Saturday Art Class

We are kickstarting the new year with a training session focused on 🌿 CULTIVATING EMPATHY IN CHILDREN 🌿 Facilitated by Deepak Ramola, Founder and Artistic Director of Project FUEL - an organization that documents and designs human wisdom collected from across the globe. Deepak also served as the Kindness Ambassador for UNESCO MGIEP. Read more about our speaker here:https://www.deepakramola.com/about The session paved the way towards gaining insightful knowledge, a peek into experiences and self-reflections for our educators. Following were 5 KEY TAKEAWAY on tools educators can use to cultivate empathy among their students: 1. Employing creative mechanisms to visualize how you feel 2.Perspective Sharing and Perspective Taking 3. Creating a space for answers that are neither right or wrong 4. Reflection 5. Involving students as collaborators and allowing their wisdom to be heard and shared See it in action HERE

“To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education.” - Jiddu KrishnamurtiThis wholly sums up the role of education in today’s world, affected by the pandemic and still healing from the after-effects of it. Our experience in the past year has made it clear that the role of education needs to evolve and extend beyond academics and literacy. It needs to empower children to become aware, compassionate, empathetic, and creative problem solvers. While several innovations in education can bring about this change, as an organization working with children from low-income communities in India since 2017, for Saturday Art Class, creative exploration through Social-Emotional Learning has been a highly effective tool in achieving the aforementioned outcomes in children, specifically.....Read full article here:https://hundred.org/en/articles/actionable-strategies-for-designing-innovative-and-impactful-learning-experiences#77770244

Saturday Art Class x Khana Chahiye

Becoming AWARE of PROBLEMS by creating art inspired by Banksy"I have drawn a bank, a man and the coronavirus. What I am trying to show here is that people are not getting a job. Even if they do have a job, they cannot go to work, because of the coronavirus, that has led to the lockdown.If we do not have a mask, we are not allowed to enter any public spaces as well. Now with the lockdown being imposed, we cannot get out from Friday 8pm to Monday 7am, the coronavirus is spreading everywhere once again." -Abdussamad Shaikh, student

Back in October 2020, we piloted our curriculum with a focus group of 220 students as part of our COVID-19 Recovery Virtual Classrooms program. Student growth was assessed and analyzed throughout the entire term of implementation. The positive results we received only further confirmed the fact that this curriculum had to be made accessible to every parent, teacher, and child globally to help them socially and emotionally during these trying times.Now digitally available on our website!What is IN MY MINDIn My Mind is a digital book based on Social-Emotional Learning, art, and creatively stimulating exercises to help provide SEL-based resources for students to educators, teachers, and parents across the globe as an open-source.This book reflects a culmination of the efforts, learnings, and feedback we were able to derive from our students and stakeholders in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that led to us curating this book that is based on our SEL and Art curriculum.What are the different components of In My Mind?In My Mind is a fine-tuned version of our curriculum that we specifically created keeping in mind the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our students. The digital book acts as a safe space for children in order to help them creatively express their emotions, thoughts, and feelings through art.How can you access In My Mind?1. Visit www.saturdayartclass.com and locate the ‘RESOURCES’ tab. 2. Each chapter of the In My Mind digital book is readily available in the PDF format, click on a session of your choice or download all 12 sessions! 3. Fill in a USER INFORMATION and SUBMIT4. Don't forget to share your reflections after each chapter by filling in the ASSESSMENT FORMCLICK HERE TO ACCESS IN MY MINDIf you are an educator / organization / school / parent open to collaborate over our digital curriculum and workbook- Get in touch- anagghan@saturdayartclass.com

Threadless Artist Mathiole has rightly said, ‘Art speaks where words are unable to explain’. Saturday Art Class works on the same principle: providing kids with a platform to express themselves through art’s universal language. Working primarily with children from low-income groups, the non-profit organisation was founded by Manasi Mehan and Chhavi Khandelwal with a common goal of solving a prevalent issue in the education system of most government schools―the unavailability of resources to teach kids the significance of social and emotional learning.“At the age of 20, I joined the Teach For India fellowship in 2015 as a class teacher for Grade 2 in a local government school in Mumbai. Over the course of my interactions with students, I realised that they learned academic subjects, but very little on how they could combat the pressures they faced on an everyday basis in their communities; from violence to difficult financial situations at home, poor nutrition, and for some even, child labour. The lack of expression of these issues affected their performance academically. The school lacked resources to not only provide them with a safe space to voice their feelings but also build skills like awareness, compassion and empathy so that they could uplift the current state of themselves and their communities,” shared Manasi.Chhavi Khandelwal and Manasi Mehan“I realised that maybe Art could be the medium through which I could address the lack of expression in my classroom and was on the lookout for an art teacher. I came across Chhavi (an architect by profession) who wanted to teach kids value-based art for the same reason and jumped at the opportunity of being a volunteer on Saturdays as an art teacher. Soon, our students started looking forward to Saturdays and started calling it Saturday Art Class,” she added.Ever since its inception in 2017, the NGO has come a long way. The team has worked with over 5700 students, 50 organisations and built a strong network of over 1300 volunteers. In a chat with ELLE, Manasi and Chhavi tell us all about how they are using the principles of art to bring a positive change to the lives of innocent minds and how much they’ve grown in their journey during the pandemic.Click here to read full article

We have had our hands full at Saturday Art Class ever since we launched the Saturday Art Class Covid 19 Relief and Recovery Program in April 2020, which was essentially launched as a way to combat the challenges our communities back home were facing due to the outbreak of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown imposed by the government.  The financial ramifications of the aforementioned lockdown resulted in many low-income communities without basic food supplies, as most of these depended on the daily wages to fulfil basic needs. Most of our students that we worked with, also belonged to these communities, hence it became imperative for us to take on Relief, by ensuring the supply of daily food essentials to families in need, which could help them, at least for a month. So far we have been able to help 12,000 individuals across 2500 families. Coupling this, we also launched Recovery, as a way to help children deal with their feelings in a positive way during this difficult time, where normalcy has been lost and has been replaced by constant stress on the effects of the disease and the pandemic. The Recovery program was basically designed to find a solution to our volunteers not being able to go on ground and conduct Social Emotional Learning and Art sessions with our children, since schools remain shut in India. Three months ago, we launched phase 1 of our "Virtual Classes for Recovery Program" where our facilitators hosted sessions for children over zoom calls. However, while phase 1 was largely successful, with more than 85% attendance being recorded, we realised that digital learning further created a gap in an already divided education system by the use of technology. The communities we worked with do not have access to technology compatible with digital learning nor do they have the resources to invest in a relatively expensive device, especially when they are currently just surviving. Additionally, over the course of the lockdown, studies show how children exposed to excess screen time as a result of schools shifting onto a digital platform, has done more harm than good. Keeping these setbacks in mind, we decided to launch our Phase 2 of the program by being mindful of what our children and communities really needed without creating a new demand. We compiled all our 12 lesson plans for Phase 2 into a workbook called, In My Mind, printed and distributed it to all children who are a part of the current phase along with Art Kits. Although we will continue to have classes over a digital platform, the larger idea behind this was to equip a child with simple tools to help him at home, with minimal tech intervention. For example, if a child cannot come online due to technical setbacks, with the aid of the workbook and art kit, our facilitators can ensure learning reaches a child over a 10 min phone call rather than a 90 min virtual class over zoom. We are also launching an e-version of the In My Mind workbook as an open source to help parents, teachers and children across the world with social emotional learning and art tools. "I believe it is a helpful resource which can help children get through the current circumstances that has jolted the world into a halting stop." -Chhavi Khandelwal, Co-founder 

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The Saturday Art Class Exhibition is an End of Year Annual Event that showcases the artwork made by students throughout the trimesters. The plat form provided engages parents, teachers, funders, well -wishers and the other stakeholders, allowing children to not only showcase their creativity but gain a sense of achievement. The year-long commitment is realised as a potential to future-growth and that of the current term. The external audience is made aware of this commitment and through the event, we hope to motivate them to help our cause and also encourage new partnerships and donations.The exhibitions contain several different aspects such as the display of artworks done by the children from partner institutions, workshops based on lesson plans conducted in class and interactive installations which are created by the children themselves. We had our first rendition of the exhibition in 2017 and consecutively we have had one in each year, in 2018 and in 2019. The 2020 exhibition was stalled due to the Covid 19 Pandemic Lockdown

To read the article published by Logical Indian click on the link below : https://thelogicalindian.com/my-social-responsibility/saturday-art-class/

The renowned media publication, First Post, covered the work of Saturday Art Class in schools. To see the video, click on the link below : https://www.firstpost.com/living/watch-the-saturday-art-class-thats-drawing-kids-to-school-4328699.html

We were humbled to be featured in one of the leading national news publications in India, The Hindu, through an article written by Ms Varda Sharma. You can read the article here

As part of the International Youth Day celebrations, the Queen's Commonwealth Trust featured the founders of Saturday Art Class. Read the article here