Anti-Racism Day 2015
To celebate Anti-Racism Day 2015, Svitac organised a two day arts, crafts and music workshop for children aged 9 – 12 with the theme “Anti-Racism Day – One World, One Love”.
The workshops were held March 19th and 20th from 14:00 to 15:00. There were 15 participants in each workshop. This year’s activities involved learning and performing a song in English and making musical instruments to accompany the performance.
The children were told the meaning of the event and then encouraged to share their opinions. The children were asked, with help and support of international and local volunteers, to make their own individual music instruments (“shakers”) out of recycled plastic bottles. They were then encouraged to decorate those shakers with arts and crafts materials such as collage paper, feathers, and ribbon. These instruments were meant for the music workshop the following day.
The next day at the music “Anti-Racism workshop” an EVS volunteer wrote lyrics for a song, “People are people”, which he had rehearsed and performed with the children at a previous music workshop.
The first part of the music workshop was to make the children familiar with the lyrics and the meaning of the song. Each child was given a sheet of paper with the lyrics and practiced the pronunciation. At the end of the workshop, the group was encouraged to form a semi-circle and then performed the song with the use of their shakers, while a volunteer played guitar.
In addition, on the second day all the children worked together to produce a colourful wall display with their painted handprints. The project helped to create a visual representation of the workshop’s theme of all people being equal. The simplicity of handprints shows that, although there are variations in colour and size, human handprints are all the same.