Intervention to make street children 'champions of change'

Over 500 street children will get an opportunity to get a taste of conventional childhood and train under popular Bollywood choreographer Sandip Soparrkar and 63 other renowned personalities at a social arts intervention being organised here.
Beginning today, the five-day long event titled, 'Taare Zameen Par,' will see these "street connected children" at their creative best with an array of activities like dancing, theatre, adventure sports etc to participate in.
Soparrkar would be training a group of 180 children in a workshop where he will choreograph a performance depicting the unfortunate lives that these children lead on a daily basis.

"The composition has been sung and recorded by various child artistes," say organisers, the domestic chapter of Plan International, a global child rights organisation.
The event seeks to reform the futures of street children, by inculcating leadership skills in them through various forms of creative arts.
According to organisers, the initiative is designed to initiate a cadre of street connected children as 'champions of change' so as to bring them back into the system and make Delhi a begging free zone at traffic signals.

Artist Rekha Bahl and theatre activist Jaya Iyer have also come on board to teach a group of 80 children, first to create and paint masks which will then be used as costumes in a theatre piece again narrating experiences from their own lives.

Other creative activities that will be part of the intevention include the art of puppetry where the children will be taught how to make life-size puppets and create music with uncanny instruments like water bottles, cricket bats, drum sticks, aluminium containers, to which they will stomp later.
The intervention aims at exploring structural hierarchies and taboos, myths, assumptions, stereotypes, exclusion, dehumanisation, indignities emerging from ignorance and deeply embedded socio cultural beliefs to re-define equality and rights for themselves, break out of vicious circles of fear and choicelessness, and actively seek the power to transform their lives.
Besides different art forms, the children will also be taught substantive activities that will come handy in tackling real life challenges.

"Substantive activities will focus on training them on decision making and risk analysis and teach them security grips through taekwondo.
"They will also be made aware about their rights, the need for hygiene, personal boundaries, laws, and protocols in times of crisis through role playing," organisers said.
Other activities in this segment include rock climbing on a mobile wall, zorbing, zip line, net climbing, rope activities, icebreakers and water zorbing in a mobile water pool.