A One Day Workshop at Rolf Schoembs Vidyashram (R.S.V.)
29.04.2017 News
On April 23rd 2017, we organized a workshop at Rolf Schoembs Vidyashram (R.S.V.). Theme: 'Writing Poems, Stories, Rhymes, Riddles and Songs'.
The idea of the workshop was to strengthen the young students’ confidence and power of expression. Rolf Schoembs Vidyashram is a school which follows the ideas and ideals of Rabindranath Tagore. Here, our Santal children should happily enjoy their life. Our children are studying, but they are also learning how to sing songs together or individually, they are acting in plays, they dance and paint or draw, engage in clay modeling, and in gardening… We try to understand the many talents of our children. We constantly reflect on how we can draw out their thoughts and support their efforts.
With this in mind, we have organized a one-day workshop on Writing Poems, Stories, Rhymes, Riddles and Songs in Bengali, Santali and Konra languages. This idea of getting training in these talents was new for our young students. We invited all our hostel boys and girls, all teachers and all teachers and students of our Evening Coaching Centres in the neighbouring villages. 45 participants attended the workshop. We also invited a well-known writer, Shri Debu Murmu Giri, who is Santal and lives in a near-by village.
Gokul Hansda, Upoma Ghosh, Ramjit Mardi and Sona Murmu of R.S.V. were present throughout the day. We divided the day into three parts. After introducing the plan of the workshop, everybody sat down under the trees and umbrellas of our class-rooms. We started with poem-writing and after about three hours, the participants shared the results reading out their poems to each other and commenting on them. This interactive pattern was followed in the other two parts of the workshop which dealt with story-telling, creating rhymed riddles and thirdly, with creating, learning and singing songs in Santali and Bengali.
Every participant wrote at least one small text which I consider a marvelous result for the beginning. The atmosphere which the workshop created was a feeling of companionship and happiness. The feedback I got from the participants is that this kind of workshop was successful and that the participants are expecting similar workshops in the future.
I have collected the various texts that were produced in the workshop. It is my aim that these texts will be edited and then collected, perhaps with some more writing, into a small magazine which we could publish in October. I have requested the senior members of our organization to support me in this effort.
Sanyasi Lohar, in April 2017