"What children need! - Was Kinder brauchen!" 

The following is the introduction to our Online-Exhibition of the project "What children need!" - "Was Kinder brauchen!". And here you can see the pictures of the exhibition in the gallery of our blog: http://kks-prachodana-14.blogspot.de/p/galerie.html. When the "real" exhibitions will start in the different institutions we will inform you here on our blog.

„What children need! - Was Kinder brauchen!“

The UN-Convention on the Rights of the Child is celebrating its 25th birthday

Germany and India are getting connected

Hello and Namasté to our exhibition.

Here you can see pictures which German children drew or painted. These children live and go to school or to kindergarden in Germany. They, and Indian children, living in different hostels or villages, were asked the same question:

What do you need to have a good life?

On the different continents the children first discussed children’s rights with their teachers (or us volunteers) before starting to draw. It was explained to them, which rights they have, referring to the UN-Convention on children’s rights. The 25th birthday of this convention was celebrated on the 20th of November.

According to this convention, all children are equal and have the same rights. So every child has the right to a name, to a citizenship, to food, to leisure time, to a sheltered upbringing and to the access of drinking water. Both the German as well as the Indian children thought about exactly the same things, although there is a distance of 6.000km between them! While they were thinking about the same question, they were doing this in completely different weather conditions, wearing different clothes, talking in different languages and growing up in different cultures. But all of them were creating pictures to answer this important question.

The pictures, which are included in this exhibition, were sent from Germany to India. Likewise, pictures from Indian children were sent to Germany, where people are reading the same introduction at this moment and are looking forward to the exhibition, full of pictures created by Indian children. Not only children, adults and teachers in Germany but also you can see which things children in India need to be happy if you’re looking at their pictures now. The German children can see that there are children of the same age in India, who thinking exactly the same way about certain things as they do - or completely different.

We want to build bridges with this project. Children from different cultures and social backgrounds think about the same topic and express their ideas in the universal language they all can understand: Drawing. One important aspect of the bridge-building is that the exhibition is visited by children and adults from different cultures and social backgrounds. The more people see the pictures, the better.

Today you are able to see what the German children answered. Did you answer something similar? Or don’t you understand why the German child drew this as an answer? Think about it. What do you think, does a German child need more than an Indian child to be happy? Where are there differences, where are there similarities? And why is that so?

When our voluntary stay in India is over, we want to collect all the pictures and put them together. Then a German picture will hang next to an Indian picture.

We’re looking forward to it.

Enjoy our exhibition!

Franziska Bader and Jule Gerleit

When we asked the question in our children’s hostel, one girl answered very fast and without long thinking “kushi”, this means “happy”. And when we asked, when she is happy she simply answered “dina, dina” which means “daily”. Unfortunately it is very difficult to draw feelings like this.

Rakshita: "In my picture you can see a plate with sambar (red) and a ragi-ball. We eat this nearly every day in Prachodana (my hostel). Also you can see a child bathing with a bucket (left) and a chicken (right, top). I like eating chicken.

The Project “What Children need!” – “Was Kinder brauchen” was initiated by Franziska Bader and Jule Gerleit.

We are both volunteers of the Karl Kübel Stiftung für Kind und Familie (KKS) located in Bensheim, Germany and are staying in Hassan, Southindia for eight months. Here we live and work in the children’s home “Prachodana Center for Social Work”. Because we experienced so much interest in joining our project in Germany, not just our children participated, but different groups of children from other KKS projects in India.

These are:

• Florian Trabold and Manuel Simon from the organization VOSARD with their three english classes of the St. Thomas School
• Nena Seitz and Charlotte Koppe from PDS (Peermade Development Society) with their girls from the Narajeevan Tribal Hostel
• Alena Jahns and Julia-Andrea Kast from Vikasana Organisation for Education & Social Development with the children from the Vikasana Hostel
• Anabell Gutfrics and Lea West from Peace Trust (SPSC) with the girls from their Tuition Center Periyathumbur
• Nora Freudenberg and Amelie Bollmann from GSHEC (Good Sheperd Health and Education Centre)

In Germany the following are taking part:

• Gymnasium Penzberg under the direction of Mrs. Melanie Hofmeister, Mr. Fabian Schleicher-Hofmeister and Ms. Scharf
• Städtische Realschule Weißenhorn with friendly support of Mrs. Susette Christensen
• Private Montessorischule Weißenhorn with the classes of Mrs. Veronika Krist and Mrs. Sylvia Pari
• Ev. Montessori Kinderhaus Weißenhorn with assistance of Mrs. Petra Wiest

We want to say a very big thank you to the Indian organizations and their volunteers, as well as to the German institutions. We are happy that all of you joined our project so enthusiastically and that you took the time to realize it.

We feel that the topic children’s rights is important to a lot of people.

We would be grateful for your feedback, reactions, visual documents, reviews etc: jule@gerleit.de, franzisbader@aol.com.