Stories. Why do we tell them? Why do they exist? Those questions can be answered by using terms like ‘oral histories’, ‘traditions’, ‘listening skills’ and ‘pedagogy’. All very valid. At Golpo Mela, the PeaceWorks Storytelling Festival, it is however, much more. Before the day of the festival, I had visited a centre to help with…
It was time to do something different. It was theatre time at Disha Foundation. Rahul Dey, one of the volunteers at PeaceWorks had planned to do a play with these children based on ‘ The King and the Little Man’ by K. G Subramanyan. The children showed a lot of excitement to do the play…
Why do we write? Stories, poems or plays? Rohan Haldar, a student at Kailash Vidyamandir once told me that he writes so that children will start taking an interest in the world of literature. This coming from a boy who studies in middle school. And that in the world of stories there is happiness to…
I was very nervous about my first day at Hamari Muskaan but as I entered the room I heard a loud ‘Gooood Morningg Diidii’. These children come every Saturday to St Joseph’s school accompanied by their mothers to listen to Divya and Shelly, two volunteers in the Share Stories Open Minds program, tell stories. Today…
‘We don’t know Harry Potter’, was the first reaction I got from the girls at the Child Care Centre in Chingrighata (North Kolkata), when first asked about their views on the boy wizard. This would not do, this would not do at all. So how to introduce these little fertile minds to the world of…
