Maitri
Maitri-building our social world’ is a collaborative programme of Snehadhara where the children of our Direct Care programmes share learning spaces with children of other organisations.
About the Programme
BACKGROUND
Snehadhara’s inception in 2012 was aimed at looking at innovatively using Arts Based Interventions for learning. The motivation was to explore a significant train of thought from an action project to a long-term sustainable practice. The pioneering attempt was to look at interventions with an integrated, holistic approach to address the various learning, therapeutic and social inclusion needs of children/adults across disabilities and age groups.
Snehadhara’s vision is to create an inclusive society for those with special needs. Snehadhara’s mission is to create a self-propagating, expanding ecosystem through appropriate body of programmes that lend themselves to scale. We believe that Inclusion cannot be applied as the response only to apparent exclusion. Inclusion must be woven into the fabric of any effort so that it deflects the possibility of exclusion itself. Hence, Snehadhara has chosen this approach to take the mainstream world and build inclusion into it using the Arts. This makes it better not only for those who are evidently excluded but also for those who are invisibly excluded. The interventions emerged as a way of improving learning, social and emotional communication outcomes using a much wider set of tools and techniques in our direct beneficiary and action research work.
Through every one of its projects, SF has aimed at meeting the mission statement that has inclusion at its very foundation. The goal has been to create an environment where children and adults with special needs can find autonomy, dignity, build relationships and further build inclusive spaces for themselves and others.
Maitri – Building our social world
INTENT
Maitri-building our social world’ is a collaborative programme of Snehadhara where the children of our Direct Care programmes share learning spaces with children of other organisations.
The launch of ‘Maitri-Building Our Social World’, has us tickled pink as we join forces with other organisations to bring about inclusion through the arts. As a first of hopefully many more programmes, Maitri seeks to bring together individuals with special needs from various organisations and co-locate online; enabling the organisations to exchange ideas and the individuals to build friendships. The idea of cooperating and collaborating with others has been an aspiration of SF since its inception and we are so delighted that it has finally seen the light of day.
This programme is an outcome of collaboration and friendship between Snehadhara Foundation and other organisations through which learning spaces and best practices will be shared on an online platform. Through this programme, we intend to co-create a new learning space that is fluid and challenges the boundaries of physicality, concurrently being close with respect to goals and values.
OBJECTIVES
- Create a space where compassion is an integral part of daily living
- Empower individuals in a holistic manner
- Hone attention and observation skills
- Ensure that emotions are acknowledged and negotiated
- Facilitate learning through working with relationships
- Enable an understanding of the larger interconnectedness
We hope to look at a curriculum design that is geared towards enabling children to acquire the tools needed to navigate the daily practicalities of life. Collaboratively, preparing every child and adult to deal with some of the larger questions that life asks, through the Arts. The group will be introduced to music, rhythm, dance, movement, story sharing, play, cooking, visual arts through a team of experts and trained Arts Practitioners.
We are thrilled to revive the ‘Maitri – building our social world’ programme for the academic year 2021-22. This year we aspire to have many more organizations coming together for the Maitri session. In continuing with creating co-learning spaces and inducing best practices through an online platform, the Maitri sessions will also help the organizations to share new perspectives and learn from each other. The children from each of these groups also get an opportunity to communicate, interact with bigger groups, and make new friends! It is also a great platform where children and facilitators will learn through different facilitation styles.
Previously, the programme was undertaken by Snehadhara Foundation, collaborating with organizations separately whereas this time, all organizations are united to form a bigger group. Therefore, giving everyone a larger space to build new friendships. The sessions that were earlier anchored by stories will now be replaced by conceptual learning through art forms.