The Kutumb Foundation

Our Qissagadh Active Library programme uses arts-led library programming to improve students’ foundational literacy skills and serves as a safe space for independent research, reading, collaborative learning, and events such as storytelling sessions. We do this through our drama conventions toolkit. Our head branch is located in Sector 7, Noida, and we have community libraries in Savda-Ghevra J.J. Resettlement Colony and Harijan Camp, Lodhi Colony, in Delhi. The curriculum we are developing is divided into four quarterly themes: Building Sustainability, Embracing Diversity, Breaking Stereotypes, and Exploring Power Dynamics. The catalogue of 3,500 English and Hindi books is divided into four literacy competency levels (Foundation, Basic, Intermediate and Advanced). Students develop language skills through structured arts-led lessons featuring our library books as part of the Qissebaaz Book Club. This is in line with the government’s NEP 2020 goals for addressing foundational literacy.

We have conducted numerous teacher training sessions with educators from government schools, colleges, and nonprofits, focusing on helping educators develop confidence in the use of drama conventions in the classroom, using our toolkit. We have organised workshops at venues such as Vishwa Yuvak Kendra and Sanskriti Kendra as well as workshops with educators at historical sites such as Mehrauli. Recently we conducted a drama-in-education training with 27 MCD Primary School teachers in association with Tech Mahindra Foundation. We have also worked to train teachers at a trust-run school in Lucknow.

The Kutumb Foundation has also conducted Drama-in-Education school intervention programming in a series of government schools, in Delhi and Noida, since 2014. We use innovative drama conventions to explore curricular topics. Drama conventions anchor our work in the space of free libraries, storytelling, literacy programming, capacity building workshops, cultural programming, and sports for development football programming. The use of drama conventions helps students develop their self-efficacy and articulation skills and develop into problem-posing critical thinkers. Drama suspends and questions hierarchies, and creates safe spaces for youth to explore difficult questions and to reach their own conclusions. Kutumb’s Drama-in-Education intervention addresses the foundational literacy skills, and drama is uniquely positioned, as a holistic, play focused, discovery oriented, activity-based pedagogy, to address foundational literacy with primary school children.

Another of Kutumb's flagship programmes is our Sports for Development initiative, Goal of Life. The objective of Goal of Life is to address the overall physical, emotional, and social development of youth - in particular girls, through football and life-skills using drama and the arts. Our technical training approach has been developed through a decade of best practices, as well as through support from World1 Sports, one of India’s leading sports consultant and player management agencies. Our toolkit uses drama conventions to explore leadership, pluralism, and gender sensitivity, through the framework of the Olympic Values Education Programme (OVEP), an international Sports for Development framework created specifically for adolescents. Additionally, we have worked with Coaches Across Continents to integrate SRHR and GBV trainings as an additional component of our programming and to co-facilitate trainings focusing on the use of purposeful play and drama.