Yearlong Engagements
Our year long interventions focus on capacity building, trainings, certification with educators towards re-imagining classrooms and learning facilitation by infusing existing learning protocols with artistic interventions. The intent is to introduce the teachers/educators to integrate the Arts into teaching methodologies and therapeutic environments within classroom and institutional settings.
Year Long Engagements – 2024-2025
Diya Foundation (DIYA) is a Vocational Training Center in Bangalore providing education in life skills and employability skills to adults with intellectual challenges. Founded in 1999, DIYA is a registered charitable Trust. The need was for vocational training once basic schooling was completed thus preparing a potential workforce that has so far been greatly ignored. DIYA provides adults and young adults facing intellectual challenges and disabilities with vocational and life skills, making them employment-ready. We equip them to become valuable contributors to society. DIYA is part of the transformational stories of over 200 such unique individuals over the past 20 years.
Snehadhara Foundation is engaging with Diya Foundation to empower teachers and support students with special needs. The capacity building program partners with the teachers to inculcate creative methodologies and arts practices into their repertoire as well as give the experiences of arts based sessions to the students at the Foundation. The goal is to share best practices, resources, and hands-on strategies to make learning a truly enriching experience using the arts. The engagement is also to work directly with the 50 students enrolled at Diya Foundation.
Year Long Engagements – 2023-2024
Biswa Gouri Charitable Trust was formed in 2009 with a school (Bubbles Centre for Autism) for children with autism and intellectual challenges. BGCT took the next step during 2017 when half of the children reached 15 years and faced the question of “What next”. The step forward was conceived in the form of Pragati, towards livelihood, a skill development centre to empower young adults towards livelihood and a life with dignity and value.
Snehadhara Foundation completed a year-long engagement with the team at Biswa Gouri Charitable Trust-Bubbles titled ‘Co-creating Empathetic Learning Spaces through the Arts‘ to focus on working the teachers on creating spaces for creative self-reflection and building motivation towards creating inclusive learning spaces for children that they worked with.
Watch glimpses of the programme here.
ONE Billion Literates Foundation seeks to provide quality education to children from socio-economically weaker sections of society in rural Bangalore. They develop and create capacity in rural women to deliver impactful learning, create critical awareness about their role in society and in the environment around them – thus enabling social and financial empowerment for this segment.
Year Long Engagements – 2022-2023
Umang Special Care Centre was established in 2014 in Alwar for providing special care to special children of military families. Since then, they have strived to ensure that the special children of military personnel are looked after at the centre.
The team at Snehadhara Foundation worked with 7 children at the Umang Special Care Centre at Alwar using the methodology of the arts over two visits in July and September 2022. The focus was to give them an experience of the multi-arts methodologies of music, art, dance, drama and play as a pilot model being implemented in a one-of-its-kind space for children with disabilities from military families. The engagement involves three visits to Alwar to conduct these face to face sessions, and is a continuation of our work with the children through two terms of the école இllam programme.
Watch glimpses of the programme here.
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The lives of military wives are unique and while they carry enormous power and resilience within them, they too have concerns that are peculiar to the roles that they play as wives, caregivers, and most of all, individuals who require the same amount of love and growth as any other person.
Through the Mandala: Creative Dialogue Circles Through Art and Play programme, over 5 sessions held from 18th July 2022 to 22nd July 2022 and 5 sessions help from 5th September 2022 to 9th September 2022, a group of 20 women from Alwar and 80 of them (online) from Jaipur, Udaipur, Mount Abu and Jaisalmer came together in a blended format. Based on the expressed needs of the group, the sessions focussed on identity, our relationships with self and with roles we play and what are our fears in the roles we play.
Watch glimpses of the programme here.
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The programme was aimed at building on the capacity of the teachers working at the Umang Special Care Centre at Alwar, that caters to children with special needs from military families. The goal was to work with the teacher at the centre to create, deliver and implement arts-based learning and teaching methodologies with a concrete pedagogical approach. This was done through onsite training during the visits, followed with continuous online support and supervisions through the year for the teacher.
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ONE Billion Literates Foundation seeks to provide quality education to children from socio-economically weaker sections of society in rural Bangalore. They develop and create capacity in rural women to deliver impactful learning, create critical awareness about their role in society and in the environment around them – thus enabling social and financial empowerment for this segment.
Year Long Engagements – 2019-2020
Nestled in the residential area of Sector 71, Mohali, Smart Wonders is a happy and welcoming space. The ambience of the school promises to nurture each child’s aesthetic and creative horizons.
Our yearlong engagement titled ‘Mandala- Dialogue Circles through the Arts’ at Smart Wonders School, Mohali enters its second year for a deeper and more intense purpose to take the program further. Three very clear groups emerged through the training and observation sessions in the first year. This year looks at creating mentors to take the program forward and thus would involve training the mentors towards facilitation skills to empower their respective groups. 35 teachers from Grades KG to X would be trained in using the Arts towards working with children to enable deeper dialogues and conversations. The engagement is comprised of a combination of 12 direct contact sessions for training and supervision interspersed with offsite support for planning and reflection.
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Year Long Engagements – 2018-2019
The Association for the Mentally Challenged (AMC) was founded in 1960 by Dr. D.L.N. Murthy Rao. Today AMC is an NGO that supports over 200 children, adolescents and adults with IDD. AMC’s aim is to educate, train and rehabilitate individuals with intellectual disability disorder (IDD) and their families. AMC is a member of Federation for the Welfare of the Mentally Retarded (India), The National Trust and Pariwar.
In the second year of our work with AMC, Snehadhara’s team of ABT practitioners and educators provided consultancy services to develop professional training modules, demonstrate quality implementation of instructional, behavioural, and on-going evaluation techniques and strategies to school staff members to ensure successful implementation of such techniques and strategies through multi- Arts. As a part of the engagement this year, we were at AMC twice a week and ABT sessions were conducted for the children at the centre each week.
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Nestled in the residential area of Sector 71, Mohali Smart Wonders is a happy and welcoming space. The ambience of the school promises to nurture each child’s aesthetic and creative horizons. The school is a center of inquiry, creativity and joyful learning, where students from different backgrounds come together to learn, to dream and to grow. Students experience all the concepts through hand on activities and experiments. The school constantly remains at the cutting edge of technology both in terms of the latest pedagogical methods and in the use of computers and information technology for teaching.
Our yearlong engagement titled ‘Creative Interventions in Re-imagining Classrooms through Dialogue Circles’ at Smart Wonders School, Mohali aimed to create opportunities for communication and learning for both teachers and children and enable possibilities to achieve independence and empowerment. Through the engagement we trained 35 teachers from Grades KG to X towards how the arts can be used in working with children as a medium of communication to enable expression.
The engagement was comprised of a combination of 6 direct contact sessions for training and supervision interspersed with offsite support for planning and reflection.
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In the backdrop of beautiful mountains and sprawling 12 acres of land is the Delhi Public School Srinagar. It set out its objective as excellence in education and is slowly trying to meet its requirements. The school seeks to provide an environment of education that allows children to understand ways of making their life meaningful, to contemplate on issues that matter, and to engage in constructive dialogues. The Special Needs Education wing of the school was set up in 2012.
Starting Sept 2018, we are offering a 6-month certificate course titled ‘Learning Facilitation for Special Needs through Arts Based Interventions’ for 30 teachers of the SEN division of the school. This team works with about 120 children with varied needs in one-on-one and group settings through the week. The certificate course includes 3 direct contact sessions at the school to introduce creative methodologies into existing therapeutic protocols and observations in classrooms, assignments that focus on capacity building of the team and designing an arts based curriculum to complement the methodologies in the SEN division.
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