June 23 2020

SOS Day Celebration: Adapting New Medium

The children and young people from all SOS Children’s Villages and Youth Care Homes of Nepal celebrated 34th SOS International Day and paid homage to the founding father Dr. Hermann Gmeiner on the auspicious occasion of his 101th birthday. 

SOS Children’s Villages Nepal celebrates SOS day with special events every year. This year too, we celebrated with great enthusiasm, but the way of presentation was different. All the participants physically gathered inside the respective Children’s Villages. They were visually connected countrywide watching each other in the screen! This was the 1st ever convergence of such a huge family members virtually in SOS Nepal and it happened to cope with the situation of COVID-19 the better way.  As a result, the programmes were not limited within the one Children's Village but they were Inter-Children's Villages programmes and all the programmes were LIVE through internet to connect across SOS Nepal. 

“I was happy and excited to take part in the virtual Inter-Village Speech Competition. At the beginning of the programme, I was anxious thinking about how the things would go. I had given speech in front of the people face to face in the stage. But, giving speech in front of the laptop with virtual connection to the audience was my first experience. I was worried about the internet connectivity though it went smoothly without any interruption. All the brothers and sisters from different Villages expressed their perspective on the given topic,” shares Tenzin, the first prize winner of the competition from SOS Children’s Village Pokhara. 

Further, she adds, “More than this, the excitement was to receive the certificate of first prize sent by the organizer from email that was later printed in my Village. On the day of prize distribution, I received the cash prize and certificate from my father (Project Director) and I saw everybody from the ten Children’s Villages cheering live on the screen! I could hear best wishes and claps from all the village through the speakers connected to the computer in the hall of my village.” 

On 21st June 2020, SOS Children’s Village Sanothimi organized Inter-Village Virtual Speech competition on the title “COVID-19 Pandemic and the World Tomorrow”. The 16 participants from ten Children’s Villages presented their speech in the language they were comfortable in either English or Nepali. 

Similarly, SOS Children’s Village Gandaki organized Inter Village Painting Competition, SOS Children’s Village Itahari organized Inter Village Poem competition, SOS Youth Care Biratnagar organized Inter-Youth Care Essay Competition, SOS Youth Care Kathmandu Organized Inter-Youth Care Quizzed Competition to mark the 34th SOS International Day. The children and young people, coworkers from SOS Children’s Villages, Youth Cares and SOS Hermann Gmeiner Schools actively participated in these various programmes organized in different dates. 

On 23rd June, the program was formally inaugurated by the President of SOS Children’s Villages Nepal Dr. Jyoti Ratna Dhakhwa by unveiling the banner virtually followed by his key note speech.  In the same function, the National Director of SOS Children’s Villages Nepal Mr. Ishwori Prasad Sharma delivered his welcome remarks. He congratulated and praised the organizer for being able to keep up the spirit of children and young people by adopting the virtual medium. He also opined in continuation of such practices as it has connected all the programme locations, children and young people to participate and grow confident in this difficult situation.