designing (using Canva), tailor-making our syllabus based on what is relevant to their college courses. We also gave them assignments over the week for them to do and make presentations on it during our Sunday sessions.

Our College students doing a session on Canva design software

Engaging sessions for college going students, such as professional skill development training was held online by Mrs. Wincy Paul and hands-on experience were given offline at the Eternus office.

Some of our students are still not as comfortable communicating in English as they should be, so we are working with them on doing comprehension exercises. This helps them learn new words and involves thinking in English.

Christmas program 2021

The Eternus Christmas program was hosted at the ICSA premises in Egmore. Families of all our students were invited to take part in the program followed by a fellowship dinner.

The program started off with Yogeshwar, Pooja and Sandhya performing a dance to the strains of a Christian spiritual classical piece.

Next was a combined choir from both schools singing ‘Hark the herald angels sing’. The children were excited to sing and perform in front of their parents and their peers.

It was followed by Mrs. Pamy Anand, a social worker, who shared with us the Christmas message with a touching story.

It was a great joy for us when Sharmila and Jenefer - who graduated in Masters of Social Work last year - told us that they wished to sponsor the Christmas gifts to all our kids. Seeing our children give back to society filled our hearts with gratitude as we believe its the message that we want to leave with our children.

Mr. Ashok Thomas and Mr. Christo Mathews spoke to gathering and encouraged the audience to thank God for blessing all of us in the Eternus family.

It was also wonderful to have eight of our graduates - all of whom are working now - attend the celebrations along with the children. We were able to hold them up as examples of what can be achieved through hard work and commitment.

We also encouraged the graduates to insert themselves as mentors in the lives of the college children as they would be the perfect guides, having traveled the same roads.

We wish our readers Merry Christmas and a glorious New year as we pull the curtains down on 2021. It has truly been a blessed year, filled with His gentle guiding and firm hand on our efforts.