Dyson's diary:
""The seven day trip to India was an incredible experience. On our travels we saw many weird and wonderful things, amazing places and cultural experiences. We also witnessed first-hand the very real challenges faced by a third world country.""
“Today we headed off for a Red Dust program at DY Patel Stadium. This venue is a privately owned 55,000 seat stadium that recently hosted IPL cricket finals. Dr Patel also owns a university and hospital next door.
Today we worked with a number of youth from an orphanage in Mumbai. Some of the group were deaf and a few others had physical disabilities. This added some more complexities in addition to the language barriers, but nothing that couldn’t be overcome with enthusiasm.
One thing that is universal to all youth is they want to have fun. We ran footy, cricket, soccer and basketball clinics as well as gaming activities for the young people. It was clear that many of the participants had not had access to a lot of formal or informal sport, particularly the girls.
It was great to see them absolutely love participating in and learning all the games –especially AFL.
In the afternoon the groups worked inside doing craft and participated in a Bollywood Dance workshop. This was really great watching the group shine. It is fair to say that the Red Dust Role models are better at sport than they were at Bollywood dancing. Never the less we all had a great time and provided some additional entertainment to the locals.
It took about two hours to get there in torrential rain that had to be seen to be believed. Once we go there we had a great night with the Consul General and his staff from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.”
