SNAPSHOT - March '23

School Programme

The half yearly exams were conducted in December '22 and we were glad to note an improvement in many of our children. We are pushing the rest to work hard.

Our weekly schedule for classes continues to be Mondays and Thursdays at the St Thomas Centre and Tuesdays and Fridays, at the Anita School Centre.

Sarah (Class 10 and 12) and Jeba (Class 6 to 8), our volunteers, continue to help us in the evening classes at both Eternus Centres.

Meeting with Anita School Teachers: In November, we had a Teachers meeting at Anita School. We had a chance to get reviews of each of our 11 children who are between class 7 and 12. One of the suggestions that the teachers had asked Eternus is to help the children spend more time on reading which we are working on. This is to help the children recover from their loss of performance during the pandemic, a reality that has been seen in schools across the State.

Career Choices Test: As a practice, we administer assessment tests to our children in 12th grad to get an idea of their strengths and interest areas. We were helped this year by Mr. Isaac Kamalesh, HR NJI Associates and a Career Counselor. The first round of screening is done and we are waiting for the final results and will meet the students subsequently.

College Programme

In the month of November to January, our classes focused on;

Reading: An initiative to make the students read books, we had them read Atomic Habits by James Clear. The first-year students found it difficult to read and comprehend. So, we spent time reading it together.

To help them with comprehension, it made more sense for them to read their own text books; this would also help them do well, academically. So we had them read a passage from their text book and audio record their understanding of the passage and send it to us every day.

The Second and Third year students were also reading the book together. They also learnt about E-mail Etiquette.

In January, for the first and second year, we focused on PowerPoint presentations, the layout and formatting, formal and business presentations. They also were taught to extract relevant data from websites.

We started doing a series of session based on the book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. This month we focused on what it means to be proactive and introduced to the concept of creating personal mission statements for themselves. This exercise will be carried out for them one–on–one, next month.

Eternus graduate lands in London

Divya, Nursing student, moved to London to pursue work as staff nurse at St George’s University Hospital on the 8th of February. She met Mr. Ashok before she left; it is purely the Lord’s doing and we are delighted for her and her family.

Eternus Christmas Program

Our Christmas was celebrated at the ICSA Hall, Egmore on 27th December with all the families of our school and college students.

We had discussed with our Graduates about this programme being a gift from them to the current Eternus students. They were most happy to host the event and even underwrote all the expenses of the programme. Some of them even helped us in buying gifts and wrapping them. The college and school children helped us set up the decorations in the hall.

We had Mr. Joshua Michael and Mr. Lemuel, Bethel Blessing Church lead the congregation in worship. Prof. Jasper, Madras School of Social Work, shared the Christmas message.

As part of the programme, we had graduates introduce themselves and some of them even shared their testimonies to motivate our students.

Ms. Sandhya (Dialysis technician, MMM) and Ms. Pooja (Class 12, Anita School) performed a dance. The Eternus School children sang, ‘Oh Come let us adore Him’. The College kids performed a skit on the topic, ‘The Real meaning of Christmas’.

Hussain, one of our earliest graduates – presently in Dubai - sent a video expressing his gratitude to God and Eternus and encouraged our kids to keep working hard.

The graduates gave out the Christmas gifts to all the students. Our Managing Trustee, Ashok Thomas, also addressed the gathering.

We sent the families home with a packed dinner. Overall, the program was good and both children and the families said they enjoyed the program.

Teens Camp

It was very exciting to have a camp after two long years. The camp was held between 6th – 8th January at Scripture Union, Mahabalipuram. 19 kids (14 from s

chool, 5 from college) took part at the camp. Two resource people; Pastor Christain Lelsey, Volunteers YFC and his team and Mr. Swithun Manoharan, President, TAFE did powerful sessions. The camp had quiet time, devotion, experiential learning, group discussions, testimony, one–on–one sessions with Mr. Swithun, along with some beach and swimming pool time.

The students really enjoyed the camp and many felt that this camp was impactful. The resource team also felt the same. We believe it was the Lord’s doing.

Post the Camp, the children are sent quiet time passages weekly and we have been following up with them on regular basis. We are also working on doing follow up sessions to build on what was begun at Mahabalipuram.

LEADTALKS 2023: Wincy, Gary and Ashok (an Eternus Graduate) had an opportunity to attend this year’s conference in February at Hotel Feathers. It was a lovely experience to listen to a wide range of speakers from different walks of life. Seeing how they stand as witnesses was astounding. Ashok was glad that he could be a part of it; unfortunately, the other Graduates could not make it, it being a working day for most of them.