India’s largest literary and cultural inter school festival

Short synopsis of the programme

The Regional team for the Charter in India had a lot of discussions and interactions since May 2006 with an “edutainment” company, The Activity, based in Bangalore, initiating a programme incorporating the Charter of Human Responsibilities in its Horlicks Wizkids 2006 event.

The Activity as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agreed to promote and disseminate the Charter and to highlight the notion of Responsibilities among children. This programme with the goal to reach more than 4,000,000 students from 4500 schools in 25 cities of India has begun since June 2006. A leaflet (that you can upload from the website mentioned below) specifically designed for this event was distributed to all these schools. The Charter team being actively involved at the Bangalore event witnessed the participation of about 85 Schools: 8,600 participants + 2000 students (audience). These students were engaged for 2 days between 25th -26th June 2006 in various art, literary & cultural events inspired by the Charter of Human Responsibilities.
Events in the cities such as Chennai, Madurai, Cochin, Trivandrum, Coimbatore and others are already over and two participants from each city selected for the Wiz team finals to be held in November 2006 have started to work on their project inspired by the Charter of Human Responsibilities.

What is Wikids 2006 ?

India’s largest art, literary & cultural School fest Horlicks Wizkids 2006 by The Activity brings together talents of thousands of schools from 25 cities across the nation to compete on a single platform & be in the midst of the best in the country. It gives students a unique platform to express themselves better and evolve from within.

The inter cultural fest has about 40 events (Art, literary, creative, dance, music, singing, writing, quizzes and speaking events etc… ) enjoyable & action filled competitions from the 1st grade to all the way 12th grade. Students between 6 to 18 years of age take part in these different competitions. The event is spread over a period 1 or 2 days based on the city.

Wizkids is a great opportunity for students to participate, perform, witness, cheer, have fun, but above all learn and grow as individuals and be responsible citizens.

How do we integrate the Charter in Wizkids 2006?

The principles of the Charter of Human Responsibilities are used as guidelines to create topics for most of the events/competitions. During the events all over India, the children are handed a small pamphlet on the Charter of Human Responsibilities printed by us.

As a result, the principles of the Charter would not only be heard but also depicted through the actions of the numerous students that would take part in Wizkids through out the country. Topics in most of these events are based on responsibilities as individuals and children’s responsibilities to their family, school and the world outside.

These different literary, arts and other events allow the children and youth to voicing their opinion on the notion of Responsibility, be it by essay competition, drawing, collage, etc.
These Competitions are also theme-based competitions. Keeping this in mind we can inculcate the Principles and ideas of the Charter in the theme for the year.
For example: Essay Writing “Earth for children”. This would not only allow the children to just write but would make them think of all the things happening around to the environment and how it is affecting them. This will definitely be a great opening for the Charter to understand the needs and understand the depth of the children and their concerns in this present challenging and globalized world.

Schools and children expected to participate in this mega event

WIZKIDS by ACTIVITY is India’s largest literary and cultural event for schools, reaching more than 4,000,000 students from over 4500 schools from 25 cities of India - Bangalore, Chennai, Madurai, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Cochin, Trivandrum, Bhubaneswar, Vishakapatnam, Kolkatta, Guwahati , Patna, Jamshedpur, Delhi, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Lucknow, Allahabad, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Raipur, Bhopal.

Final WIZTEAM Event in Bangalore – November 2006

Within the purview of WIZKIDS, the WIZTEAM Contest, a contest that aims at identifying individuals who possess both character and competence. The participants are tested at school and city level with an exciting & thrilling National final to find India’s WIZTEAM.

At the Wiz Team National Finals, all the finalists (two from each city - around 50 children) undergo theatre training, project presentations, interviews, group discussions, games, psychometric tests and other evaluation methods to judge their character and competence. The Indian Charter team will facilitate a workshop for these 50 students and finalize the Children’s Charter of Social and Environmental Responsibilities.

Meanwhile, from the time they are selected in their respective city until the time they meet at the finals they are to focus on a project, which is to add more meaning to lives of people and make individuals better and responsible citizens.

Project:

- Each city level winners’ need to prepare his/her own charter of responsibilities called ’My Charter’.
- He/she has to choose a project that would benefit the school or society from their own charter of responsibilities.
– They may discuss about social and environmental problems and how to assume responsibilities by themselves at individual and collective levels to address these problems and local actions and the partners/ stakeholders with whom to realise these actions.
- The project would have to be an effort to initiate a movement, which encourages the student to use his/her latent creativity, abilities effectively. The focus of the project is to add more meaning to lives of people and make better and responsible citizens.
- The short listed contestants need to choose a topic for the project under broad category of social, environment and culture based on the Charter.

For Example:
- For the topic Environment, organize people in your neighbourhood and do a cleanliness drive, No plastic Movement
- For a social topic, visit an NGO and be of any help, assistance to them, start a study circle for the underprivileged kids.
- For a cultural topic, encourage your school to introduce/include traditional sports of India in their curriculum.
This project should be completed by August 06.

The Project paper will include:
1. Children’s Charter of Responsibilities.
2. Project report of about 40 pages

The proposed outline (which is of course flexible) for their project report is:
- Understanding on the Charter of Human Responsibilities.
- Relevance of the Charter today
- Reflection on Rights and Responsibilities.
- Individual responsibility (both theory and practical experience)
- Group Responsibilities (both theory and practical experience)
- Concluding remarks

After Wizkids 2006 event

 We are considering publishing a small booklet, which will include a consolidated Children’s Charter of Responsibilities given by the 50 semi-finalists, some of the experiences of these children (from project report), paintings, etc

 The six finalists (Wiz Team 2006) will get an opportunity to represent India in a youth initiative/conference abroad. They will play a significant role in highlighting the role of Young Indians in the future world.

 We look forward to present this book to government officials, Ministry of Education and Children, UNEP (TUNZA Programme) and others.

For more details, you can visit The Activity Web site