With story sessions, dance workshops and games coaching, summer camps for children in the city offer myriad ways of keeping your kids engaged throughout the vacation. But at Learning Alternatives (LA) Centre For Beyond School Experiences, a group of kids have been on a month-long ‘Make a difference’ activity to learn and create awareness on autism this summer.
This is the first time Prasanth Gangadharan, the founder of LA, is introducing a summer programme with a social commitment. “This is the first edition and it was just for children between the ages of 11 and 14. The six children who participated came up with some brilliant work,” he says.
The group of six — Anand B. Prathap, Govind B. Nair, Amrita S. Rajeev, Adithya Prakash C., Govind P. Namboothiri and Anjitha Prakash — had been working on various activities like poster designing, script writing for a street play and making a short film, all focused on autism awareness, with the help of Amrita Vinil, one of the teachers at LA.
“The aim was to put them in a team and ask them to work together, while making them aware of social issues, which can help shape their character and outlook towards the world around them,” says Prasanth. The children being in the formative and most curious years of their childhood, Prasanth believes this is the best time to start introducing them to some of the realities of the world.
Parents’ challenges
As part of the campaign, the children got to interview parents of children with special needs to understand the different challenges they face. “We got an idea of how life is for children with special needs as well as their parents. Most of them face discrimination in society and many face alienation. That needs to change,” says Anand. At the same time, ‘Make a Difference’ group learned that such kids usually have special talents too. “Some are exceptional in mathematics while others have great memory that they tap into while painting and drawing. That was a revelation for me,” says Govind.
The group visited National Institute of Speech and Hearing (NISH) where they interacted with students as well as therapists, even learning the basics of sign language. The experience, all six of them agree, was overwhelming for one particular reason. “We were the challenged there as everyone else was communicating so well using the sign language. It was a real learning experience for us,” adds Anand.
Team-building exercise
But the toughest part of the project, children say, was poster-making. Anand says, “We had to design, draw and colour it ourselves. That took some time and effort”. ‘Make a difference’, more than anything, is a team-building exercise and the poster making, Prasanth says, presents the perfect opportunity. “To make those posters, they had to first understand what autism is and how it affects people. It also demands a particular aesthetic sense and decision-making regarding how it should be executed. All this will help instil a sense of responsibility while encouraging them to be creative,” he adds. The posters has been displayed at different parts of the city.
‘Make a difference’ posters
The project will come to an end this Sunday at Manaveeyam Veedhi with a street play on autism, written and performed by the ‘Make a difference’ team. The students have been training under Kanchan Avchare, a theatre artiste from Maharashtra, who is in Kerala to learn Kalaripayattu and Kathakali. “I have never done anything on autism before and it was a challenge to work this topic. But training the kids itself has been wonderful experience,” says Kanchan. A short film on the month-long project too is being made.
Although the project ends on Sunday, the children say they will take what they have learned with them to their friends in school and will continue to spread awareness on autism wherever they can to make a difference.
The street play will be staged at 5.30 pm on Sunday.
