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History Expedition History Expedition {Hex} is an idea to record the history and working conditions of children and child labour in Karnataka. This will be through a bicycle expedition of children to visually and empirically document the travails and tribulations of the children of India so as to raise the knowledge, awareness and information about the status of child labour in order to eliminate it. Hex will be an extension of the Of Legacies and Legends idea through out the length and breadth of the districts of India in order to study it and create an empirical visual data base. This will be done by a 25-member team consisting of 20 children and 5 Adults. The children will come from working and street backgrounds, bonded labour who will be trained in the art of filming and photography. The team will cover one district each day. The Hex also will coordinate and is dependent on Department of Labour and local NGO's who should provide infra structural support for the realization of the idea. The Hex team will be using digital cameras and these impressive images will bring us closer to the issue and for the final resolution of the problem. The Hex team will also film their condition, which will be of severe significance. Details more… Of Legacies and Legends Of Legacies and Legends is a visual documentation
of the life and times of working and street children. A hundred
million in India and 246 million in rest of Asia, Africa and Latin
America. To Bangalore city arrive everyday, day after day, one
hundred children. 65 by train, 30 by bus and the rest by walk,
to join the ever-swelling ranks of the unfettered and street children,
with the sky as their roof, and only the earth to lay their bodies
on. They are the modern day slaves. Freed from their natural homes
to roam on the streets and to toil in the shop floors and factories.
This is a modern phenomenon of a modern society. Throbbing with
energy, pulsating with activity, you can find them in the dark
corrupt crevices of this society. Behind all those delicacies
served in shiny plates, is a tiny hand wearing out his body. Behind
all those two wheelers that mob the city, sparkles a child mechanic.
Behind all those bricks, which went up, to build the walls of
the malls were pairs and pairs of small gentle hands! Behind all
the matches that lit up millions of fires in homes for cooking
were dexterous hands that counted 50 sticks in less than 5 seconds.
Every time a cracker bursts in the festival of light shatters
the dream of a child! Is society aware or conscious of what it
does to a fourth of its population? Its present and future, CHILDREN?
Child labor has to stop in order to create an egalitarian society.
History has to be written and re-written and retold on behalf
of the children. The idea Of legacies and legends will truthfully and faithfully record the history of the working children through the powerful idiom of photographic images. The idea of Of Legacies and legends is to create Child photographers, Child historians, and Child educators. There will be 100 workshops, which will be held and spread across Asia, Africa and Latin America. In each workshop there will be 20 to 40 child participants who will be trained in Photography and educated in Child rights. They will then record by pictures and word the images of working and street children. The work thus produced will be mounted as a traveling exhibition and shown across in schools, colleges, exhibition halls, cultural center in India and different parts of the world, with the support of the national and international networks of child empowerment. This process will be then established as an important exchange link. Impact At the end of having created 100 workshops with 40 children in
each event. Of legacies and Legends would have created
4000 child historians and photographers. If each participants
exposes a roll of 36 frames we would have created 1,44 000 pictures.
Each participant in a workshop will create his/her own exhibition
of post card size for the primary level exhibition. For the higher
level one picture from each participant will taken to be printed
of a size 12" X 15" to form the public~ traveling exhibition.
From all the 100 workshops, 300 of the most powerful images will
be taken to form a Global exhibition of Of Legacies and
Legends. 6000 pictures in 15 editions in Of Legacies and Legends Thus OLAL has been organized in 15 places; With working and street
children, bonded labour children, students and youth from Bangalore
and Japan. Nepali street children also clicked pictures in Kathmandu.
So far, OLAL has been able to create over 6000 pictures. OLAL
exhibition are making their impact in the worlds children and
youth gathering: From schools, colleges in India to the World
Social forum in Mumbai, 2003 to the Morocco youth congress. Also,
the exhibition took place in Germany, Spain, England, Japan and
Singapore. The important exhibition came by its showing in the
first global congress of child labourers in Florence {The World
Congress on Child Labour by the Global March against Child Labour}held
in May 2004. OLAL has caught world attention and is now being
organized through out in Africa, Asia and Latin America. All documented
pictures are browsed on the line; http://www.olal.net |
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