Veshan Mukti Kendra

On Saturday we took 24 boys from the Jamalpur class to the Veshan Mukti Kendra. This is an organization out of a cancer hospital educating the public about the dangers of tobacco along with the nature and causes of cancer. There are lots of rooms to walk through which have diagrams, pictures, and graphs in both Gujarati and English going through what is a cell, what is cancer, how does it occur, treatments, prevention etc. There is a room full of very very disgusting pictures of cancers. The information focuses on the dangers of tobacco smoking and chewing since that is very very common in India. The center was surprisingly very professional - both in the way they are setup and how they conduct their informational sessions. They have more and more young people that come to the center since more and more young people chew tobacco in India. They also showed the kids a video drama about the dangers of tobacco. At the end, the kids went to the mandir (temple) that is built into the hospital and had to make a promise to stop all addiction and to never start again. Talking to the staff there it was amazing to hear the lack of education people have for the importance of preventative medicine. The organization and hospital has done many types of outreach to make people more aware and to get them to get regular pap smears etc, but people are very reluctant or uninterested. But it is positive to see an organization that is at least aiming to increase awareness.