Moving Closer to the 1000 T-shirts for Fukushima

We had invited children from the Salaam Bombay Foundation, to be a part of the T-shirt painting exercise for the children of Fukushima.

The exercise began with the presentation of the story of Sadako Sasaki and the 1000 Cranes, and a short explanation of the hazards of nuclear power. After the presentation, they all painted their own crane T-shirt to be sent to the children of Japan.

We had a little spare time while the other volunteers were preparing the dining hall of the hostel at TISS to convert it into a painting workshop, so, we got our 10 Crane Project children, to become teachers of small groups, and teach them how to make the origami paper crane.

So, it was a complete exercise towards understanding the story of Sadako Sasaki, as well as sensitizing themselves with the understanding of nuclear power.

We had to remove the fabric canopy made by the kids yesterday from the common area, and bring it in to the boys hostel foyer, as it was being attacked by the monkeys in the open campus, but, hanging it in an enclosure actually made the crane woven into it more clearly.

We then did an exercise of Quick Painting! This is an exercise to test the visualization skills of a child as well as challenge the child to work with limitations – in this exercise it was time and tools.

They were just given paper, and acrylic paints, no brushes, pencils, erasers. And we kept giving them different themes which they had to draw /paint using their fingers, in a limited time! There were a no of spontaneously creative work that emerged.

We then had a short team building session conducted by Victor, a fellowship student at TISS, working in the area of ABT (Art Based Therapy).

We ended the day with a movie – Chillar Party. As much as they enjoyed the film, in the feedback after the film, they all seemed to understand the meaning of team work and friendship.  And, I can see the bonding increase, as they have by themselves between yesterday and today, amongst all these multiple activities managed to make 260 paper cranes already !!!!