If there is one sentence that parents get fed up of hearing through the summer vacations, it’s “I’m bored!” Invariably, this is the lament of most kids during the vacations and the summer of 2020 has been rather unique to say the least! With the lockdown brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, children’s frustration levels and boredom are reaching new highs. 

Luckily, at XYZ (Xtremely Young Zoraostrians) the sun never sets on the fun. While kids may be on lockdown, XYZ turned the key and opened up a veritable treasure chest of activities, which had, not just the kids, but even their parents and grandparents, participating and enjoying thoroughly! The #XYZQuarantine Challenge was conducted over a period of five weeks, with participants showcasing their skill levels across 36 different challenges! The challenges were designed to test endurance, hand-eye coordination, balance, creativity, problem solving ability and dexterity. 

Challenges like Jumping Jacks, Rope Skip, Plank with a difference, Mountain Climbers, Hop Till You Drop had the members pushing the limits of their endurance while the Bottle Flip, Paper Ball Toss, Water Transfer, Coin Tower, Coin Flip, Throw the Ring, Matchstick Tower, Separate the Beans… had them testing their aim and balancing skills. Mixing creativity with healthy competition were challenges like Draw a Rainbow, Draw Some Circles, Draw Stars with Your Foot, Write XYZ. Of course, knowing our Parsi love for food, there were some challenges that revolved around this ‘favourite passtime’ of our community as well, such as Bake a Cake (microwave cake in a minute), Push up and Eat and the Dal Chawal challenge! 

Just committing to the challenge and being thoroughly engaged in doing it was a rewarding experience. But in true XYZ spirit, the competition was tough on this digital platform as well and winners were declared for every challenge with every XYZ group striving hard to claim first place – Rustom’s Rockstar, Behram’s Battalion, Cyrus’ Superstars, Themurasp’ Titans, Jamshed’s Giants, Noshirwan’s Knights, Daraius’ Daredevils, Ketayun’s Conquerors, , Artaxerxes’ Army, XYZ Seniors all had their chance to prove their mettle at the challenges. 

Says Hoshang Gotla, founder of XYZ, “Our #XYZQuarantineChallenge had a total of 2,768 participants over the last five weeks. When the lockdown started, all our groups planned activities for their members on Zoom and it worked very well. We then decided to take this on an overall XYZ platform in phases, starting with Presidents and then with President-Elects. As the initial lockdown was extended, we continued and had another round of challenges with the XYZ members and then with volunteers. 2,768 participants enthusiastically took part – we are sad that it had to end. But, we have more activities planned in the next few weeks for all to enjoy.”

This is the ‘never say die’ Zarthosti spirit; even when times are tough, we make our own silver linings! Kudos to the XYZ team for making the lockdown period a super exciting and challenging one for our young Zoroastrians!