Our PDI’s community house was filled with fun, little giggles and loud laughter this past Saturday. We were celebrating Kerala’s Onam festivities with a day of games and entertainment for our community’s children. Onam is a long awaited Kerala holiday that commemorates the return of the mythical King Mahabali, a great benevolent ruler, proponent of social equality, justice and prosperity in his reign.
According to the Onam myth, this Great King Mahabali returns once a year to his beloved Kerala in the month of September. This is why the Profugo Team decided to host a children’s community event during this time to celebrate with the children and introduce our first Profugo Children’s Club activity.
In the day of our Onam festivities, the children were eager to start the day of games and came earlier than expected. We opened the doors of our Center for Development to find a group of girls and boys, in shy laughter, carrying a big bag of flower petals of many colors. The children were on vacation from school and had come to create their own Profugo “pookalam”, a colorful flower carpet traditionally made to receive Great King Mahabali at our own Profugo office’s doorstep.
By the time the Profugo Team finished filling up the water balloons and preparing the prizes, the children had carefully arranged all their flower petals to form a beautiful intricate design. This multicolored flower “pookalam” marked the beginning of a great afternoon of fellowship, enthusiasm and fun games with our community’s children. The Onam Celebration was a great success. Attendance surpassed our expectations. We received a group of 54 children whom we divided into tree energetic teams. They proudly called themselves Team Jasmine, Team Rose and Team Dalia respectively.
The evening went by with many games and concluded with the surprise visit of the King Mahabeli himself, played by our new Field Fellow Tyler Casteel. King Mahabali distributed the prizes for the champions at bingo, hot potato, water balloon race and many more.
Our director, Dr. Abraham Koleth addressed the crowd welcoming them to our center and inviting them to be part of our Profugo Children’s Club starting next month under the motto of “Learning, Sharing and Growing Together”. The children laughed and enjoyed listening to Dr. Koleth retelling to story of The Great Mahabali. It was reassuring to hear him say how the children of Prashantaghiri village truly had the power of making King Mahabali’s myth of social equality a reality by learning together from the past, sharing together and eventually growing together as a prosperous strong community. I’m looking forward to seeing how this Profugo Children’s Club continues to grow and become a great host for many activities and an outlet for creative learning experiences in fellowship.
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