Brahmana Kodur is our ancestral village which is about 25 km from Guntur, which amounts to about 40 min drive by car, from where we live.

Even during the years we lived in the U.S, we used to visit our village during our India trips and meet the farmers who took care of our land there. These lands have been originally owned by Ram's grandfather Sri Gunturi Venkata Subbayya garu and later have been inherited by his sons and grandsons. Ram's grandfather was known to be a very kind landlord who used to take good care of his farmers. In fact he even built a small but beautiful Rama temple in the middle of the farmers' colony for their worship and cultural activities.

During our many visits to B.Kodur, we both used to feel deeply connected to that village - the land as well as the people. But we never had the opportunity to get really involved with them or their lives.

So, when we moved back to India in 2010, one of the foremost things that we put on our agenda was to visit the village at least twice in a month and get started with a humble but sincere "Grama Seva".

Our first project was to gather the farmers' children and teach them Bhajans and Human Values. In the sacred memory of our grandfather, we made the Rama temple the venue for these EHV classes and devotional singing. By God's grace and elders' blessings, this activity has grown over the last three years - from two or three kids in the beginning to almost 25 to 30 kids who attend these classes nowadays. Even some of their parents started attending these sessions :)

During our interactions with these kids, we came to know that there are no facilities like children's library, play equipment etc anywhere in the village. All they have are school text books, exams and tutions. So we initially got this idea of arranging a bus named 'School On Wheels' for them, once a month.

This bus is built and maintained by another charity organization named Chetna, where we volunteer regularly. The bus is equipped with educational toys, videos, children's books  etc. It gets taken to one village at a time, giving a chance to the kids of that village to have a fun learning experience for a couple of hours each time.

When we requested the director of Chetna to send this bus to our village, they obliged us for a small donation to cover the fuel costs, thus giving our village kids an opportunity to have fun once in a while. During the times when the kids played on the 'School On Wheels' bus, we saw how thrilled they were to have access to such a facility and the excitement they felt was beyond words!

Encouraged by this tremendous response, we ourselves started a mobile children's library for them. We are making interesting kids' books in Telugu as well as English, available to them on a regular basis ie. during our EHV classes. This library has also been a big hit!

Next, we started working on the construction of a facility, with modern play equipment that we normally find in the city play parks.

We acquired land opposite to the Rama Mandiram and got the land cleaned up and ground leveled. We also worked with a representative of the Arihant play equipment company from Mumbai to get an estimate. He inspected the site, took measurements and marked off a 30 ft X 18 ft area for the play ground. Based on these dimensions, we selected  a slide,a double swing, an animal merry-go- round and a multiseater see-saw and an A-B exercise item for the village children. These items were made of high quality materials and brightly and attractively colored! We paid for the land, the play equipment as well as the compound wall, with the support of our family members.

The village community and the children were thrilled to see our project materialize so beautifully. The kids couldn't wait to start playing, so we had consulted the priest and had scheduled the inauguration of the play park named as "Pragati Balavikasa Kendram" on the Jan 26th of this year 2013 (Republic Day), which also happened to be a full moon day.

Since then, the farmers have been opening it daily in the evening for children to play after school. Along with their own kids, they have also been allowing other village children from outside the farmer's colony. Thus we are happy to see this project bring about a certain unity among the villagers while providing basis for all-round growth of the village children!

Pictures  of Inauguration of the play park named as "Pragati Balavikasa Kendram"

More Photos can be viewed at Photogallery Page