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Is it an office, is it a business house, is it a charitable institution?

No, Banjara is none of the above

Banjara Academy just happened, and its reach has grown over the decades. It currently touches more lives than it ever did before. The fact that the number of people benefitting from our association is ever increasing is what we would like to claim as our major achievement. The fact that we have made many people sit up and pay attention to many hitherto ignored or misunderstood issues involving human relationships, child upbringing, etc is what we regard as our foremost achievement.

Our efforts have been acknowledged by many organizations over the years. Our online short-term and long-term courses and classroom courses on counselling skills have been appreciated and recognized as very useful and at times indispensable in the understanding of human relations by many academic institutions, corporates, hospitals, etc. It has been very heartening to see that many of our students have been employed for their counselling skills in different organizations around the country, and the world. Here are just a few of them:

Rotary International, Kidwai Institute of Oncology, Institute of Human Resources Development, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, YMCA, Sudatta, Defence Institute of Quality Assurance, Navabharath Trust, the Indian Air Force, Acharya Patashala, Senior Citizen’s Clubs, various centres for disabled, most reputed universities and educational institutions have appreciated our services and have associated with us frequently in the conduct of our many programs. We would like to proudly and humbly acknowledge that some of the most prestigious institutions and organizations invite us frequently to conduct training, provide counseling, or train their trainers.

Mission

Banjara Academy wishes to be known as an institution with a heart. It is committed to improving the quality of life of the people it touches in its journey. We believe that every human being is unique, with immense untapped potential. Our mission is to open the doors for the flow of emotions, energy and release the potential. Do join us on this road less travelled.

We are playing, and we will continue to play, a role in helping human beings understand each other better, thereby helping improve interpersonal relationships. This significantly enriches lives through empowerment.  It is our constant endeavor to help individuals build their self-esteem, again a very crucial element in improving the quality of life.

The doors of the Banjara Academy are – and will always remain open to individuals who seek guidance in child, adolescent, family, and inter-personal emotional issues. We consider ourselves blessed whenever we make a positive difference to the well-being of anyone who comes to us.

We believe in the mission -
“Enriching Life Through Empowerment”

We not only provide free counselling to anyone who walks in, calls us, or writes to us, but also extend our services to nine public hospitals where patients and care givers need emotional support.

We believe that anyone can be trained in the vital fields of psychological counselling, life skills training and career guidance. Hence, we have constantly been endeavoring to train as many people as possible, so that the ripple effect reaches out to people at large. We have very convenient face-to-face part-time programs suiting people of all backgrounds and ages, and for those who cannot come and attend, we also have on-line programs.

Banjara Academy

We are available for you.....

 

Every baby and small child has an innate desire and curiosity to explore, learn and acquire skills. 

Adults find it so difficult to hold back toddlers who wish to move around all over the place and investigate everything within their reach. They use all their senses to see, listen, touch, taste & smell whatever they come across.

As the child grows older, he is sent to school to get ‘educated’, but all his motivation and desire to learn reduces.  He then has to be forced to listen to the teacher, take notes, do calculations, complete his homework, and ‘mug up’ for exams. Is it the fault of the student, or is it the fault of all of us adults who kill the curiosity and the joy of learning?

Instead of blaming the system or authorities, each one of us can, and should, do our bit to rekindle the spark of learning in any child we interact with, and send him off on a path of growth to become a capable adult.

It’s not difficult.

We can be rightfully proud of ourselves

Patients treated in American hospitals have lower death rates if they are treated by doctors who were trained in foreign countries than at American universities – and these foreign doctors include many from India.  This was the result of a survey done by Harvard University, covering as many as 1.2 million elderly patients.

In the US, international medical graduates are mostly from India, the Philippines, and Pakistan.

The study questions the perception that some people may have that the quality of care provided by international graduates may not be on par with US- trained doctors. “America has a history of attracting the best and brightest from around the world and that appears to be true in medicine as well. We hope that we are able to maintain that openness because the biggest beneficiaries of these doctors coming to the US have been the American people” said senior author Ashish Jha, and I do hope Mr. Donald Trump is listening.

 

Bilingual Advantage

Those of you who feel burdened because you need to study two or more languages, let us see some advantages of being bilingual:

Overall, the bilingual outperformed the monolingual speakers on memory tests. Bilingual people were also on an average five years older than the monolingual participants.

Bilingual people tend to have better functional connectivity in frontal brain regions which helps them maintain better thinking skills and withstand the damages to the brain. Constantly switching between different languages causes structural brain changes creating a “neural reserve” that helps bilingual people resist mental deterioration.

Bilingual people also have better ‘neural compensation’—the brain looks for alternative pathways to help maintain thinking skills and compensate for the loss of brain structure that comes with aging.

Speaking 2 or more languages may slow down mental decline and eventually help you keep away from dementia, one of the worst things that can happen to you in old age, for which there is no cure.

 

Gratitude is a wonderful habit that can enrich your life significantly.

It is not the same as Thankfulness. We can be thankful for something that we wanted and received, and hence we desire to have more.

When we develop Gratitude, we are thankful for something we received without wanting, expecting or anticipating – and we feel a sense of fulfilment without desiring more.

It makes you feel happy, positive, and helps you overcome failures or disappointed.  You can even have gratitude towards those who treated you badly, because you became strengthened by their behaviour.  You can learn from failures. You feel connected to everyone around you – and you will never experience loneliness. Learn to look at only the good side of people around you.

Just start off with making a journal of all that you received as blessings or gestures or gifts every day…. And read the journal periodically.