Magic Box at St. Andrew’s Vasco da Gama

Communicare Trust and the students of Goa Institute of Management conducted our second Magic Box workshop for the year at St. Andrew’s High School in Vasco Da Gama . This time there was a small difference in the plan. Instead of creating characters out of waste , we asked the students to make their on slogans on placards with the topic of Waste and Waste Reduction. They students came up with some very interesting and catchy slogans. We also played the Segregation game with them, separating plastic, glass and paper into three separate bags. The slogans the students made will be turned into a Stop-Motion Animation movie soon.

Salvador do Mundo Magic Box

This year we started off the Give Goa Project of with Goa Institute of Management , with a Magic Box workshop at the Smt. Sunandabai Bandodkar High School in Salvador do Mundo. The kids were all very enthusiatic about learning how to manage waste and how to create their own little characters and stories . The volunteers from GIM gave a short presentation on the problem of waste and how to manage it. They then organised two games for the children with music , dancing and prizes. This got the kids really interested and they were able to come up with interesting little stories and these have been turned into a small movie you can watch at the link below .

 

Mayem Magic box

Our final Waste Management Workshop for the year 2014-15 was conducted in the beautiful village of Mayem. We had 26 students from the 6^th STD actively participating in the workshop. As always we had a introduction done and the workshop was carried forward by the students of GIM who have been working with us since the past few months.

Workshop began with a Q&A session about waste segregation followed by a presentation on various types of waste and how they are treated

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The children were shown videos of the previous workshop to get an idea of what the rest of the day would be like.

Further they were divided into 5 groups and each assigned with a team leader. The children began making stories and within an hour the story telling began.

Out of the 5 brilliant stories 2 were chosen of which the movies would be made. The children of the respective groups began preparing their characters under the guidance of the team leader while the rest put on their creative hats and made their best out of waste.

The final outcome of the workshop were these movies.

The duckling and the rabbit : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZrTBNqJNoI&list=UUew5mjs9dcdp8lXe7bcoH7Q

The clever birds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfamGxxmg3s&list=UUew5mjs9dcdp8lXe7bcoH7Q

The Morlem Magic Box

Communicare Trust along with 6 students from Goa Institute of Management, Sanquelim this time visited a rural village of North Goa, Morlem with our Magic Box project.

The students namely Rahul Sharma, Sannidhi Vyas,Saeesh Kakodkar, Rohan Shukla, Ashlesha Salkar and Aditya Rajurkar are part of the GiveGoa intitative by GIM and they have been working with Communicare Trust’s Magic Box since the beginning of the academic year.

With their help and support from the Govt High School of Morlem we were able to conduct our 2nd project for the annual year of 2014-15 on 4th December 2014.

The project began with a small activity conducted by the students.

Following which random questions were asked to the kids if they knew about waste segregation. Questions such as what is the difference between wet and dry waste and how to treat them etc.

All the dry waste was gathered into a heap and 3 teams were made and each was asked to either pick up glass and metal, paper or plastic.

Once the game finished we divided the 30 kids to 6 groups of 5 each. Each student from GIM guided a group as they began preparing the storyboard.

Every team had a leader who then later presented their story to the class. There was a voting session conducted and the best story was chosen to be made into a movie

As the winning team prepared their characters the remainder of the class made creative things out of the waste provided to them.

Meanwhile the voices for the characters were recorded.

 

We successfully concluded the workshop within a day and the shooting of the movie will be done next Thursday.

The outcome was this movie made by the kids

Swach Goan Swach Bharat : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXXpWHm4Ib4&list=UUew5mjs9dcdp8lXe7bcoH7Q

Santa Cruz Magic Box

The Santa Cruz Magic box is our 1st Waste Management workshop for the year of 2014-15. We held it with the kids from Bethesda Life Center.

About Bethesda Life Center

Established in 2001, Bethesda Life Center is a home for children in distress. Beena Martin trustee of the orphanage took care of children who were abandoned and homeless.

It all started in April 2001, when Beena Martin (founder of the orphanage) came across Martha who was disowned by her family because she got pregnant out of matrimony. Knowing Martha’s situation, Beena housed her with an old friend (an elderly lady) who was living alone. When Martha was six months pregnant, she found out she was HIV positive. Beena went around in search of support groups, she was made aware that numerous children were homeless on account of the stigma attached disease. Beena took strict action, she rented a room in St. Cruz and brought ten of these distressed children here. Once news spread, people and NGOs referred children to the apartment.

Now Beena owner of Bethesda Life Center which are three purchased homes (with the help of supporters), Daniel’s Enclave (for boys 3-10 years of age), Joshua’s Enclave (for boys11-16 years of age) and Rebekah’s Enclave (for girls 3-16 years of age) they houses 98 children in total.

The motto of the orphanage is to provide an opportunity “to live their life to the fullest” in the nation of India and beyond, irrespective of cast, creed, religion and colour. Their strategy includes providing residential care for children in distress as well as essentials such as food, clothing, education and health care hence being established in life. The elder distressed children have been provided employement.

We had a 5 groups of 6 kids each with one adult guiding them throughout the workshop. It was a 4 day workshop. We began the 1st day by explaining to them about the various kinds of waste and how they should be segregated. A game as well was played on how to segregate garbage from one other.

The children had also prepared their story boards and chosen the material which would be necessary for their characters.

 

Day 2: The children began preparing their characters and gradually they all came to life.

 

Day 3: The children completed all the characters and their back drops. The voice over for each play was done as well.

 

Day 4: The Magic box was built and shooting of each movie began.

 

We made 5 movies of which 3 were in Portuguese. Hindi and Konkani.

 

Magic box reaches ASRO, Thivim!

Since waste management has been an issue in Goa for quite a while and attempts to tackle it have been limited to the cities, Communicare Trust has decided to create awareness at the village level. From 18th – 21st September, we intend to organize a waste management animation workshop to teach children to reuse waste and create animation movies. Our long term goal would be to screen these movies in schools all over Goa to inform them about the importance of waste segregation and recycling in the hopes that they will use these methods at home.

Our first workshop of this kind was held in Aldona and it was a great success. Hence this time we are going to held the same at ASRO (the care home for HIV children who are mostly orphans).

In the long run we aim to organize these workshops in other villages of Goa and whenever possible with institutions.

Characters from the animation ” Dosti”

Characters of the animation ” Magic Fairy”

Characters of the animation ” T-Man”

Creating Crazy Characters

During the second and third day of the workshop, the kids made remarkable headway. A vibrant display of dogs, washing machines, a parachute, amongst many other fascinating characters created out of waste dotted the front edge of the stage at the Institute. And as soon as their character-building task was completed, they instantaneously got cracking on the storyboards for their respective teams.

                                             

Making News

On the 4th of May, The Goan published an article on the success of Aldona’s Magic Box. 

Breathing life into waste by Rachel Fernandes

First they segregated the dry garbage into separate piles. Then they were guided to create characters out of the waste items. What came next was writing a story using all the created characters. With both the characters and the storyline firmly in place, the next step was creating an ideal background for their story. This, too, was created using only items from the segregated waste piles. On the last day of the camp, the characters, storylines and backgrounds came together in the form of short movies, made by the kids themselves under the guidance of the resource persons.

This was ‘Aldona’s Magic Box’, a five-day workshop, organised by the Communicare Trust for the children of Aldona, ages 8-12 years. The camp aimed at teaching these kids the importance and ‘tips and tricks’ of appropriately segregating their dry garbage. But that was not all the kids did. “Harnessing the amazing creative potential, enthusiasm and energy levels of the youngsters, we encouraged them to convert this segregated waste into wealth,” says Noel Sequeira, a member of the resource team that conducted the camp.

On the last day, parents, family members and friends were invited to a presentation and felicitation ceremony. The short films made by each of the groups of children were also screened and their work exhibited.

Nalini Elvino de Sousa, who founded the Communicare Trust, said that their aim was to teach young kids about waste management. “This is the age when they are easily impressionable and highly enthusiastic. Hence, it’s easier to impart such important lessons which they will then go out and follow,” she says adding that after their success in Aldona, they now plan to take this camp to other villages as well. 

 

Goa Streets published us as well. Check out the fantastic story: http://goastreets.com/goa-news/films-from-waste/

Thank you, scrap-pickers.

As the enlightening article below puts forth- It is really not such a big hassle to keep an eye on your waste. Of course, cardboard is essential for secure packaging of appliances but that doesn’t mean we dump it wherever we deem convenient. Waste, whether plastic or paper has negative consequences on the environment. As long as it is not bio-degradable, we ought to walk that extra mile to deliver the stack of segregated waste (This could be a certain tonnes of plastic bottles or cardboard boxes) to the closest recycle station. We cannot rely on scrap pickers forever and for however much longer they might depend upon scrap-picking as the livelihood, be grateful to them. Acknowledge them. Learn from them.

Note: Please click on the article and use the magnifying lens to read in comfort. 

Of Games, Documentaries and Interesting Talks

Nalini shows the kids how bottle caps can be used to make eyes for their characters.

Communicare Trust had been collecting waste items in the form of cornflakes boxes, tins, cans, peanut butter jars, newspapers, tetra packs and so on for the creation of the characters that would be used in the animated movies. These waste items came in handy for the game as we jumbled them all up on the floor for the teams to collect the items appropriate for their respective bags. The plastic team scrambled to and fro to collect yoghurt cups and plastic wrappers, and later dropping them into the bag reserved for plastic items while the other teams put up a very good fight. Soon enough, they were well acquainted with the practice of separating dry waste from wet waste and further separating the different types of dry waste.

We then screened our pilot animation to offer the kids a glimpse of how animation films can be produced with garbage. We strung together an artificial worm with pepsi bottle caps and the twenty second animation showed this worm gobbling up a few leaves. The kids were intrigued and geared up to start creating their own movies.

The first day culminated with an eye-opening talk on waste segregation by Avinash Mesquita, Founder of Aldona Citizen Initiative for Waste Management. With the aid of several illustrations, videos and case studies, he elucidated the repercussions of a lack of an efficient garbage disposal system on the world.