Shram, Kushadevi, Boudh, Bal Bayabsai, Suthakhan…

We are in week 4 already! How did we get there? The Children and the team have been so busy we have had no time to update the blog, but we have lots to tell……..this last week has involved some theatre improvisations from the children that at times tell truly harrowing stories but the young participants are still managing their smiling selves that we see week in week out and continuing on with the rest of the work with commitment and enthusiasm. However we adult facilitators are finding it hard to imagine how the children are able to cope with the difficulties, hardship, discrimination, and more often than not violence, they face everyday.

Through various methods planned carefully by the project’s team the group are learning to be upfront about the problems they are facing and are able to devise possible solutions to try and improve their educational environments. In just over a week’s time the first of 5 ‘in context’ events will begin and each group will present their ideas to all the relevant stakeholders in the community and local NGO’s. They have devised performances to form part of a Forum Theatre workshop where audience members, made up of the children’s employers, family members, teachers, community leaders and development workers, will be invited to work with the children to formulate ideas of how to change the situations the children have presented. This will be followed by a short film outlining the project’s process and the children’s views on their formal and informal education and how to make it more enjoyable and crucially more effective. The audience and participants will then be invited to take part in a discussion on how to action the ideas presented during the event. So……fingers crossed……please send some positive energy this way! The more effective we can make the events, the more difference the children create, not only themselves but for many other children in their communities.