Involving them in the Wildlife Trust India’s project ‘Gaj Yatra’, artist and founder of Tara Trust, Dr Katharina Poggendorf-Kakar has motivated the marginalised children in Goa to contribute in their own small way for a bigger cause - to save the Asian elephant
BHARATI PAWASKAR
Can I wear my elephant mask, please?” requested an excited Feroz, a smart class IV student, holding the colourful mask he just finished creating - his face beaming with a radiant smile that was quite infectious. As he was allowed to do so by his summer camp facilitator, the smile on his face became broader and the dimple on his right cheek deepened further down. The frail, yet confident Feroz seemed to be good at craft, though he admits that his favourite subject is mathematics. “I am good at maths. In class I come first, sometimes second,” he quips.
Feroz is one of the over dozen kids in the room, laughing and chirping as they work meticulously on their masks. Expressing their joy as the assignment was nearing completion Anjali, Sandhya, Preeti, Pooja, Vishal, Rohan, Jeromy, Papai and many more bubbling kids are all eager and excited to experiment with their creative imagination. Except for the 13-year-old Anita Rai, an enthusiastic teenager from the church aided St Jude High School - all of them are below 12.
These less-privileged kids coming from marginalised families are enjoying their vacation art camp at this Government Primary School in Betalbhatim, thanks to its kind principle Hilda Rodrigues, who always extends a co-operative hand when it comes to summer school activities. This summer the kids are working on creating a part of an elephant using various mediums of their choice and their motivator is Dr Katharina Poggendorf-Kakar and her team of two enthusiastic volunteers from Germany - Nora Muennich and Antonia Fassnacht along with workshop facilitators from India, Prescilla D’Silva and Nancy Mascarenhas.
“This is the third batch of our summer school of 17 kids, the earlier two being a bit bigger with 26 and 24 kids in each,” states Dr Katharina Kakar. Such summer camps are a regular feature at her non-profit organisation, Tara Trust that offers creative educational workshops and projects in Goa and across India, this year it’s a bit different summer school. “Together, the kids and I, are working on ‘Gaj Yatra’ - a project by Wildlife Trust India. ‘Gaj Yatra’ is all about creating awareness about the Asian elephant,” shares Dr Kakar, an artist herself, who was approached by the Wildlife Trust India in February 2018 to contribute a life-size elephant for their awareness campaign to protect the Asian elephant.
“I decided to introduce the concept to our summer school kids to address the shrinking numbers of elephants in India and to create awareness about the need of elephant corridors. The children responded so well. We showed them a movie on elephants from Wildlife Trust India and then conducted a quiz on it to build in them a consciousness for the environment. They enjoyed this process of fun-learning and gaining knowledge through games. After that we told them to employ their skills and draw, paint, colour or create parts of an elephant from paper, plastic, cotton, twigs or even rags - just anything they can think of. It worked. Look at the beautiful elephant masks they created,” quips Dr Kakar who and her team chalked out a three-week programme for three different groups of kids from two schools - Government Primary School, Betalbhatim and Mae Dos Pobres High School, Nuvem.
These children came with ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas and were delighted to work on the concept of creating an elephant or part of it with the art material sponsored by Faber Castell India for elephant summer schools. The outcome of their amalgamated ideas will be integrated as collage into the body of the elephant that Dr Kakar will create as a final product to be delivered to the Wildlife Trust India - to be part of the 100 other elephants created by other Indian artists. This interactive elephants will travel across India in 2018 to contribute to awareness programme organised by Wildlife Trust India.
“Our objectives are multiple,” states Dr Kakar, adding, “These summer schools aim at increasing the awareness for the current wildlife crisis that is occurring with elephants. Our aim is to nurture an understanding of the values of conservation amongst the students and create self-awareness through art and movement activities. They are given free hand to draw an elephant with the characteristics that gives it a personality. We told them, the elephants may not be painted grey and black always, they can be as colourful as your imagination. The kids also participated in awareness sessions to realise and reduce the challenges of human-elephant conflict through art education. To gather conservation messages from children we interacted with as a further call to action against elephant poaching,” observes Dr Kakar.
Founded in 2008 with the aim to build self-esteem and build a positive self-image through creative imagination, through her Benaulim based NGO, Dr Kakar offers creative educational workshops and projects in Goa and across India. Tara Trust also creates special projects across India, such as music instrument building out of garbage and found objects. “From January to March this year, we have done three workshops with children from deprived villages in Madhya Pradesh. The creative educational workshops integrate art, music and movement as well as programmes aimed at improving literacy skills and developing confidence,” discloses Dr Kakar. Opening up a new way to look at art, with movements, music and touch, Tara Trust is working on 13 different projects in Goa. Children need art, stories and access to their imagination to build self-esteem and a positive self-image to navigate the world and Tara Trust had been providing a nourishing environment for a decade now.
