Libby Hathorn inspires our girls with poetry

Well-known Australian children’s author, Libby Hathorn, has been a wonderful supporter of Mitrataa for a long time now, beginning with her support of 100 Views Kathmandu in 2008. She visited Kathmandu again in November, with her friend Sandra, to again share her creativity with us. In addition to working with the illustrator of her children’s book called Sangita’s Singing which was inspired by her first visit in 2008, she is also exploring a short film based on the book to help raise funds for Mitrataa. She managed to fit in time to run a poetry workshop for some of the girls at Bal Mandir and we were very happy (but not surprised!) to discover that we have some budding poets in our midst! The girls all threw themselves into the workshop as they imagined themselves as a river flowing down through the Himalayas and then explored the sounds, smells, sights of the river’s journey to write poems.

Thanks, Libby, for all your support and energy. You are an inspiration!

Inspiring words

Below I have pasted two pieces of creative writing from Kishor Ghimire, a boy we have been supporting in Nepal since we first visited Kathmandu in 2000. Kishor is now in Year 9 at the Model School in Kathmandu and it is amazing to think that his education opportunities have helped him to produce work like this:

Success

To be a successful person is the main aim of every human. But what does success really mean? Could it be a dream that may occur in the life of every human? Yes, or it may not be. The definition of success varies from person to person. It could simply be prestige, power, money or security for many people. Nobody is born successful or tagged with the destiny towards success, but why then are some successful and others not?

As we look back, history might hold the answer; all highly successful people had a clear vision of what they wanted. All had beliefs and determination in the existence of their infinite intelligence and supreme power.

As a Chinese philosopher once said, “our greatest glory lies not in never falling but rising every time we fall”. One of the best examples of this could be Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the U.S.A. He failed in politics and business. He lost lots of elections totaling dozens, from senate legislature to vice president. But finally he became the president of the U.S.A. at the age of 51. He really was the epitome of the saying that “winners never quit and quitters never win”.

Everyone is born with the seed of greatness with the ability to win, but as a human there is some weakness. This weakness in today's world might be defined as intolerance, greed, jealousy, revenge, suspicion and egotism. To make these weaknesses the positive strength we might make a lot of effort, which is absolutely necessary for obtaining success.

To be a successful person, one must build up positive thoughts. He that moves not forward goes backwards so one must always press onwards to solve problems. A clear vision, positive attitude, talent, ambition and initiative are the things really required to reach the top. So, as my last but not least point, I would like to suggest accomplishing greatness we must not only act but also dream, not only plan but also believe, as we know winners don't do different things but they do things differently.


Global warming

Look at my world it’s burning,
So people are regretting and learning.
She’s getting burnt alive,
People look at her tears and please realise.

She’s informing us to be aware,
'Cause the animals and vegetations are getting rare.
She doesn’t want us tolerating the heat,
So please people think about keeping your world neat.

She’s getting hotter and hotter,
Informing about our life getting shorter.
She’s so hot even her tears have turned into vapour,
So please understand and take care of every single wrapper.

She does not have a drop of water for drinking,
'Cause all the water resources are polluted and stinking.
She’s suffocating due to oxygen’s lack,
Even her colourless oxygen has become colourful and black.


Thanks Kishor, some fantastic thoughts and comments here.

Creative Writing for Kids in Kathmandu

On our recent trip to Nepal we were joined by our good friend, Australian children's author Libby Hathorn. This was Libby's second visit to Nepal after her wonderfully successful 100 Views Kathmandu program run at our model school in 2008.

This time Libby ran a one day creative writing workshop for class 7 and 8 girls living in the orphanage at Bal Mandir. The program was also joined by 4 specially selected students from the model school, 3 of our Dream Centre facilitators, and two children's authors working with Room-to-Read.

Libby started the workshop talking about different types of creative writing and had plenty of her own work on hand to show as examples. The children were so excited to be sitting in the same room as a published author! She next delved into poetry and had everyone standing and jumping around to act out the words in some poems. Continuing with the focus on words the students were divided into groups and had to work on describing two contrasting feelings/emotions using other similar words. This really got the students thinking and once this was finished, they then had to devise and perform a short drama illustrating the feelings described. Most of the groups chose to mime their dramas and ask the class to guess the feelings being conveyed which led to some hilarious results!

After some quick lunch the final work for the day saw the children begin to write their own poems. Libby shared a number of different techniques for structuring poetry with the class and the results were fantastic! Many of the students really managed to capture some strong feelings and descriptions in their short piece of writing. The class was left with a homework assignment of writing a short story of about two pages in length which they were all eager to begin immediately.

We must once again thank Libby for sharing her wealth of knowledge and experience with us and really making a wonderful day for the students. I'm sure it gave our Dream Centre facilitators and the Room-to-Read writers lots of great new ideas too! Thanks also to Libby and Room-to-Read who both donated books for the children at Bal Mandir to enjoy.