A festival of this magnitude definitely requires more than 2 dozen pairs of hands to make all the events and activities flow smooth.
The team of Priyanka, Sindhuja, Viswanath assisted by Priya in the evenings saw that the events at the Nageswara Rao park went on very well. The team had the bonus of enjoying their time with young kids painting on the spot and made colourful crafts in the evenings apart from the music kutcheris and plays.
The backstage team of Srividya, Rajeswari, Lakshmi and the emcee Janani received the artistes and their groups, helped stage the performances go on time all the days and saw the performers off with a warm smile.
The food and hospitality team of Rahul, Ganesh and Sharanya doubled up at the food counters and on the kolam contest areas. The team at the food counters selling the coupons to the visitors had to grow in numbers day by day. Gokul, Aishwarya, Varsha, Ganesh, Rahul, Sharanya, Prashanth, Raghav, Bhargavi, another Gokul joining the team on the weekend really enjoyed tearing the coupons and collecting monies, while the seniors Prabhakar and Saravanan couldn't believe their eyes seeing these young people smiling all through with heavy cash transactions at the counters!
The front desk lead by Jayaraman had Bhanumathy, Usha, Ragini and on the computer information was Saravanan.
The dance inside Sri Kapali temple was another event away from the buzzing streets. The groups of dancers each with more than a dozen kids, the guru and their orchestra were hosted by Sridevi.
Harikrishnan, a hosteler at Vivekananda College helped in organising chairs for the artistes on Pitchu Pillai Street, the handicrafts women and the Tamil book stalls and then hopped across to the talk show to assist Deepika there and then to the food counters. Harihara Sudhan, a student of class 11 also spared his time amidst his busy schedule of studies and classes.
The weekend shows are a challenge at the festival as they are all conducted one after the other and the major contests - kolam, pallankuzhi and dayakkatam attract more than 100 participants. The team of volunteers at the backstage, talk show, food counters, info desk multitasked to be at the kolam area and then moved on to their respective posts. Joining the team is Sundar who sees to the kolam event till the prize distribution. He has been doing this for six years now.
Kalavathy, another regular volunteer for the weekends, helps out at the traditional games contest every year and she did so this year too. Kamala, a young girl in class 9, registered with us to volunteer on weekends this year and she promptly reported at the traditional games event running about for chalk pieces for drawing dayakattam on the floor, spreading the mats and placing chairs for senior participants, distributing scoring sheets and collecting them back!
We thank you all, volunteers! Without you the festival wouldn't have been possible.
1 comment:
My weekly Jottings column ( www.vincentsjottings.blogspot.com) was on the role of volunteers. I mentioned a few names to illustrate by examples
But the column was a thank you to all, including Katir at MT and his boys and the boys/men of the three major infrastructure providers.
Also to lowprofile policemen, St Johns Ambulance help and the 7 rickshawmen who were around to organise the tour
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