Navsari summer camp

Forty-eight enthusiastic youngsters from Navsari, Billimora and Nasik assembled at the Bai Dosibai Kotwal Parsi Boys Orphanage in Navsari on May 1, 2013 to participate in the five-day annual summer camp sponsored by the WZO (World Zoroastrian Organisation) Trust Funds. This was the third edition of the camp.

Navsari summer camp participants

A report received by Parsiana from Simin Bharda, member of the WZO Trust Funds Navsari Local Committee mentions that each day began with kusti and prayers at the Orphanage dadgah followed by a host of activities which included aerobics, glass and pot painting, reading, gardening, games and adventure sports such as wall, net and monkey climbing as well as river and commando fox crossing, with the gung-ho youngsters imagining themselves to be local 007 operatives!

The final day of the camp, May 5, was marked by an outing to the Ajmal Gadh hills in Vansda, the site where the sacred Iranshah had been housed for 14 years, from 1405 to 1418 AC. The children labored up the hill to the memorial column commemorating this part of the Iranshah’s history. They performed the kusti prayers and participated in a humbandagi at the column. After enjoying in the vast open vistas from the hilltop the group was taken to the house of Cyrus Kasad at the base of the hill and went around the village so that they could witness first-hand how the disadvantaged lived in huts, the write-up notes. Later, at village Vaghabari, they partook of dhansak cooked over a wood fire by Sunno Godrej Kasad, before they returned to Navsari that evening.
Bharda places on record the gratitude of the WZO Trust Funds Navsari Local Committee to the trustees of the WZO Trust Funds for sponsoring this annual event, trustees of the Bai Dosibai Kotwal Parsi Boys Orphanage for permitting the use of their grounds without any charge, Paris Bakery of Bombay for supplying gratis a variety of their biscuits, the Kasads for their hospitality, and all volunteers and supporters for their hard work in making it possible for the children to have participated.