ARTS EDUCATION: A HIDDEN TREASURE

In order to highlight the important role of arts education within and outside schools, leading experts from around the world are exchanging (25 to 28 May) their views on the subject of arts and education, thus promoting the importance of arts education in the international community. This is the second global meeting after the one held in 2006 in Lisbon.

The aim is to establish a field of common understanding on the important role that arts education plays within the international community, and facilitate the exchange of ideas, knowledge and good practices.

Much remains to be done in the field of art education at all levels, whether it be raising awareness about its introduction and implementation in various educational and social contexts, or linking up different actors and communities in order to lay the foundations for international cooperation.

The Education: a hidden treasure report places emphasis on the urgent need to reform and strengthen school systems in developing countries, especially primary education, and stresses the importance of education through art and creativity.

It cannot be denied that education is the instrument that best opens the doors to development. However, considering the global challenges we face and the diversity of opinions, cultures and situations that we must accept in contemporary society, the effectiveness of an education rooted in traditional objectives, such as the mere transmission knowledge, is questionable. From this perspective, UNESCO acknowledges the importance of creativity and the arts, and learning from them, as crucial elements for the coming together and the ongoing development of societies and individuals.

To anticipate changing needs, giving a special place to the teaching of artistic values and subjects in order to foster and encourage creativity, which is a distinctive attribute of the human species – therein lies our hope.

Photographs: Creative Workshops at the Day Care Centers, Pune.
Fundación Asha-Kiran

ASHA-KIRAN in BOLLYMADRID 2010

The third Bollywood and Indian culture festival will take place in Madrid on June 4th, 5th and 6th.

Organizer: Madrid Central District City Hall and Lavapiés Neighbors Association

• Multidisciplinary and integration Indian culture week in the Lavapiés borough.

• It will take place throughout Lavapiés, with a wide array of cultural and visual features.

• The cultural agenda will be distributed in themes among the following town squares:

- Food at Lavapiés Square
- Bollywood films at Agustín Lara Square
- Handicrafts and design at Corrala Square

At Corrala Square there will also be separate spaces for several NGOs that work in India and wish to make their work known to the public, enlist new sponsors or simply carry out activities in relation to the themes in question.

Just as last year, FUNDACIÓN ASHA-KIRAN will have a mini-office and a handicrafts stand at Corrala Square, and will also organize various activities and children’s workshops.

COME SEE US AND FIND OUT ABOUT OUR SOCIAL ENDEAVORS

Place: Corrala Square, Lavapiés Borough (Madrid). Metro Lavapiés.
Schedule: from 10 am to 8 pm

For further information, please contact us at:
(+34) 913 920 688 (+34) 913 920 688

fundacion@asha-kiran.org.es

http://www.bollymadrid.com/

DISCOVER A NEW WAY TO SPEND YOUR TIME

The Seventh Week for Participation and Volunteering has unfolded under this theme, on May 21, 22 and 23 in Málaga.
This activity was organized by the City Hall through the Citizen Participation, Immigration and Aid-to-development Department. Over 100 organizations, including Asha-Kiran, had the chance to show the visitors our work and offer them several activities, children’s workshops and shows, like the Bollywood Dance performance given by the Chand Taari Group on behalf of Asha-Kiran.

The mayor of Málaga greets all the participants on inauguration day.

Bollywood dances - Naadeva

Bollywood dances - Auxi Durán

Bollywood dances - Chand Taari Group

LIFE ON THE FRINGE

Slum: a settlement of shacks made up of tin or plastic and bamboo, about 10 square meters big, where a family of 8 or more members lives.

Slums have no facilities such as electricity, running water, sewers, waste disposal or paved streets.

More than half of the urban population in India struggles to survive in a slum.

There are no educational or health facilities, no security, no social protection, and no opportunities for employment.

Skin, digestive and respiratory disorders are very common, especially among children.

SPRING IS HERE

It is here after a long and intense winter – with all the strength of rebirth, with brighter colors, like the colors that welcome the spring in India during the Holi festival.

Blue, red, yellow, green, purple… India joyfully celebrates the arrival of spring – its peoples and streets covered by water and dyes. Millions of Indians go out in the streets with water guns, buckets, and, above all, with powders dyed in all possible colors.


It is one of the most important festivities in the Indian calendar; it is lived with enthusiasm in all the cities of the country in the midst of a festive atmosphere that makes all differences in castes and religion vanish.

People wake up to the sound of drums that call to dance all who dare come out of their houses and participate in a fun war of colors.

It is the festival of fun, romance and fraternity – Holi celebrates the triumph of good over evil. With the appearance of the full moon in March, the ceremonies start on the day before Holi with a group prayer during which every family throws a stalk in the fire as an offering to the gods that protect the fields’ first fruits.

The eldest man in the family starts the celebration by throwing some colored water on his relatives, which makes the younger ones to follow suit – a ceremony that symbolizes the exchange of affection and blessings.

On Holi’s eve, on many streets, men dressed up as gods light big bonfires, and the neighbors come out to see the women sing and dance around the fire.

There is no doubt that spring is tantamount to life, play, coming together, rebirth, light and color. We find ourselves at the perfect moment to renew ourselves, and this is what Asha-Kiran does before new challenges that take shape in new Projects for children, and which we face with renewed energy, with vitality, with passion.


We will keep you up to date.

VULNERABLE CHILDREN

Street children are those who spend their lives on the streets, carrying out all their daily activities and earning a livelihood from working on the streets. Sometimes, family members arrive in the city together; others, children leave their families behind and try to start a new life by themselves; yet others, they have been abandoned or are orphans.

Having no access to personal hygiene, nutrition and health facilities, they are vulnerable to malnutrition, hunger and dreadful diseases that are aggravated by their precarious living circumstances.

Most of the children living on the streets are physically and emotionally worn down by the need to support themselves at such a young age. They lack a secure environment, a place they can call their own, where basic facilities are provided along with the presence of caring and protective adults, all of which would help children develop and gain the self-confidence to be a part of mainstream society as wholly integrated individuals.

Homeless street children share the common condition of being “out of place”, not only in street environments, but also in surroundings typically considered appropriate for children, such as home, school, and recreational settings. This “out-of-place” condition also tends to place these children outside the sphere of the rules and regulations set up by society to protect them.

Street children have, as compared with the rest of children, less chances than most other children of getting formal schooling, be it on account of their mobility, lack of birth certificates or of a permanent address, or lack of adults to enroll them in school.

Street-living children are exposed to certain health risks, as they have greater difficulty accessing health services than most poor urban children. It can be seen that street children have a higher risk of suffering malnutrition or psychological illnesses, chronic skin infections, sexually-transmitted diseases or AIDS, having accidents in the streets, enduring high levels of contamination, abusive sexual relationships and the risk of unwanted pregnancies.

A more global term which is becoming more common among organizations and entities, and which encompasses street children is ‘Vulnerable Children’. Without guidance and protection, these children run the risk of being victims of violence, exploitation, child trafficking, discrimination and other forms of abuse.

Following are some examples of vulnerable children:

- Street children.
- Children of construction workers who move from one construction site to another and build settlements at each new place.
- Children who work or beg in order to support themselves and their families.
- Children who are trafficked with and who sometimes remain in slavery or semi-slavery conditions.
- Children with serious or hereditary illnesses, or caused by their precarious living conditions.
- Children who are at odds with the law.

After all, streets are the main, almost the only, stage where children’s' social interactions take place, whether they are positive or negative. The fact that they live there does not mean that they are people without rights. In other words, we must understand and describe their issues from the children's viewpoint; from their own world vision, not just from ours.

This will be the best way for our description to coincide with the children's particular course of development, the specific cultural and social features of their lives and their personal background. In order to achieve this, we must listen to their voices – the voices of street children.

We will then be able to go from using an empty and anonymous term, to speaking about concrete facts concerning the people who, in spite being children, live on the streets. In this manner, we will also be able to understand the term 'street children' and the nature of its semantic field, varied and changeable in meaning, just like the children themselves.

WOMEN'S DAY. STREET GIRLS.

Within the group of vulnerable children that our Projects are destined to, we pay special attention to street girls, who, just as boys do, lack education and healthcare, and endure abject poverty, mistreatment and marginalization. Aside from all of this, they also endure discrimination for the fact of not having been born males, and their situation is markedly unfavorable.

In Indian society, where castes and dowries are so important, where the image and value of women is always subject to that of males, it is girls, and especially those lacking in means, who are the most vulnerable because they suffer the consequences of these beliefs from birth, and are subjected to begging, exploitation and the rest of problems associated with living and working in the streets.

The Indian government is beginning to become aware of the danger that the exceedingly vulnerable conditions of women in Indian society imply.