Children’s Festival in Seelamunai, Batticaloa(Sri Lanka) on 15nth of May 2005
Third Eye Local Knowledge and Skill Activists Group is organizing a Children’s Festival from 4.30pm to6.30pm on 15nth of May 2005 in Seelamunai Batticaloa. The Children’s Clubs of Third Eye in Kumarapuram, Seelamunai, Karuvepamkerny and Navatkudah will participate and perform in this festival.
Programs:
Demonstration of Traditional Children’s games and Children’s Theatre Games by the children’s who are involved in the Children’s program of the Third Eye with the Tsunami affected children from the 27nth of December 2004.
The special feature of the festival is the Festival of Kites.
Kites are very popular among people and very special among children. But now it is very rare to see people with kites or children are playing with kites.
Why it’s lost its popularity and what is the importance of kites?
Education and Electronic Media cut short the leisure time of the people and especially the children.
Children are sitting in a class room (may be in a school or in a tuition centre) in front of a teacher and studying matters which are rarely connects themselves with their environment or in front of the television box and busying themselves with popular entertainments which were designed to make the people to live in a crazy world.
Time to free mobility is very limited for children now.
Reviving the entertainment of playing with kites among children is a kind of liberating children from their oppressive nature and provides them with creative atmosphere.
Playing with kites is an exiting entertainment and an energetic creative exercise.
Popularizing it among the children is another kind of Education.
The process of playing with Kites is an aesthetic experience, physical exercise and an exercise for concentration.
It will function as a tool to connect the children among themselves and with their own environment and it will function also as a tool to build-up gender equality from the childhood.
Third Eye celebrates the creativity and skills of the children of this world of domination and control.
Children’s Festival will be followed by screening of KITCHAN; a 26 minutes short film was produced by Neithal Media Vision. The short film was scripted and directed by
A. Vimalraj based on a short story Krishnapillai by Riyas Ahmad (Amritha A.M.)
This is Kitchchan…
Kitchchan is the story of a boy who has lost his primary education.
Our families are patriarchal centered.
When the male heads of the families became victims of war, a large number of families became women headed households.
In a large number of families, children were compelled to become breadwinners for the livelihood of their families.
Naughtiness and merriment at home, play and mischief outside,
Wandering timidly………..
Children – stars twinkling on the ground have become the carriers of unbearable burdens.
Law considers child labour as offence.
Law is reasonable.
But reality is complex, full of challenges.
To relieve children from their heavy burdens
is connected to facing the challenges of complicated realities.
Kitchchan is the manifestation to face these challenges.
(Translated By: S.M Felix)
Children’s festival of the “Third Eye” will be extended to the other villages with the support of the communities and friends.
The aim and objective of the “Third Eye” is to strengthen the self sustainability of the communities.
Let’s depend on our knowledge,
Let’s depend on our skills.
Let’s sow in our fields,
Let’s live on our yields.
Let’s awake by removing
Living practices that control.
Let’s revive
Ways of living in harmony
With environment.(Translated By: S.M Felix)
S.Jeyasankar
