Education
Students Find Themselves with JLF Youth Outreach Workshop at Jayshree Periwal School
When the world is shrinking to an online platform, there are some who are still stuck with fighting for basic necessities. A few students of Jaipur’s top schools and some of rural areas come together… and try to bridge the gap.
On a cold, wintry Makar Sankrant, as the city of Jaipur wakes up to festivities and kite flying, 50 young people begin a journey that explores their sense of identity and self-esteem over the next 10 days. The extraordinary journey towards themselves is supported by Jayshree Periwal High School, Teamwork Arts, and The Yuva Ekta Foundation.
The programme aims at bringing together students from different backgrounds to help each one of them examine and understand each others’ daily lives and its complexities. Themed as ‘Finding Me – a search for identity, a search for self’, the programme discusses social justice and equity, integrating rural youth in Rajasthan with their more privileged urban counterparts, through a six-day theatre workshop.
Some of the participants come from places in Rajasthan as far off as Abu Road, Kumbhalgarh, Chittorgarh and Lakshmangarh to Amber on the outskirts of the city. There are others who live in Jaipur and have all the luxuries that life can buy. It begins tentatively — the outsiders grappling with the anxieties and timidity of being flung so far out of their comfort zone and the host children unsure of how to deal with the guests — to break barriers and bring down walls of class and language with laughter and bonhomie to weave a tapestry of wisdom and love, assimilating each story. Each one is encouraged to speak and to share without fear.
For most of the outsiders, it is the first time they have left their village or town. Wide-eyed, they have entered a proper school for the first time, and most are happy to just get away from the daily drudgery. Girls, from Doosra Dashak in Lakshmangarh are glad they can simply attend school for the first time with no fetching water, no chores to attend to and the outcomes are easy to see.
Talking to ScooNews on the last day of the programme, Pooja Kumari, Rinki bai, Nisha, Raveena, Rajkumar, Zeeshan Khan, Mahipal Singh and Ajay Kumar can’t stop talking of how comfortable they are and how much more confident. “The workshop,” says group-in-charge Iqbal Khan, “has not only built confidence in children, but also teachers like me.” Watching so many students from different strata, mingling together, doing something good has inspired him to make sure he educates his own children and help them build their future.
For the boys from Chittorgarh — Shambhu Lal, Kamlesh, Jagdish, Manoj, and Rakesh — it is simply being able to talk clearly and in English that instils a great deal of pride. are now proud to say that they have started learning to talk clearly and also in English! Mukesh, Amrit Lal and Ashok, all from the rural areas of Abu Road tell us how they now realize that talking to the opposite gender doesn’t always mean making a pass at them.
For Barkha, Devesh, Sai, Radhika and Simran, of Jayshree Periwal High School, and Anmol Gupta, Divyanshi Sarin, Ishita Khandelwal, Malya Sharma, of Class 11, Rukmani Birla Modern High School, this is a huge learning ground. They have experienced what they have studied in their geography and history books. “Lack of water? No classrooms? No English?” What had bothered them so far had been late-night parties, latest mobile phones or fashion. The lack of water or girls their age walking long distances to fetch it was something they had believed existed only in books! Reality check!
What the children have learned with each other will now show its outcome in different schools of Jaipur over the next four days of the festival as they perform across the city in eight schools and a community, inviting other young people to share their journey.
The children from rural areas hope to be heard by the students of the city’s prestigious schools and the children of prestigious schools hope to be heard by their counterparts in other city schools who tread on a different path. And both groups hope to find themselves… a new self within the existing self, accepting others just as they are, dealing with everyday issues of growing up … empowering themselves and future generations.
Participating schools:
1. Jayshree Periwal High School
2. Jayshree Periwal International School
3. Maharani Gayatri Devi Girls School
4. Sawai Man Singh Vidyalaya
5. Rukmini Birla Modern High School
List of NGOs:
1. Digantar, Jaipur
2. Doosra Dashak, Lakshmangarh & Alwar
3. Jan Chetna Sansthan, Abu Road
4. Buniyad Sansthan, Kumbhalgarh