A Great Beginning

With the utmost enthusiasm and excitement I present to you a blog documenting Revive: Mumbai's 2009 summer program coordinated through Brandeis University, the Experimental Theatre Foundation, the Parivartan school and AID Mumbai.

Revive: Mumbai is an initiative run by Brandeis University students helping out the Mumbai community since the terrorist attacks this past November. To learn more about this group you may visit their webiste at: http://revivemumbai.wordpress.com

One of the projects that they started was a summer program aimed at creating street theatre with the children that reside in the slum community of Wadala outside of downtown Mumbai. The theatre performances will be created using the methodology and training of the Experimental Theatre Foundation (ETF), a theatre organization located throughout India that works with using theatre as a tool for social change.

Working on the project are 4 Brandeis students (including 1 recent alums) student of ETF, Shamli, and all are under the guidance of Manjul Bhardwaj. The Brandeis students include: Juhi Chadha, Ria Chadha, Zohar Fuller, and Sriya Srikrishnan.

As a quick update, the first week of the project involved meetings with the staff of the school and planning out the project in detail. The second week was spent in intensive ETF training (participants were Zohar and Shamli), that gave a strong basis on the concepts of ETF's movement as well as enhancing communication skills and leadership abilities (in order to work with the schoolchildren).

Currently we are going door to door in the slum community surveying the families regarding how many children reside in the homes and what educational background the children have. Starting Monday the school will be in session, and until that it is our job to find those children who have either never gone to school before, there has a been a huge lapse of time in their education or that it's too late for them to register in the goverment funded schools.

We will be trying to update regarding our experiences, reactions, achievements and challenges as much as possible during this time.

Enjoy!

-Zohar