Saavi 3 - workshop for teens - 20 April 2024

Saavi 3 emerged with the thought of exploring the idea of community life with children. Though we know that the adolescents need a community to thrive, we were eager to explore the idea of community from the children.

We began the session with Montessori's story of the great river as it suited the current election scenario, the idea of community and human body.

Shopping team 1

Session 1 - Imagination of children

The first session was a discussion with the children about the word "Community" and we asked them to describe about a community where they would like to live. Participants were excited to put down their ideas, but not as a group but individually. This is a new twist. So as facilitators we had to sit with them and put together their ideas.

This is expectation of these young adults -

"Community should have diverse people, balanced technology, natural farming, forest for all beings, a place each individual can contribute in a way they like, a space where each one plays a part and should have a mechanism to share each one's ideas and explore."

It was mind blowing to see how the observations of Montessori came from these young adults as their expectations. One of them said community should have the possibility to explore, create, produce, build the basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing. 

From there we asked them "we are a community today and what's is our need? ". They realized then none of us brought Lunch.

We also introduced them to the idea of balanced meal and its importance in building a healthy body.

Session 2 -

Lunch time

The session 2 is to plan a lunch menu using the balanced diet idea, write the recipe, shop the ingredients, cook, and eat. This was the most wonderful part of the Saavi 3. Each one of them contributed their ideas, skills, and efforts to the meal preparation.

Shop keepers were excited to see a bunch of children with a list, asking questions and calculating amount. Young adults were so conscious of the budget and check price of each item before they chose. Once the meal is ready, they wanted to create a simple eating space using a saree. One of the Participants described it as a floor dining table.

Long interesting conversions about budget, protein, calories, health happened during the mealtime.

Session 3

Art together

During the art session, our idea was to introduce art as an expression of the community, every life. We explored different art forms like cavemen art, Warli, Bengal Patachitra and a recent drawing of Elliott Beach by a linocut artist. We used 3 books - Do (Warli), the village and story of Indian ocean for participants to explore the art forms.

The next part was to express their idea of community (from morning) into a large canvas on the wall. Each one took a word from the morning session like diverse people, new language, everyday life, cafe. Participants used mixed approach of Warli and stick figure.

Session 4

Group pic

The final session of the workshop was to reflect and journal the day. Participants were introduced to journalling as a practice to reflect their day. As a group, we reviewed each session with the prompts “what happened during the session?”, “What did they learn in the session?” and “What were their feelings during and after the session?”

"Saavi made us realize the ability of children when the opportunities are created in a right way"