GoogleServe At Magic Bus

What happens when you Google for fun? Pure magic! Here's an example of how Google spent a day with us for their 4th GoogleServe, the search giant's annual philanthropic initiative.


The warm (which eventually only got hot) Friday morning could not deter their spirit. Googlers, Magic Bus riders and of course, our kids and youth – together, around 200 of us had an absolutely fantastic time on June 17 at our Tughlaqabad location. We involved in around half-a-day of really interesting stuff – right from ice-breakers to team-building activities, all-involving games to challenge-tasks, and a tug-of-war between the community and Google to a football tournament between mixed teams.


The activities were conducted in three groups – Google, Magic Bus staff and volunteers, and the kids formed teams within those groups. Encouraging and ensuring participation for all, this also made a visual delight. It was good to see action, team-play, challenge and accomplishment, fun – all at one place in all the directions.
Some glimpses:

Moving mountains – together, we did: One of the activities at the group involved lifting and throwing away a huge, imaginary mountain that needed to be cleared to make room for further activities. With each other’s support, Google and Magic Bus were able to move it in their third attempt. Accomplishment!

Friendship, above all: In yet another activity, we had to move right, left, in, out and whatever direction possible – the only condition being that we could not let our friends’ hands go. We stretched when we moved away, adjusted when came too close, and kept a look on when we moved right and left. Good team-building exercise – seen here, all of us moving in together. What’s more, the Mentors soon added a good dose of signals to pick up – so, while ‘river’ meant ‘move’, 'ice' implied ‘hold-on’!

The ball, everybody’s friend: Nothing engages a group of 40 like a football.  We had an interesting game of handball with mixed teams. Interestingly, one of the Googlers contributed to the other team’s points by scoring a goal against his own!

Who can act, you? So can I: Here was another interesting activity – we saw some very amusing faces in this elimination game. Clicking our friends in these unusual poses was equally fun.

The event concluded with prize distribution and a few words by some kids, volunteers and team Google. Said Abhishek, from Google, “we have been engaging with a lot of organizations over this week for various causes. Here, it was different. We’ve felt good, like happens with most organizations we touch during GoogleServe. But coming to Magic Bus has made us feel happy as well. It was good fun!”. Abhishek is very fond of kids, and the kids made friends with this ‘cap-waale-bhaiya’ in no time.

The event was very well designed and conducted by team Tughlakabad – cheers to them! This happens to be a location where we have a very good girl-participation from the community, and has been recently featured by NDTV Marks for Sports campaign.

Read on to learn how sports changed thousands of lives.