A one of its kind initiative, Project Aawaaz succeeded in giving many underprivileged children the thought and voice that they need for surviving today. PRAKRITI ROY visits the showcase to see how well the children have progressed
It happens very often when we feel that we should be doing something for our society, for the children who are the future. But equally often, we push that thought into the backs of our minds and carry on with our own lives — education, career, love, marriage, family.
That is why when a bunch of young people — fresh out of college or still in college — decide to actually follow their will to make a difference in society, they really can make a few heads turn. Tarang Tripathi and Vibhor Mathur are just two young people, hardly a couple of years out of college. Yet they are already making a difference in the way hundreds of underprivileged children in Delhi’s Government and low-income private schools think about the Government and other social issues.
As part of the Teach For India programme, Tarang co-founded with Vibhor a special project called Project Aawaaz. When formulating what the project would be like, they were certain that they “did not want to create something that engaged children only for a week or two”. Instead, they enlisted the help of about 75 volunteers, mostly college students, who held special sessions with these children at 45 classes, almost 1,000 children between the ages of 6-12.
Project Aawaaz is not about literacy; it is about the education of these children and the kind of exposure they should be getting from a very young age. It is a unique training initiative to prepare students to be well-informed and confident leaders of tomorrow. Classes for creative writing, artistic skills (painting and poster-making), acting as well public speaking were conducted by the mentors. But the most important things are the topics on which the children were taught to ponder upon - politics, religion, caste, gender-sensitivity, environment, rights, entrepreneurship, public policy etc. Having mentors who are young, confident and getting educated can do a great deal to inspire these young and gullible minds to follow in their footsteps as well.
At MCD and low-income private schools, the environment for the children is not conducive for the students to be thinking about socially relevant issues. Through the initiative, Tarang and Vibhor aimed at making children familiar with these issues. And once they became familiar, they had to express them through the Project Aawaaz Showcase 2.0 that took place on December 12, 2015.
There were some children writing an essay on the topic ‘If I was the Prime Minister of India, I would….’ or ‘How will I use education to solve the problems around me’; some were making posters on the topic ‘Vision 2030’ or ‘Women’s Empowerment - an equal world for women’; some put up street plays on hard-hitting relevant issues of education of the girl child and caste inequality; some participated in Just-a-Minute and debate competitions speaking on topics like ‘Meaning of Rights’. It is indeed amazing to see how the minds of young children can be moulded to think about much larger issues.
Sustaining a social initiative like this requires capital and Tarang says that they were lucky enough to have been able to raise enough money to carry out their initiative. “We raised Rs2.5 lakh from a crowdfunding campaign. For this showcase, our partners are Hachette Books and Jiwan Publishing House, who have really pitched in a lot,” Tarang says.
The showcase was a successful event, a reiteration of the goal that Project Aawaaz was aiming for. The young guns involved with founding and organising this event can surely inspire many more like themselves.