Enter e-Balavihar!
With in-person Bala Vihar classes having to be cancelled, we at Chinmaya Mission Boston had to quickly come up with an effective alternative in order to minimize the disruption to our most precious members, our Bala Vihar children. The remote learning technology was available, and thanks to Chinmaya Ramdoot (Bridgewater, NJ) an approach had been defined and tried out. But with just 4 days until Sunday, our team had very little time to adapt it to our needs, train our sevaks & sevikas, and inform our parents about
the new format. We are extremely happy to report that with His grace and blessings we
were able to make this happen, with our first classes going online on March 15th.
CM Boston, including our 3 satellite centers, held more than 70 online sessions on day one! We were able to move from in-person classes to online classes without missing a beat. Dr. Shashi Dwarakanath ji, the Spiritual Guide of Chinmaya Mission Boston, was able to conduct 5 Adult Satsang sessions that day! Teachers reported outstanding attendance! From our 3-year old Shishus to our 18-year old J-CHYKs, there were reports of excellent engagement and participation. Parents expressed their appreciation: “It is nice to continue the routine amid the chaos. Our boys loved the idea of being on the screen like ‘Office meetings’.”; “Thank you for making Vidwath’s morning extra special with the Birthday wishes. I was wondering how to keep him at the desk for an hour but you guys had it covered. Kudos Teachers!!!”; “It has been a wonderful past few weeks with ShishuVihar, and thanks for the initiative in keeping continuity”. And kids said “…everyone was sooooo focused, no distractions or unnecessary side conversations”, “this was so awesome!”.
All sevaks and sevikas came together in true Yagna spirit, as envisioned by our dear Pujya Gurudev, to carry out His work. After all, as Shashiji said, this is an opportunity to put Vedanta into practice: to appreciate our many blessings, to remind ourselves to be humble, and to spread positive energy. With several weeks of social distancing in our near future, we are grateful to have e-Balavihar as an oasis amid the chaos, a solace for our ‘quarantined’ souls.