By Vishal Talreja | Co-founder
"I used to be unruly and disrespectful towards my teachers and never pay attention in the class. I used to often get into fights and arguments with my friends or bully them......today I listen to and respect what my teachers say, and my friends too respect me and that is making me proud about myself" confesses 15-year-old Saif Ulla.
The amazing transformation in Saif Ulla has been due to the Life Skills interventions under the After School Life Skills Programme of Dream a Dream using creative arts.
Saif Ulla studies in the 9th grade of the Florida English School a low-cost private school located in the suburbs of Bangalore city. His father was a sales man and mother a house wife. He has an elder sister and a younger brother. Coming from a lower income group, life had its own challenges for Saif Ulla from very young age.
At school Saif used to constantly get into trouble with his teachers and fellow students because of his bad behaviour and disrespectful attitude. He was unable to concentrate on his studies nor pay attention to what his teachers were teaching. In the company of his friends, he used to pass unnecessary comments and at the encouragement of his friends do things that eventually landed him in trouble with others and the school teachers and authorities. He realized that his friends always escaped being punished by passing on the blame entirely on him. This made him feel very bad and started to avoid their company and started to remain alone and aloof.
His facilitator noticed this change in him and had a long conversation with him. She told him to not to be aloof and be in the company of his fellow students. She knew that from her interactions with Saif’s teachers that he had a very creative bent of mind and was exceptionally good in drawing and painting.
She says, “So after attending the Life Skills through Creative Arts sessions continuously, he was started to involve himself more in activities and tried to mingle with others. I could see the small-small changes in Saif Ulla. He started to listen to the instructions from his teachers and me and putting the effort to give respect to his fellow students, teachers and friends. I know he had a passion for drawing and soon enough in the drawing sessions he was not only enthusiastic but started to teach and support his friends as well”.
“In one of the Creative Arts sessions, I created few groups of students and gave the task to draw on ‘festivals of India’. On that day Saif Ulla took the initiative of leading the group and started to give ideas and guidance to his group. He and his team came up with the idea of drawing on the Ramzan (is a festival celebrated by Muslims worldwide that marks the end of fasting) festival and made very beautiful paintings. Saif Ulla friends and teachers not only admired his work but encouraged him to continue painting. From that day onwards, he started to change some more in his behavior and started taking initiative in every activity and become friendlier and more respectful towards his fellow students and teachers.
Saif Ulla has a very beautiful dream of becoming an “Artist”, he also aspires to be a police officer. To make his dreams grow the facilitator started to give extra attention to him, and also gave him new and challenging ideas, drawings etc. to improve his skills. One day the facilitator organized a drawing competition. Saif Ulla took the competition seriously and painted many beautiful pictures, for which the facilitator gifted him a drawing book.
Saif Ulla says, “I love Dream a Dream class, and the activities conducted by Leela mam (the Dream a Dream facilitator) is very nice. In the class I get the space to talk openly with everyone, and I am also trying to talk with girls. I started to respect teachers and trying to listen to their words. My friends also started giving good respect to me, all this is making me proud of myself.”
This is what his class teacher Ms. Nagin has to say about Saif Ulla’s transformation - “In a Dream a Dream session I see big smiles and energy on everyone face. Saif Ulla in the beginning was one of the slow learners in the class, he was not having any interest in any subject, he and his group of friends used to constantly create mischief and pass comments in the class but now a days he has started to listen to the teacher’s instructions; and his way of communication has also improved. The very pleasant change in him is that he has started making beautiful paintings and at the same time has started taking initiative and helping others. It makes me so happy when every time he paints something he would enthusiastically show it to me. I am happy to say that he is one of my best students in the class”.
Some of the paintings by Saif Ulla is attached separately.
Dream a Dream is a registered, charitable trust empowering children and young people from vulnerable backgrounds to overcome adversity and flourish in the 21st century using a creative life skills approach. Currently, we work with 10,000 young people a year through our two innovation labs – After School Life Skills Programme and Career Connect Programme, have trained over 7,700 teachers/educators from 206 partners impacting over 192,500 children and have impacted over 1 Million children through strategic partnerships with state governments in Delhi and Jharkhand. We work on a strong collaborative approach with local charities, corporates, volunteers, governments, expert consultants and a host of national and international strategic partners.
In our After School Life Skills Programme, we use creative arts and football as mediums to engage and develop critical life skills among young people between the ages of 8 to 15 years. This programme is an innovation lab where new approaches to life skills development are introduced, demonstrated, documented, evaluated, and fed back into a larger framework for re-imagining learning for young people in the country. To measure the improvements in life skills amongst the young people, we use the Life Skills Assessment Scale (LSAS*). In our After-School Life Skills Programme, we use creative arts and football as mediums to engage and develop critical life skills among young people aged 8 to 15 years.
*Dream a Dream’s Life Skills Assessment Scale was selected as one among hundred inspiring innovations that are changing the face of education across the world at the HundrED Education Summit in Finland. This is a recognition of over 8 years of research that we put into establishing a first of its kind, standardised, validated and published scale to measure the impact of Life Skills on young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The published paper has been downloaded over 4500 times and is being used across the world. For moreinformation visithttps://hundred. org/en/innovations/dream-life-skills-assessment-scale-dream-a-dream
You can read about the scale here - http://dreamadream.org/the-urgency/item/362-dlsas
(Please copy and paste the link on to your browser to access the same)
Impact of our After-School Life Skills Programme:
As always “Thank you for your generous contribution and giving our young people #aChanceToThrive!”
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