Creating a new band of Trainers’ continues…(17th May-20th May, 2008)

The enthusiasm and confidence of this batch of BBM members who were trained in the last TOT workshop to conduct a comics workshop was unsurpassed after their first experience. The second TOT workshop began with a review of the workshops.

In this second workshop, new trainers shared their experiences of conducting the workshops independently. The purpose of sharing the experiences was not only to get a feedback of the achievements in their own way but to also practically analyse the difficulties faced in conducting such workshops using the community resources. It also involved the challenges faced in articulating apt explanation to encourage comics making to children who need not be born artists. It also turned out to be a challenge for the trainers to give a coherent explanation at some particular steps in drawing and story telling. The effort was to rectify these first hand experiences and challenges for action in the days to come.

We also realized that along with the resources, other major difficulty in organizing a workshop in a village independently by these young BBM members is the limitation to generate interest, concentration and consistency amongst the participants. The local surrounding and make shift arrangements also tends to make the children more restless and distracted. Children of small age-groups who did not attend school participated in good numbers. Explanation of corporal punishment to them was a difficult exercise since they did not have a prior exposure to the issue. After lunch the trainer had to again recollect the participants individually. While in other cases, children were called back by the parents to work and especially girls.
Despite these limitations, there were also cases where even illiterate children had made their own comics.


This ToT workshop was also conducted with the aim of moving one step forward in the art of comics making. In this workshop, the children were introduced to comic booklet using eight-panels, comic strips and wall posters. All the trainers created their own eight panel comics. The participants had worked hard for two days to create a story, to draw a rough draft and then finally inking it. But all the hard work had turned into thrill and excitement when the children saw their comics to shape into a booklet. Our trainers used this booklet to pen down their stories on corporal punishment. On the first day, different issues in corporal punishment was identified by the participants. Some were personal experiences while others were of their friends’.

Eight new members have become part of the core group of Chadi Ke Lagal Hathkadi Camapign from these workshops conducted in the villages. These children were part of the trainer’s workshop and our activists Anam Purty and Suresh are training them to be the future trainers. These children have been inspired by their fellow friends who are now trainers. Sudha and Vanadan, both fourteen years of girls attended the workshop in Shyamkat. They with full interest completed the workshop and now are excited to be part of the campaign. When told that they would someday conduct a workshop themselves, they were full of delight.
And these series of workshops and association of the people has a long road ahead...