With zealousness in her eyes and a pencil in hand, Kavya runs to a classroom and draws a comic strip, not about superhero or her dreams, but about water discolouration, a problem that has been plaguing her basti for years.
“Ma’am, I am done! When can we display my comic,” she yells from across the room, brimming with pride over her work.
“These comics empower me to become a stronger person. I have taught so many people about the severity of diabetes,” said Shantamma, a resident of a slum in Ranigarithota, who shared a personal story of her diabetes diagnosis in the form of a comic strip.
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Slum dwellers in the cities are deprived of basic healthcare due to a plethora of reasons, stunting their growth significantly. Besides, they also lack the means to voice their problems, distancing them from their right to have basic amenities.
Organisations and NGOs pledge to reach out to the underprivileged by providing them with basic amenities like healthcare and education, but The George Institute, a non-government global organisation decided to give their outreach programme a makeover.
In a first of its kind attempt, the institute has collaborated with World Comics in order to introduce the concept of sketching comic strips as a medium to highlight the plight of their communities and the hardships they face vis-a-vis health, basic needs and environment in their slums.
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The workshop was conducted at RMC School, Ranigarithota, and the people from slums in Kandrika, Rajarajeshwari Peta, Kalanagar, Vambay colony and Vaddera Colony participated in it.
The first round of this workshop was held in March and its success made them conduct a second round which concluded on Tuesday.
“Here in our workshop, we have given them all the necessities and the liberty to draw whatever they wish to,” said Sharad Sharma, founder of World Comics. He was actively involved in guiding the participants on how character should be portrayed.
“It took me a 100 workshops to figure out a way to simplify things,” he said. The participants were given a basic outline as to how people would look in particular scenarios and the further used their imagination to draw it on the paper.
The second round, which was attended by 40 participants from 10 slums in Vijayawada, witnessed a new panel of stories. With the first workshop focussing only on non communicable diseases, people participating in the second workshop took the liberty to highlight the cardiovascular diseases, environmental issues and even cases of pregnancy.
“Around 50 families in the area have tuberculosis. Most of them do not come to us because the revelation of the disease will bring a bad name to the family,” said Sasikala, an ASHA worker who is using this medium to communicate the importance of the ASHA workers.