These Children are Telling Stories of Lost Childhoods on Canvas

A recent Kolkata exhibition showcased the works of disadvantaged children who’ve survived sexual trauma and abuse.

Paint Our World is a humanitarian organisation that works to empower underprivileged children who’ve been through trauma like child sexual abuse and becoming orphaned. (Photo Courtesy: Priya Virmani; Facebook/Paint Our World)

At first glance the picture below is just a beautiful painting made by a child. Nothing unusual about it.

It has trees, birds, a very blue sky, the sun, earth and two girls.

This is no ordinary painting: it is the work of a child who has survived trauma and used her paintbrush to express it. (Photo Courtesy: Priya Virmani)

But once you know the story of the painting in the child’s own words and juxtapose it with the story of the child’s lost childhood, this becomes no ordinary painting.

The painter is a little girl rescued from the Sealdah railway station area (a heaving Kolkata terminus). This beautiful little girl Rina – a victim of trauma and abuse – used her paintbrush to depict the turnaround in her outlook on life.

Rina is part of Paint Our World, a humanitarian organisation I set up almost 3 years ago that works to empower underprivileged children who have been through trauma like child sexual abuse and becoming orphaned.

Rina described the story of her painting as: “The past was bad but it is over. Now I turn my back on the past and look at the happy sun.”

Of Healing Through Art

Rina’s painting – together with that of other children from the Paint Our World family –were curated for an art exhibition with a difference. Titled ‘Agapi’ (meaning ‘love’ in Greek), the exhibition was a labour of love held at the ITC Sonar in Kolkata.

Titled ‘Agapi’, the exhibition was a labour of love held at the ITC Sonar in Kolkata. (Photo Courtesy: Facebook/Paint Our World)

The artwork led the guests by the hand into the world of these wonderfully sensitive children chronicling the positive transformations being brought about in their worlds. These pieces weren’t meant to showcase ‘talent’, but a heartwarming result of trauma healing workshops where art was the seminal medium of expression.

The story of Paint Our World (POW) began in a dilapidated building in the heart of Sonagachi – Kolkata’s notorious red light district. The children here had the saddest of stories of absent childhoods because of which they were grappling with myriad behavioural difficulties.

The workshops I began – which the children nicknamed ‘mastizones’ – started, over time, to bring about a visible transformation in their lives. What I discovered was very simple.

The children had begun feeling good about themselves and when you feel good about yourself, your interaction with the world around you changes and becomes more purposeful. The children were becoming more positive, enthusiastic and confident.

The children – after the workshops – were becoming more positive, enthusiastic and confident. (Photo Courtesy: Facebook/Paint Our World)

The Paint Our World model is a low cost, high impact, easily scalable methodology that works with a curriculum designed by leading experts and child psychologists. Using activity therapies like game, dance and movement, narrative, theatre, zen painting and art, counselling happens at the subliminal level in ways, that for the children, are fun and imaginative.

A most common question put to me is – “Why is emotional empowerment important?” People ascertain that surely, once the basics of food, clothing and shelter are provided, education is the most pressing concern?

They are often puzzled by my response that emotional empowerment is a most fundamental aspect of education; that this is what separates man from beast and on a pragmatic level, readies our children (with histories of trauma) to handle school lives and enables the progress of key developmental skills.

Children at Paint Our World watching a puppet show with glee. (Photo Courtesy: Facebook/Paint Our World)

India has More Abused Children Than UK, Germany and France

It is a myth that love, care, empathy and the like are emotional attributes we are born with.

Just like we learn the skills of maths, science and the languages, these attributes too are learnt. We learn them most in our infancy and in our childhoods from our immediate environments.

When an infant cries and his mother suckles him at his breast, that’s when his learning of such emotions begins. The absence of such emotional learning in childhood bears a correlation to the formation of dysfunctional adults. This makes meaningful interventions in the lives of our country’s most vulnerable children crucial.

The Paint Our World model uses activity therapies that for the children, are fun and imaginative. (Photo Courtesy: Facebook/Paint Our World)

Besides the qualitative impact of Paint Our World’s work, the numbers also point to an urgency of interventions needed. The last figures released by the Women and Child Ministry (2007) state that 150 million girls and 73 million boys in India are victims of abuse. This amounts to more than the combined populations of the UK (at 64 million), France (at 66 million) and Germany (at 81 million). Any educated estimate suggests this even this number is an underestimate because most cases go unreported against the backdrop of a culture of reporting that is part reticent and part undocumented.

If we are to bring about any meaningful change to next generation India can we overlook our most imperilled children? Soni’s painting strikes a chord here. She says, “My teachers tell me India loves me so I made a big flag of India. It is as high as the mountains.”

Is the India that “loves her” going to give her a purposeful chance at life or it is going to let her down?

*Children’s names have been changed for reasons of child health and safety

(The writer is a political and economic analyst.)