The Hambantota Rotary Club is delivering an English Education Project with a group of young people aged between 10 and 15 from Bundala, a small village located on the south coast of Sri Lanka. The project has been requested by the Bundala School to assist disadvantaged Tamil young people learn skills that will help open up greater opportunities for them in the future.
A creative addition to this project is being facilitated by lkCreate, a project by Steph Vajda of Ferment Collaborate (formerly SpeakOut Events). These workshops involve monthly creative arts workshops using film, photography and visual arts to create short films and ‘zines’. The content created will be showcased for the Bundala community at a celebration event at the end of the program’s initial 6 month delivery phase, as well as being accessible through the lkCreate website. These creative workshops aim to encourage young people to develop confidence in the way they see the world, to break down barriers which limit their ability to do so and to be creative while learning.
In addition, the program attempts to increase the school’s resiliency, by identifying ongoing opportunities for teachers to facilitate young people’s creativity and their ability to connect with the use of technology and, through this, network with other communities. lkCreate aims to support Hambantota Rotary Club in its delivery of the English classes, by assisting with workshop design advice, teacher skills development and through the development of support resources to encourage further use of creative practices in learning.
Funding raised will be used in two ways. Funds are required to purchase equipment to facilitate multimedia workshops, including film and still cameras and some visual arts materials. The funds will also be used to purchase a computer for the school, to enable students to access the material they create through the project and engage via the internet with others who are interested in the project and its participants.
Embodied in the approach to this project is the desire to support young people’s connection with each other and their community to better understand, within a positive, creative setting, the environment from which Sri Lanka emerges after over thirty years of civil war. The young participants represent the marginalised fringe of Sri Lankan society; young, Tamil and from a remote village, in many ways representing the people whose empowerment and creative voices are most needed in such times of change.
TO DONATE, PLEASE GO TO THE POZIBLE WEBSITE – THERE ARE REWARDS FOR PARTICULAR DONATIONS AND THERE WILL BE PROJECT UPDATES TO ALL THOSE WHO CONTRIBUTE.
Thanks for taking the time to read this
Ayu bowan
Steph
