The Jijivisha Fellowship

Children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, face a lack of engaging opportunities to build creative confidence and are thereby disempowered to harness their voices to break this cycle of negative outcomes. 

A combination of disadvantaged childhood circumstances (such as poverty, poor mental and physical health, etc.) and various ecosystem challenges (such as global inequity, lack of opportunities and conflict) result in a disempowered future for our children. Studies show that 47% of India’s 6.8 crore graduates are unemployable for any industry role (Aspiring Minds, 2013.) This is due to the fact that our education system does not cater to the requirements of current opportunities: what’s being taught in schools is just reading, writing and arithmetic. 

On average, students receive less than 20 hours of art education in a year, with a stark ratio of 1 art teacher to every 1400 students. This translates to our nation suffering a creativity crisis: India ranks 99th out of 139 countries on the Global Creativity Index (2015). Children are not only far from solving their own problems, but also stymied in their ability to become leaders who have a voice; leaders who bring about a more just and inclusive society and influence social issues.

Our education system needs to be better designed to serve all children equally. It needs to encourage them to develop the skills that will empower them to harness their voice in changing the world.

Slam Out Loud uses art forms like poetry, storytelling, visual arts, and theatre to help children from disadvantaged communities find their voice through creative expression.

Our organization seeks to address the lack of creative confidence building opportunities for students through various interventions of program + product, including:

• Arts-based workshops, delivered by the core team and trained artist volunteers (Fellows), and
• An evolving arts curriculum which is disseminated through technology and Fellows

The Jijivisha Fellowship is our flagship program in which we work with professional artists to help children in low-income communities build confidence to dream bigger and create agency for their future. So far we have worked with 100 artists and 6500 children across India. 

Each artist works with a group of approximately 30 students for a period of 1 year. The program expands into a 5 year intervention with a relay model. Through this, the students receive 108+ hours of arts-based learning per year. We monitor and evaluate the children’s growth in both life skills and mastery in the art form. The program enables us to create assets and public goods. We scale them through our program, Voice For All.

SOL aims to harness the extraordinary power of the arts as the right input to build creative confidence, raising educational outcomes for learners and enriching overall quality of life for communities in the most under-served places.

Focusing on the 6 core skills of Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking, Empathy and self Esteem, our intended impact is to help children discover their voices through the transformational power of the arts, allowing them to become creative thinkers who dream bigger and create the future. We aim to make this possibility accessible for all children: to empower every individual with a voice that enables them to change lives.