Inspiring Children's Day full of excitement, creativity, talent and the launch of "Sangita's Singing" children's book

The Mitrataa family celebrated Children’s Day this year in a style core to what we do – with creativity and the incredible talents of our children as the focus. We hosted 3 wonderful programs at our Wiley Dream Centre in collaboration with Dream Catchers Nepal, our local partner. The theme – “Our nation, our pride” – inspired a lot of positive celebration of the great talents and beauty of Nepal.
 

1)    Inspirations Awards – “Celebrating creative thinking in Nepal’s children” – we invited all our partner schools to participate in this art, poetry and story writing competition and we had entries from 15 of the invited schools which was wonderful. There is some real talent in our group with some very impressive writing and drawing. The English poetry and story writing competition was judged by Libby Hathorn, well-known Australian children’s author. The art competition was judged by Barbara Jones, and Australian artist and art teacher. The Nepali story writing and poetry competitions were judged by Saroj Dhungana, Nepali poet and journalist. Entries were judged in advance and prizes were awarded on the day. We plan to publish a book with the winning entries as a celebration of the creativity of the children. The winners were invited to special workshops the next day hosted by Libby and Barbara to continue their creative journeys.

 

2)  Mitrataa’s Got Talent – A dance and drama competition amongst our partner schools really showcased our children’s talents! After a fierce competition, our judges, Ajit Aryal (director of Achel theatre) for the drama and Birendra tamanag (dance teacher) for the dance, announced the winners. The acts all really brought our theme to life and our visiting guest judges got a true taste of Nepal’s talent!

 

3)  Launch of “Sangita’s Singing” children’s book – Libby Hathorn is an award winning Australian children’s author who has written over 50 books! She first visited Nepal with Mitrataa in 2008 to run the 100 Views program at Riviera. During that trip, she was inspired to write a story about a girl from the village who comes to Kathmandu to study and her journey towards literacy through the challenges of being bullied and a long way from home. The story was illustrated by Bandana Tulachan, an up and coming Nepali illustrator who is currently completing her Bachelors in Fine Arts from Kathmandu University Center for Art and Design. After a long journey, the book is finally complete and was formally launched on Children’s Day at our Nepali pride celebration. It looks fantastic and we are so excited. Two students read an extract from the book, supported by 2 girls acting out a scene at the launch.

 

     Libby has very generously donated all profits from the sale of the book to support Mitrataa’s work. Sangita’s Singing will soon be available through Mitrataa’s website – www.mitrataa.org – for A$25 (+P&H) so please order your copy for a loved one this Christmas and enjoy the wonderful story while knowing you are also supporting the dreams of the girls like Sangita who are supported by Mitrataa in Nepal. We will also be selling copies in Nepal and working with schools here to use the story as an educational tool as it covers so many wonderful themes – the importance of education, rural v city life, bullying, using your strengths to overcome challenges. Thank you so much to Libby who is a great supporter of Mitrataa. We are incredibly grateful to have you as part of the Mitrata family.

 

So huge thanks to our judges for their time and energy and especially to Libby and Barbara for travelling so far and for running the workshops on Saturday too. Thanks to all the schools and the kids who participated in a fantastic celebration of what is some amazing about Nepal – the level of talent and passion was wonderful!

And the biggest thanks to the Mitrataa team for all your hard work in organising this fantastic day which gave us an opportunity to showcase the work we do and the talent of the kids we have the privilege of working with. Without your hard work, none of it would have been possible. While every member of the team was involved, special thanks must go to Bipana and Ganga for leading the organisation for the Inspirations Award and to Subina for leading the organisation of the Mitrataa’s Got Talent competition. Thank you so much.