And the award goes to ...

By Little Birdy

June 22, 2010 was the deciding day when we all were keeping our fingers crossed for making the winning entry at the UK Annual Meeting Award Night!

Amidst all the curiosity, it was North West India team who did the winning goal and received the award under category for best example of ensuring eye health & social inclusion programmes are rooted in community development. The special award for lifetime contribution to Sightsavers was given to the longest serving support team to India Regional Support Team (Sahadeo Kamble, Ilda Fernandes, Mariamma Jose, Emily Sajan, Krishna Bhuvad, Shantaram Kalambate, John D' Souza and Gajanan Bandabe). Hope their travel diary on return from UK will be full of interesting stories !

North West India Area Office won an "Oscar" for a range of programme initiatives including CES approach in the Thar Desert, PPP model with SEWA Rural*

Dr Caroline Harper (CEO) with the coach of winning team Abraham George (Area Director, NWAO)*

Other selected nominations from India under different categories are given below:

• Best example of a scalable approach to eye health: South India Area Office for vision centre and paediatric outreach and India Regional Office for Cataract and Diabetic Retinopathy guidelines
• Best example of scalable approaches to education of visually impaired children: India Regional Office for development of new project design to align India Region IE programme with SIM card objectives
• Best example of enabling BPOs/DPOs to advocate effectively for members’ rights: North West India Area Office for advocacy initiatives by DPOs in Western Rajasthan
• Best example of ensuring eye health & social inclusion programmes are rooted in community development: South India Area Office for projects on village EC Committees and advocacy
• Best Programme Innovation: North East India Area Office for VMA low vision programme
• Best Support Innovation: Ranjish Kattady & India MIS team for establishment of an effective information sharing system
• Most innovative fundraising/marketing campaign: South India Area Office for Mumbai Eye Care Campaign
• The most fundraising miles: South India Area Team – 12 runners @ 6K each
• Support Team of 2010: Social Inclusion trainers (Diane, Gertrude and Praveen) for Social Inclusion workshop

This was the first time during the Annual Meeting that a trip to Buckingham Palace was organized.

(L to R) Abraham George (Area Director -North West Area Office), Archana Bhambal (Area Director-North India Area Office), Shrinivas Sawant(Area Director - South India Area Office) , Elizabeth Kurian (Regional Director - India Region) and Prasannakumar (Area Director - North East India Area Office) **

Group of delighted visitors **

*Photo Courtesy: Akbar Mehfuz Alam; **Photo Courtesy: Elizabeth Kurian

Self Analysis – A Tool to Empower Oneself

By Dr Sandeep Kulshrestha

skulshreshta@sightsavers.org “In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.”

- Deepak Chopra

How many times in life we face a situation, when we feel everything is going wrong against us? I think many a times we face these challenges, be at work place, or in relationships or elsewhere and we always feel that we are perfect, it is the others who spoil everything. Do we analyse holistically as to what could be the reasons for this and try to ponder on questions like, “Why did my boss questioned me today, what did I do which made him behave this way with me” or say, “Why was my wife in this mood today”. The answer lies in Self Analysis as it is finally the individual who has to take a call and analyse his/her strengths and limitations on a day to day basis and following can be a way in doing that;

Be still in a space of your own
Play some soothing music, preferably of a flute and be conscious about your being. Do this at your home and be alone. Don’t brood or spoil your mood. Just be yourself and think of the day gone by and in a flash, remember the low points and high points of the day and tell yourself that you will not repeat the low points again. Keep aside your ego.

Go Backwards
Whenever you have some trouble, say at workplace, go backwards in your career, in your thoughts and see whether this kind of trouble had occurred that time. If yes, then what did you do to tackle that. If you did nothing that time, this is the time to do something about it. Remember, every mistake has to result in an action plan to correct that. You cannot ever change someone else, the least you can do is to change yourself.

Write down your strengths and limitations
At every month end, most of the people check their bank balances. Its all the more better to check your “emotional abundance” and maintain a diary, where you should write your strengths and weaknesses in a particular month, along with at least one thing you would have done differently

Have a Goal Map
Develop a Goal map about what you are today and what you intend to be in future. Example; I will be a Head of my department/division and will have a house and a car of my own in 2015. It can also be a short term goal like I will not repeat this mistake ever again

Have self-esteem
Don’t do self analysis with self-pity. Analyse as if you are good enough as an individual having high self esteem and see things in a holistic perspective, with a belief that all individuals have their perceptions. Hence, self analysis is more of self awareness and the ways in which you can harmonize your life. Every human being is different and one has to accept this. But we can always try in our own way to analyse ourselves and be intelligent human beings. And, surprisingly it works as a tool to empower ourselves.

Suggested readings:
1. Goal Mapping, available at http://www.flipkart.com/goal-mapping-brian-maynes-practical-book-1842931385
2. Key To Living The Law Of Attraction, available at http://www.flipkart.com/key-living-law-attraction-jack-book-8189975846