But what better way to celebrate Christmas than to dress up as Santa and distribute gifts to underprivileged kids across the streets of Mumbai?
Sounds of Silence (SOS) is India’s first technology based NGO, empowering the hearing impaired individuals to overcome the barriers to communication by providing them a new way to interact with the world, came up with this initiative called “The 100 Santa Project” – An effort of giving a chance to the underprivileged children of Mumbai to experience the joy of Christmas. This initiative involved 100 volunteers dressed up as Santa distributing 10,000 gifts to kids on the streets of Mumbai.
I feel extremely happy and fortunate that I got to be a part of this beautiful event. On 22nd December, Sunday, the journey of this project started in Bandra where we met 1000+ students around 8 in the morning & each of them had sparkle in their eyes and the biggest smile on their face looking at the gifts we had for them.
What filled my heart with joy was when those kids gave us greeting cards made by them which read “Merry Christmas to all!! My friends!!!” along with an extremely adorable Christmas tree drawn on the side.
I can’t even find a way to express the amount of happiness I felt that morning. Seeing those kids smile and laugh with joy after receiving the gifts left me with a contagious sense of happiness. I strongly believe that even though there are a lot things that are wrong in this world, there are a lot of things that are right too. Hate spreads like wildfire, but so does love, happiness and joy.
This Christmas, make it about them instead of you. Because in the end, it is truly these little things in life that matter the most. Everyday, consciously make an effort to make people around you happy, in whichever way you can; small or big.
And who knows, maybe you could be someone’s definition of happiness…
Until Next Time
Love,
Pooja
Pictures by: Ranjit Pawar
