“An idle mind is the devil's workshop and makes a person lazy,” says Mahatma Gandhi.  At this time of lockdown, this is true.  When grownups themselves feel very bored, what will be the state of children who were eagerly waiting to enjoy their summer holidays?

Shanti Ashram, Coimbatore and SARVAM, of Sri Aurobindo Society have been working together for a long time for children.

At this time, to keep the boredom of the children away, Shanti Ashram conducted an online competition for the school students during the lock-down period. The main objective of conducting this online competition is to help the students who are sitting idle at home because of this pandemic. The students, who usually, used to be very active during this summer vacation were made to sit at home without doing nothing. This had induced a lot of stress in the minds of the students.  The online competition organized by Shanti Ashram had been a vent for these children.

These competitions have given an opportunity for the students to keep themselves active and to exhibit their creativity.

Competitions were conducted for various age groups of students. Competitions such as essay writing, pencil sketch, rangoli, budget making, and few other useful competitions were conducted online for the students.  All the students used Whatsapp as their platform to showcase their talents.

Around 100 students from SARVAM participated in various competitions and exhibited their creativity to others. Usually, students will participate in competitions that are conducted directly, but to everyone’s surprise, this online competition attracted many children and the participation was much higher than expected.  It was a new experience for the children to use mobile phones to participate in a competition.

This experience has given happiness and cheerfulness to the students who were sitting boring at home. By conducting these types of online competitions, Shanti Ashram has made the students happy and at the same time, it has helped students to avoid coming together and get infected by the COVID virus. It has also helped students to learn how to use technology fruitfully.