Music For Harmony '09 Banner created by waste material made by SMILE volunteers

Hi all,

Music for Harmony is back!

It is an event led, organised and managed by young people to celebrate peace and harmony. It is an effort by Pravah, a community of changemakers, to bring everyone together and make a difference.

This year again, we are getting together to understand and spread the message of peace through music, puppetry, theatre, photography, and such creative outlets.

We invite you to help us create a photo exhibition. What do you think peace means to you? What around you signifies harmony? Send in pictures of anything and everything around you that bring you happiness and joy. Let’s put together peace in pictures and make memories!

You can email two-three of your pictures (high resolution pictures, please!) by November 25th, 2009 at youth.pravah@gmail.com. You can even send us hard copies (5” X 7”) of your pictures at the address given below. Make sure they reach us by December 7th, so everyone can be a part of this! We’d also like to request you to send a short note describing the pictures and how it signifies peace. It’d help everyone to understand your point of view clearly.

Call Prachi at 9891963336 or our office at 01126213918 for any queries.

SMILE Pravah team

Pravah

C-24B

Kalkaji

New Delhi

www.pravah.org

smilevolunteers.blogspot.com

On the 13th of September, the monthly meeting of SMILErs was held and it went on from around 10 in the morning to 6 in the evening!

Many things were discussed during the course of the day related to our targets, our accomplishments of the past month and our future goals, the details of which will come up soon.

Through the final discussion in which Abhijit, Neeru, Sudeep, Surana, Nishu, Rashmi, Neha, Sulab and Anurag were present we decided to modify our action project and slightly alter our future proceedings.

Firstly, it was mutually reached that the goals were to be modified a bit keeping the current scenario of working into consideration.

Secondly, it was decided that the film club was doing a great job in increasing visibility of Pravah in various colleges which was highlighted by the fact that we have been asked to return to all the colleges to which we’ve been. So it was decided to strengthen our relations with those college students by continuing the screenings and discussions so that they might be involved with Pravah as and when something comes up in the future. It was also decided to reach out to more colleges through similar means so as to start the process in those colleges too.

Thirdly a new project was discussed and was decided to be started asap. It was established by consensus that the Rural Internship was all about grass root level movements and engaging positively with those people to bring about some sort of change and enriching our knowledge along the process. It was felt that this aspect was previously missing from our action project and needed to be fused with our plan of action so that we don’t lose touch with our learning’s. So the plan was that we will take up a backward / underdeveloped community and develop a plan in that space. The plan broadly had 3 aspects :

1. Initially, it was about interacting with the community through various conventional and unconventional means so as to get an insight into their lives and develop a bond. This is meant to be a continuous process.

2. At the same time it was decided to revive the ACR (action research group) so as to effectively compile the information on the community, establish various trends about them and concluding something with all the data. This will be very time consuming and intensive process which will require a great amount of dedication and seriousness on our part. At the same time it will be in all probability a very fun process in which we will get to learn a lot.

3. Using all of this it was decided that we could develop and launch some sort of program if things worked out well that would benefit the target community.

Apart from this a plan to Jaipur was decided so as to witness a community project and learn from it. It will take place at the earliest

Meanwhile search of the community will also begin.

Also as usual we ppl had a lot of fun!!

Looking fwd to seeing u all.

Keep :)ing

SMILE'rs :)

Our third screening was held with a very enthusiastic crowd from the Sociology Department of Miranda House college. The screening was held in the college auditorium and was attended by over around 25-30 students. The day started with the SMILE’rs sharing their Rural Internship experiences with the audience and it managed to generate quiet a lot of interest among the students.

The movie screened was “Rehanna” which is a journey of a Muslim woman who decided to break the shackles imposed on her by the society and work for the betterment of other women who might be in the same position as her own. After the screening was over the general consensus among the audience was that they felt charged up and emotional some of the initial reactions generated from the audience were:

Date: 24th August 09
Venue: Don Bosco Technical Institute

Introduction:
The event started with a fun activity, wherein the volunteers were divided into pairs and were asked to balance a pencil between their foreheads without actually touching it. The activity managed to gear up the audiences and also helped the facilitators who were supposedly unknown initially to develop a connection which is an integral part of any interactive session. Thereafter, a random question was thrown at the audiences. The question was “What images come to your mind when you hear the term boundaries." There were diverse response to these questions and following terms seemed common in the responses that were received.
Partition
Controversy
Limitation
Barriers

A thought process commenced and just to add spark to the fire another question was thrown randomly after jotting the previous points at the whiteboard. This time the question was “What image comes to our mind when we hear of the term terrorist”? Again a lot of different answers came from the audiences and following points seemed prominent.
Blood shed
Violence
Destruction
Fighting for a cause

Movie : Little Terrorist
The movie managed to keep the audiences engrossed at all times. The very first scene which depicts a scene, wherein a group of children are trying to retrieve a ball which has crossed the Line of control aroused curiosity among the audiences and that connection seems to be everlasting. One amazing thing about the screening was that audiences were thrown in an ocean full of varied emotions and at the end one could see questions of the faces of people. People who were from different background, Different geographical locations having different interpretations. However one thing seemed to be common. There were questions looming large on their faces.

Discussion:
Once the movie was over the question about the images comes to our mind after hearing the term terrorism was again referred to. It initially started with the debate on identities. A part of the audiences agreed to the fact that that we fall prey to stereotypes and our own preconceived notions and label a person as terrorist and the views are predominantly based on physical features which has been beautifully shown and portrayed in the movie. Gradually a few interesting perspectives came up which not only intensified the discussion but also gave a proper ground for brainstorming.
“People are same irrespective of their religion”
“Humanity is our first religion”

Thereafter the discussion turned towards the cause of the problem under consideration and the following important points were the core of the discussion

Feedback:
The involvement of the audiences during the movie screening and the subsequent discussion helped us to get a feedback on the proposed activity. The discussion has a direction and purpose. One important observation of this screening was that a film with limited duration helps us to connect with audiences better and leads to a comprehensive discussion.

In all it was a great session which provided us with just the perfect amount of motivation, enthusiasm.

SMILE'rs :)