Keertha Kumar is a 10 year old child studying in Class V in Thiruvottiyur West, Chennai.  His mother is the sole bread winner of the family supporting her 3 children after her husband walked out of the family.

His teachers branded him as 'extremely unmanageable' since he is very mischievous and is a slow learner.  He has difficulty in identifying words and in interacting with his fellow classmates.  He spends most of his time in school playing with children from higher classes.  Keertha Kumar is an isolated student in his class.

NalandaWay's Arts in Education class in his school commenced in the second week of October. Keertha Kumar's interest was piqued and he did not venture out to play during the class.

Keertha Kumar mighty pleased after finishing his activity 

He followed all the instructions and was eager to do NalandaWay's activity.   His involvement was drastic and unexpected making his teachers exclaim "He is one happy child there".  For someone thought to be a slow learner, he was able to understand the concept, follow instructions and finish the activity.  His drawing and the usage of colours was a step ahead of other children.  To his teacher and to our delight, he is now looking forward to further NalandaWay's sessions.

Healing through Art

Kanavu Pattarai, our Workshop of Dreams is on at CSI school in Sriperambadur, Kancheepuram district in Tamil Nadu.   

These are healing workshops for underprivileged children where they identify their most troubling personal issues, find solutions to common social problems, work on building themselves and their community.   

Yesterday, with clouds threatening to rain, 26 excited and restless children of Standard 8 could not wait for the workshop to begin.   

Activity for the day - Drawing Modern Art based on an personal impactful life incident.  

Boys meditating 

Girls contemplating harder 

The children were seated in a circle and were asked to meditate for a few minutes.   With eyes remaining closed, and the sound of waves playing from a speaker, the children were asked to imagine one sad and one happy memory from their lives.   The feelings and details from that day were asked to recollect.  A few minutes after this, the children were instructed to use colours and patters that best described their emotions on that day.  The painting would be their diary, a personal journal where they record their feelings. 

Drawing with complete focus

It was amazing to see what the children came up with - 

• Immense anger due to abandonment by father and mother struggling to make a living 

• Distress when watching parents fight 

• Happy on remembering day out at the beach 

• Spending time with friends giving great pleasure 

Art in making 

It was touching to watch children get in touch with their emotions and paint it gloriously.  What better modern art? 

Unconventional Team Building

In June NalandaWay decided to have its first off-site team building trip.  The vision was to go trekking in Kodaikanal, camp outdoor and have surprise team building activities sprinkled in between. 

Beautiful Kodai 

DAY 1:  Reached Kodai with a lot of bonhomie. An hour’s drive from the city was our base camp.  The  plan was to start trekking before noon, but there was no sight of our trekking guide for what seemed like an eternity. 

When he finally turned up and we took our first steps, the skies opened up.  We scurried to our vehicles for the rain to abate.  After about 30 minutes, with just a light drizzle and with garbage bags as raincoats we resumed the trek.  Barely 10 minutes into the trek there was a blood curling shriek from one of the female employees as she spotted leeches on her legs.  From that moment it was pandemonium galore.  We were told to walk fast, aka run, and not mind the leeches.  There was running, crying and shrieking in a continuous cycle. The path seemed endless, we turned back mid way to repeat the cycle of running, crying and shrieking.  Not all were crying and shrieking, but surely everyone ran for their lives.

We tumbled back on the road with feet, legs covered with leeches that had came out after the rains.  There was a frantic effort to pull them off.  Blood was trickling down our legs like sweat after an intense run.  A scene out of a comic horror movie.

We made our way back to the camp in heavy downpour.  There was shed acting as make-shift kitchen with its sides open. We huddled around cooking fire in the ‘kitchen’ with no electricity. We were wet, bleeding with leech bites, but we sang, swapped stories, and played dumb charades.   Retired into tents for a listless sleep.

Our bedrooms  

DAY 2: Following a sumptuous breakfast, we started our trek to a waterfall.  It had the promise of swim, bath, and washing of previous day’s nightmare.  We walked for over one hour only to realise we had just reached the point of descend, and boy, did we descent.  Steep, very steep and rocky, inducing acrophobia and never ending.  Then the downpour – dense and causing landslides.  We scurried yet again and huddled in a room at a farm used for drying garlic.   There we were, packed in that room full of garlic, eating rusk and mixture, watching the guide doze off wondering what did we get into.

Once the rain abated a show of hands to continue or return had a majority opting to continue.  With this decision came new challenges.  One, as we learnt from day 1, leeches would be out post rains.  Two, the ground turned slippery and we were in flip flops. Three, most significantly, the guide did not seem to know the best way to get to the waterfall.

We resumed nevertheless.  Our boss was leading the way on a slippery descent.  He fell.

We were in a single file behind him. Everyone stopped mid way amidst walking falling, taking a step or drinking water.  There was absolute silence.  His left arm was twisted at the elbow in an angle that can be described as alarming.  No more choices. We had to get back to sanity and civilization at the earliest.  Boss made an arduous climb up with a staff and local help to a hospital in Kodaikanal. While rest make a painful climb back.

Before the fall, during the descend 

Chief Operating Officer decided enough of drama and made us pack up from the camp.  Kodaikanal city here we come! We find the boss in the city with his arm looking normal, in pain but in good spirits.

Phew!

DAY 3: Walked around the city, ate, talked, ate, talked, slept and left for home sweet home.

Happy to be getting back 

A sizable staff was new, a few working from Delhi, Coimbatore and Andhra Pradesh.  In 3 days we learnt more about one another than months at work.  We saw each other tested, troubled, resilient and strong.  What better team building than a trip with misadventures?  

FUNDANGO goes to Schools

We are excited to share with you that our first batch of FUNDANGO are out for distribution today!

In three huge vans our three teams today took the treasure FUNDANGO chest to almost 9 schools.


The  Spunky kids helping to set up FUNDAGO at a school in Shenoy Nagar

                       Vidhya explaining to the teachers on how to use FUNDANGO




The Headmaster worried about the safety of the Lenovo tab and Vidhya assuring her! 

Acquainting with FUNDANGO

NalandaWay staff is getting ready to distribute the FUNDANGO kits to schools in Chennai.  But not before they get acquainted with it!

 

Gomanthi Shankar instructing on how to use FUNDANGO to the staff 

Our Staff soaking it in 

Fun begins begins with....

FUNDANGO is a treasure chest filled with goodies to arouse curiosity in children and bring out their creativity.    NalandaWay plans to distribute 25 FUNDANGOS to Chennai Primary Schools.  

If the kids want to draw, there are supplies to make paintings, puppets and go wherever their creativity leads them. 

They can dive into world of books in Tamil and English on wildlife, famous personalities, interesting places, things to do, fun stories and amazing poems.

Music instruments like small drums and Kanjera and others are available to bring out the

AR Rahman in them!

There are board games to play and Oh WAIT….a Lenovo tablet awaits the kids! The tablet is loaded with over 70 demo videos on painting, drawing, sketching and the likes.

The idea of FUNDANGO is for the kids to open the chest, pick what interests him or her and just roll with it.  Self leaning with no structure and following only curiosity can show amazing results in learning.   Our small endeavour in this process.

So let the fun begin! 

Lending an 'ear' to teachers

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Lights, Camera, Laughter!

I am pleased to share with you NalandaWay's 'Story of the Month' View this email in your browser

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Add a splash of colour in a child's life today!

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Dream Catchers

I am pleased to share with you NalandaWay's story of the month. Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.

Dream Catchers  Dear Friend, At the outset, I would like to thank you for supporting us in our journey towards helping thousands of disadvantaged children achieve through arts. Having co-facilitated our 'Kanavu Pattarai' initiative- which helps heal adolescent children from exploitative backgrounds through art, I would like to share Altaf's story with you.  Altaf is a shy 14-year old studying at the Corporation School in Chindadripet, Chennai. An introvert by nature, he is the typical quiet child who maintains a low profile and prefers to be invisible in front of his teachers. Altaf’s shyness largely stems from his lack of confidence and inability to express/communicate clearly. Any one of these two problems on its own is quite enough to pull someone down harshly, but for Altaf it was a deadly duo! His fledgling wings were already becoming numb to ambitions. When Altaf came to our ‘Kanavu Pattarai’ (KP) camp, he continued to retain his shy demeanour and quiet ways. His participation in camp activites was moderate and he wasn’t quite able to overcome his fears. The biggest challenge came when he, along with a couple of his classmates, had to give a presentation on  ‘Ideal India’. The presentation would basically have to entail the students’ perspective on how they wanted their country to be. In the previous activities, Altaf would normally let his teammates do the talking, but this time my co-facilitator- Bhagya insisted that each person face the audience and speak. It was not insistence by authority but insistence by concern. Unfortunately insistence alone was not sufficient to make Altaf talk before an audience. He stammered, forgot, trembled, gave up and broke down. The facilitator switched from insistence to persistence. She simply would not let Altaf give up. She took Altaf outside the hall and asked the others to continue their presentations.  A few minutes later, the door opened and Altaf entered the scene. Bhagya had shown Altaf a new way to combat his nemesis. He stood up to the audience, established assertive eye contact and fluidly used orchestrating gestures of hands to aid his presentation. Such was his transformation that on the fourth day of the camp, when he and his classmates were asked to put up an exhibition of their artworks at DakshinaChitra, Altaf took the lead and passionately spoke about his group’s vision for ‘Ideal India’. He explained in detail to visitors about his artwork, the activities that were conducted during camp- and this was even to European travellers despite a language barrier! So the question is, What did ‘Kanavu Pattarai’ do to him and many others like him? Meaning a ‘workshop of dreams’ in Tamil, KP essentially uses arts as a medium to boost self-esteem, confidence, clarity of thought, curiosity and social skills among young children. Most kids who participate in the camp go home as transformed individuals and hopefully carry on the good vibes with them even later on. Your support to the project could go a long way in bringing more children like Altaf to the KP camps. Why don’t you make a contribution today? No amount is small So long,   Gomathi Shankar Trainer   Donate here to support NalandaWay

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I hate arts!

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I hate arts! “Why should I learn the arts?” “I hate Arts.” “How long is today’s training?” “When are the coffee and tea breaks?” These were a continuous volley of questions that came in from one of our participants- Geetha, at our Teachers’ Training Program.  She was very smartly dressed and intelligent, but the defiance in her body language was loud and clear.  The queries came in on the first day of the training and my colleague and I were both amused and flustered at this questioning- because the other participants were keenly observing this exchange and gauging our response.  We let Geetha rant, gave her a patient hearing and promised her that the 5 days spent with us would help her and her peers open new avenues both in terms of relationships and learning. She was not convinced but continued to be a reluctant participant, often disrupting our schedule and looking at us with a bored expression. Geetha was one of the 25 teachers who participated in our Achieve through Arts program. The program focuses on improving the 5 Cs among teachers - communication, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and class management. As part of the program, teachers get an opportunity to interact with art experts and are also trained in stage mechanics, role plays and pure art works. It helped teachers like Geetha create a fun learning environment for their students. Children now find the learning process more engaging as core subjects are integrated with art.  This motivates them to attend school regularly and has led to reduced dropouts and absenteeism among them. Besides that it also helps teachers in their personal development and shedding their inhibitions in expressing themselves. As the days progressed in the teachers training program, the ice thawed and Geetha surprised herself, her peers and even us through her unique art works, quick wit and ability to understand the process and help her peers. Her histrionics were the highlight of the workshop. The program gradually influenced her to become uninhibited – sometimes stretching on the floor during the art sessions, establishing eye contact with us, incessant exploration and losing track of time by saying” Oh! I didn’t realize it was time for a coffee break!” Underlining all this was the gentle nudge, encouragement and appreciation which brought on a small shy smile to her face and a murmur questioning, “Is my work really good?” It was now our turn to smile as we were convinced that our program design works!!! Where is Geetha today? She is the most popular teacher who brings out the best in her children! Her class is the most motivated with constant encouragement and incentives. They flock to her as she has a story to tell them everyday, helps them explore and learn the concepts through the creative activities she designs for them – truly helping them ‘Achieve through Arts’   Cheers, Uma Viswanathan Head - Projects Donate here to support NalandaWay

Follow on Twitter | Friend on Facebook | Forward to Friend  Copyright © 2014 NalandaWay Foundation, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website Our mailing address is: NalandaWay Foundation AH-206, 1st Floor, 3rd Street, Anna Nagar, Chennai 600040 India Add us to your address book unsubscribe from this list | update subscription preferences

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