Support Young People to Lead Social Change

Vanessa and Vasundhra are young leaders with the YP Foundtion's Blending Spectrum programme. They lead the arts and crafts club with homeless children in partnership with the Society for Promotion of Youth and Masses (SPYM) in Nizamuddin, Delhi. 

They started their engagement with an exercise, allowing the children to create whatever they wished with some art and craft material. This helped them gauge the children's level of interest and skill in the method and left them impressed with the creativity they saw and planned how they could take this forward.

However, once the clubs started, Vanessa and Vasundhra found it difficult to sustain the interest of the young children in the activities. The children sometimes refused to listen and even left in the middle of the session. In order to continue engagement with the children, Vanessa and Vasundhra worked together to come up with creative ideas for group activities where they ensured that every participant had a unique activity to complete in order to foster individual as well as group sharing and learning.

Vanessa and Vasundhra’s ongoing sessions focus on discussions around various life skills such as interpersonal relationships, effective communication and creative thinking. The sessions uses arts and crafts activities which include making paper flowers & lamps as well as card making. The activities are a great way to build the communication and creative skills amongst the children. The sessions also include a feedback element wherein the children talk about their likes and dislikes from the activities which provides useful insights for the volunteers to adapt the sessions accordingly. They work as a team to manage the children’s expectations from the sessions and focus on developing a rapport with them. They have learnt to handle the children with love and care and understand their needs and interests to run the clubs successfully.

Leaders like Vasundhara and Vanessa are able to continue this work to build Life Skills and leadership with homeless and marginalised children thanks to support from donors like yourself! Your support helps young leaders engage with diversity and enable young people in Delhi to access better opportunities.