Today I met Prashast, the media mentor assigned to Akshay Pratishthan. The session that went for an hour started with the discussion on the documentary topic and Prashast’s brief about his idea for the documentary film. While going on a round of the school building, the plain white washed “ramp” (used for the physically handicapped children instead of stair) caught his eyes. His idea for the film was to paint the ramp and the adjacent walls with bright images and then capturing the response of the students, teachers and school administrators. The ramp will be painted by professional workers or some volunteers and students will also participate in their capacities under his guidance. He also showed images of similar work (painted rooms) he had done for a private school in Srinagar.
The idea seemed interesting but I was apprehensive about the response of the students to the idea. Secondly my point of concern was whether AYV program is for ‘students’ or for ‘mentor & teachers’. The creative idea that Prashast suggested seems that 70% of the work will be done either only by mentor & teachers or spoon fed to students and 30% may be the students actual input. What my understanding of the AYV program is that students will put at least 70% of their efforts and remaining 30% technical & logistic support by the mentor and school teachers. Rajita was also of the same opinion as mine. Teachers were also concerned whether school management would like to fund the idea as considerable cost is involved in painting the ramp.
During the discussion, Prashast raised a very good point and used a phrase “think out of the box” to advocate his idea. I also felt that during my first session I could have given the students more space to think on more creative ideas instead of using the heavy word “ISSUES”. But at that point of context, I felt more like getting out of ‘our’ box and getting into ‘another’ box. Since Anuradha, Lipika, Usha & Rajita were also apprehensive about “the ramp” idea as they were not able to visualize the tangible output, I suggested Prashast that he must first talk to students to gauge their level of understanding and creative thinking.
During the interaction with students Prashast talked about their dreams, their interests their imagination but no single view helped us to introduce his idea along with theirs. The session ended without any conclusion and Prashast suggested us to come up with other ‘out of the box’ ideas for the documentary film. Again, I felt that AVY is more for students than teachers or resource persons. To me the first and the last idea must be of the students. Teachers & mentor are there to help them add or delete the sub-ideas in between.
Internally it was finally decided to have two groups for making two different films. One group will work on the topic suggested by Prashast and another group will have 10 students and proceed as guided during the EVC workshop and according to the training manual provided by the EVC while keeping in mind the objectives of the AYV program.
But the above discussion raised a few queries in my mind about the association of media mentors in the AYV program:
==> How to get the creative inputs from the students?
==> How to manage time for the project during school hours with exams around the corner?
==> What is the role of and expectations from media mentor as defined in AYV program?
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