Dream A Dream

Dream Creative Arts

Monday, 16 August 2010

Annaswamy School

Facilitator: Namrata Rajesh

Class 6, 22 Children

Activity: Independence Day Painting

Every once in a while, children strengthen our belief that complete education goes beyond the academics and children have tremendous potential irrespective of the circumstances they come from. At a recent Creative Arts session, children proved once again that life skills are critical and help in completing the cycle of education.

Focus of the activity:

1. To see if the children understand the given instructions well
2. To see if the children use previously taught techniques on their own
3. To discuss the National Flag: What the colours on the flag represent? What the blue wheel in the center of the flag represents?

The children were given pencil colours and wax crayons and black lead pencils and asked to draw something which exhibited the spirit of Independence Day. The children were mainly asked to use the colours from the Tricolour and use their own creative imagination to come up with something and not draw the flag as a whole.

13 out of 22 painted the typical flag hoisting scene. The remaining 9 children understood and executed the activity brilliantly! These 9 children did not copy from any other source and used their creative imagination.

Some examples of what the children came up with included:

Dinesh: Drew a picturesque landscape with orange sun, orange mountains, white river, blue fish, green pastures and other beautiful birds, etc. It was excellent even in terms of a composition!

Pavithra K: Drew floral designs in a vase. Again she did not copy. And for an original floral design, it was simply too good!

Bhavya: Drew two coconut trees and a huge tortoise in the middle of it. The girl seems to love green as the entire paper looked green and she had used very little orange. Well, choice of colours is a personal one, the good thing is she did something very original and had fun with it.

Vinodhini E: Drew a simple house and coloured its roof with alternate orange, white and green stripes adorned by blue trees! The girl drew blue trees!! Never witnessed anything more original than that!!

Zahir Hussain: The usually noisy attention seeker was quiet in the class for a surprising change and did a marvellous job with the activity! Marvellous! Really! He was the only one who coloured the entire paper without sparing any blank space (The children were made to colour the entire paper in the Resist effect activity). His painting was the most bold and on the borderline of abstraction. He divided the paper into two, one half orange and the other half green. And drew various other things on and around it in white and blue and also orange and green.

Reflections:

The facilitators discussed the names and meanings of the colours on the flag. The children were taught and explained new words like the tricolour, unity in diversity, peace, prosperity. The children were asked to write down these words in their homework books so that they do not forget it.

The children sang two lines from “Jhanda ooncha rahehe humara” (Let our flag fly high) before winding up the class.

“The children were asked to draw something which exhibited the spirit of Independence Day. Paintings were original to the core. The choice of colours was personal but simply it was too good! It was excellent even in terms of a composition!” ~ NAMRATA NADKARNI, Creative Art Facilitator

Dream Adventure Camp – Honemaradu, Phase II

NGO Partner: Round Table School

Class – X,

Age: 14 to 16 years

In 2006, nearly 6000 students (figure form a ‘goodparenting’ press release) committed suicides and four years later; the numbers have only grown further. Exams and exam related stress, peer pressure, parental problems and family issues have been the reasons for this rampant increase in the number of adolescents and young adults committing suicides.

It is therefore important for every parent and every school to ask what really goes on in the adolescent mind before it decides to take that final fatal step? How does one offer support and help a child tackle exam pressure and the choices that wait for him as he embarks on a new journey?

The relevance of developing life skills in a child is further highlighted in the above case. Every child needs to understand that the attempt is more important than the achievement and if life does not go as planned it is not the end.

Life skills such as overcoming difficulties, problem solving, managing conflict, confidence and self esteem play a very important role in a child’s overall development.

This year’s first Dream Adventure Phase II camp was held from May 25^th to May 28^th at Honemaradu, Shimoga District for our NGO partner – the Round Table School. With 46 kids and 7 volunteers and 3 key facilitators, the camp run smoothly and involved two demanding activities like route finding and a long island challenge.

Divided into two groups with an adult child ratio of 5:23, one group was asked to plan an entire camp out and had to trace their route to a village called Kalchor. The second group had to find a village temple on the other side of the reservoir.

These challenges did not just offer physical challenges of hiking a tough route & paddling 8 Kms, it also required group co-ordination & planning the entire expedition including equipment, supplies & grocery and individual roles & responsibilities.

Group I – Destination: Kalchor Village, Hiking & route finding

On the day of the challenge, the group on the hike took the wrong route. Responsibilities were now becoming a burden with some members crumbling under pressure & exhaustion. However, the group decided to continue on the wrong route determined to find the village. The juicy cashew fruits we plucked on the way added to some excitement. By 5PM, after many discussions & disagreements on the way, the group arrived at the right village & located the village home we were to stay at night.

Group II –Village Temple, Paddle across the reservoir

The second group that had to paddle across the reservoir to find the village temple got lost & reached the wrong island. To add to the groups woes, the power of wind forced the coracles in the wrong direction. The group was tired & had lost confidence to continue. The leaders now had to step in to draw the correct map on the mud & encouraged them to give it one last shot.

It must be the magic peanuts & jaggery that got the group to agree & finish the challenge. After 4 hours of paddling, cutting through the reservoir, the group made it to the shore and hiked another 10 minutes with their supplies.

The Celebration

Both groups were tired but jubilant on arriving at their destinations, cooked their meals, sat together for dinner under a beautiful moonlight. Surprisingly, no one complained of body ache or exhaustion. The pain had now become the pleasure.

The Circle Time –

Geetha,”I realised I was never unhappy cooking for the group. I only wanted everyone to get food to eat on time after so much hard work. I don’t know if I would do this at home”

Lepakasha, “In my coracle, two people didn’t know how to paddle and the third member was very exhausted. I was the one to paddle throughout & I was angry. My arms were aching but I didn’t want us to be left behind. So I decided to keep paddling because eventually we would reach our destination.”

Yeshoda, “I realised it is important to have a goal, as it gives you a sense of direction.”

Manja adds to Yeshoda’s comment, “I agree we need to have a goal. But we should always have another plan. If I don’t score what I want in my Xth exams, I should look for another option and not think it’s the end.”

Anand, Head, Round Table School, “I wanted to bring the entire Xth class together in the beginning of the year including the key teachers who will be taking your classes. I am very glad to see that none of you gave up no matter how difficult things got. Keep this camp in mind whenever you face tough times in the year ahead.”

We believe, through the experience these children have had at the Dream Adventure Program, they will be much better equipped  to deal with challenges in their daily lives.

Shalini Menon

Associate Manager | Dream A Dream

Eleven years of bringing smiles to children’s faces, eleven years of making children believe in themselves, eleven years of volunteering, eleven years of paving the path for hundreds of brighter futures,  eleven terrific years of Dream A Dream!!

Eleven years ago my life stumbled upon a serendipitous time. I woke up one weekend morning expecting to spend the day like any other weekend in Bangalore – hanging with friends, riding my motorcycle and losing my way somewhere between Koramangala and Frazer town, finding new excuses to not find a gym, and maybe grabbing some prawn curry and beer at Pecos.  But life had other plans that day. I ended up spending the evening with a bunch of fascinating people discussing how we can help children from less fortunate backgrounds by giving them the opportunities and confidence to take on the real world. And so Dream A Dream was born.

We started by volunteering our time at the Freedom Foundation, a home for HIV infected children, with a simple goal of making the lives of the children there joyful, bringing smiles to their lives and giving them something to look forward to. And while confidence and hope grew in the hearts of these children, we realized we could make a real difference in children’s lives. One day at a time. One child at a time.

And now eleven years later, watching from afar, it is humbling and inspiring to see how much Dream A Dream has achieved and how many lives have changed for the better as a result. At this juncture as we celebrate Dream A Dream’s eleventh anniversary I am grateful to the eleven other co-founders – Brinda Jacob-Janvrin, Neha Arya, Pramod Ramprasad, Rahul Mathur, Rashmi Bajaj, Sandeep Wadhwa, Shweta Kothari, Supreeta Sampath, Vipul Chhabria, Vishal Talreja and Vishwa Prasad – for allowing me to be a part of something this wonderful (despite the poor humor that I regularly injected into our initial long team meetings). I am especially grateful to Vishal, who over the years has become Vish Bhai to me. His decision to give up his fast rising corporate career and become a full-time Dreamer was a turning point for the organization; and his leadership has been the guiding light for the organization as it crossed the stupendous milestone of supporting over two thousand children with over one thousand active volunteers last year. But most of all I offer my sincerest thanks to the entire family of Dream A Dream volunteers – your time and energy has made these awe-inspiring eleven years of making dreams into reality possible. I am now even more excited to see what the next eleven will bring!!

Arjun Dugal

Admirer / Supporter / Co-founder