Reaching out to the Community-A day of learning together
“Children are not things to be moulded, but are people to be unfolded.” — Jess Lair
At Shikshantar we have always believed in nurturing sustainable development in the community. From time to time and especially around festivals like Dussehra, Diwali or Christmas we have organised sessions to give experiences around art, music, story narrations to the children from neighboring schools. This has been our practice as part of our social responsibility and commitment to work with children from varied economic backgrounds.
During one such session recently organised at our Registered office-28, Jor Bagh, New Delhi 110003, children from the neighboring school thoroughly enjoyed exploring experiences on art, music, books and story time. Children began their day with collecting their energies by chanting ‘ॐ भूर्भवः स्वः ’ synchronising their voices with Didis voice and pitch. They then played a game called the ‘name game’ where they shared their names and ‘What is their favourite activity’ which helped them to know each other's names and further led to bonding.
Children thoroughly enjoyed listening to the narration of the story ‘खिचड़ी’. Later, in an interactive circle time they shared their observations on the story- “दीदी खिचड़ी तो गीली होती है और पुलाव सूखा होता है|” The children enjoyed singing songs - ‘तितली रानी, ओ तितली रानी….’, ‘ड ड ड डॉलफिन …’, ‘मेरी छोटी सी पतंग…’, with Didis and Bhaiya and insisted on singing more songs and went on to sing ‘हमनेतीन चीज़ें देखीं ’. They explored and read books of their interest from the book corner also. Their experiences were captured in their drawings where they tried to write their names as well their friends names and drew pictures from their favourite story ‘खिचड़ी’.
All in all, it was a fulfilling experience for the children and the Didis as well. We as change makers continue to work towards development of the community and further plan to do this on a quarterly basis and extend it to other communities as well.