If the walls could smile… -Aishwarya Upadhye, THE HINDU

The drab beige walls of the Government Children Home for Girls has just brightened up. Fairies, princesses and murals of children in vibrant blues, pinks and reds add a splash of colour to the walls.The walls in the corridors, classrooms and dormitories too are now filled with paintings that speak to the teenage girls living there, about women empowerment and girl power. ‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,’ reads one of the murals that has a girl with wings on her back and stars in her eyes.

Ken Foundation Society, a city-based non-profit organisation which works for the welfare of underprivileged children and runs initiatives for stray animals along with Manohar Chowdhury & Associates, a chartered accountancy firm, planned and executed this event. The initiative is called ‘Paint with a smile’. Forty volunteers took up paintbrushes and paints to add colour to the lives of the girls.

One of the volunteers, 23-year-old Viswa Teja, said that it was a Sunday well spent. He declared that while the back-breaking job left him physically exhausted it left him with a satisfied soul. He along with the fellow volunteers spent the day painting Jasmine, a princess from Aladdin. “There is an inexplicable sense of satisfaction when the little girls look at your art with admiring eyes ,” he says.

Ken Foundation, has undertaken initiatives such as this before. It has spearheaded three painting drives in government hospitals and other shelter homes. “The idea is to add a dash of colours and brighten the institute. Children are attracted to colourful walls and feeding their curiosity we have painted colourful alphabets and numbers,” says Santosh Pulletykurty, Founder of Ken Foundation Society.

The superintendent of the shelter, AV Sunitha is thrilled. She says, “Every girl in the home now wants to paint. While they watched the volunteers paint in first half of the Sunday, they decided to do some painting themselves in the second half. They gave rein to their own imagination as they imitated the princesses and fairies that the volunteers drew. I’m seeing such flood of creative thoughts for the first time in my tenure,” she laughs happily.

Situated in Visalakshi Nagar, the home provides shelter to over 80 girls aged between 11 years to 18 years. It was established in 2007 after the bifurcation of the State.