Colleges and Institutions

Our work with Universities and Colleges has been to look at arts practices, diversity, inclusion and taking these to the context of learning environments. The idea has been to include students to work within the development sector and reflect on their role as global citizens. We have hosted various talks, seminars, workshops and more within these colleges and universities. 

Dr. Gitanjali G Govindrajan, Founder and Executive Director at Snehadhara Foundation, was at Christ University Central Campus, where she gave a talk on “Youth Skills for Peace and Development” in celebration of UN World Youth Skills Day 2024. She addressed over 100 students from various Christ University campuses during the inauguration of their Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Cell. The event focused on the crucial role youth play in building peace and development through skill-building, and how this ties into the UN’s SDG goals. She covered topics including understanding conflict, conflict resolution, and the youth’s role in skill-building and being agents of change and innovators towards peace and development. She also highlighted Snehadhara’s approach to skill-building and its relevance to the overall theme.

 

Our Associate Director Yashaswini Gupta was a panelist at Vihaan 10.0, a flagship event of Udyam, the Social Responsibility Committee of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Bangalore, which serves as a platform for collaboration between corporate entities and NGOs. This year, the focus was on “Innovation to Drive Social Change in Rural India,” aiming to address the diverse challenges faced by rural communities and uncover innovative solutions for sustainable progress.
Yashaswini Gupta, reflecting on SF’s work and experience, highlighted how Arts Practices for Inclusion can serve as a platform for social inclusion among persons with disabilities, vulnerable groups, the elderly, and children in conflict with the law in fostering self-expression and community cohesion. Paving the way for modern and equitable conversations and collective action, she spoke on the use of creative methodologies like the arts to bring about social inclusion in rural and semi-rural areas.

Snehadhara Foundation was part of the ‘Promoting Inclusion through Arts and Creative Expression: A Path to Better Mental Health- International Conference 2024’, organized by EKA Educational and Charitable Trust and Jyoti Nivas College, as our Founder and Executive Director, Dr Gitanjali G Govindrajan, was a Speaker at the conference.
Dr Gitanjali spoke about Inclusion, what it means and what are the roles each of us have to play in the verb that is inclusion. She also took the group through a simple arts and movement experience which energized the group to participate as it portrayed inclusion in action. She spoke about how one needs to start with making a deliberate effort towards their participation in the process of Inclusion. She stated that unless diversity is welcomed, and relationships are consciously nurtured, there will be only a slight change in the learning process that each are part of.

Over a series of sessions titled ‘Inclusive Classrooms- Learning through the Arts’ worked with the MA Education students at APU, Bangalore. The objectives of the workshop series with the students were to understand inclusion in a larger perspective than as applicable to the disabilities sector alone; to welcome and affirm the learner from where he/she is without the burden of labels weighing upon the learning strategies and in the process reimagining learning spaces and facilitation through this lens of inclusion and to understand the role of the Arts in innovative facilitation, self-discovery and meaningful, compassionate, learning and in the process relook at ‘learning’ vs ‘treatment’.

Our work with this group was to primarily introduce the group to a vocabulary of creative arts-based techniques to examine the way one learns. So far we have worked with three groups and it has been a lot of learning for us to watch the youth with their ideas of change. The workshop series was filled with experiences, challenges, fun and risks the group took together.