Every child has the right to equal treatment, without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the race, colour, sex, language, religion, national or social origin, disability or any other status of the child’s background.Which brings me to what we, at The Create Foundation, strive towards. Our vision is to build an inclusive world where every child, irrespective of his/ her challenges and economic background, has access to equal opportunity to become a productive member of society.
Our mission is to empower and educate children from marginalised backgrounds with leadership, teamwork, self-confidence and communication skills through the medium of drama and the creative arts.We provide various creative platforms for self-development and life skills with the programs that we carry out. Children who are physically challenged are the ones in most need of inclusivity and attention in order to grow. Sadly, everyone is so focused on exclusivity… But that's where we bridge the gap by integrating differently-abled children and marginalised children along with kids from mainstream schools to be part of all our activities - be it theatrical shows, performed on a very professional scale, or life skill classes that we run on an ongoing basis around the year.
The love, respect, concern and caring these children have for one another is enormous because it's a pure creative space where each one can showcase their talents, based on the training they receive which is equal for all. So, it’s completely growth-centric and unbiased.
Feelings of empathy and caring are also instilled in them, so they are able to recognise each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and integrate towards a common goal. So the very same content, teaching tools and facilitators that are engaged with our children from mainstream schools are teaching our kids at eight different NGOs.
A very thoughtful insight I would like to share is that an impact assessment that we carried out with an external consultancy, showed us massive results in various qualities like confidence, speaking, body language, creative thinking, discipline and teamwork after our engagement with them. This goes to show the scope for improvement that our country has.
It is very important that we, as a whole, come forward and provide support to eradicate inequality amongst children. We must give them an equal platform and a level playing field for gainful employment in the future. All children must have an equal right for participation and development, which will help them grow and become holistically well-rounded individuals.
Through her body of work, theatre veteran Raell Padamsee promotes the right to equality for children
(Co-ordinated by Jaya Patel)
