Puppet plays to spotlight health causes

The initiative will let Puducherry students stage skits at their schools and in neighbourhood communities

Children at government schools will soon be showcasing their own puppet plays to highlight health causes relevant to peer communities under an initiative supported by the Department of Science and Technology.

The project, led by Sri Aurobindo Society’s Svarnim Puducherry initiative, is being implemented at 10 government schools, in collaboration with the Directorate of School Education, Puducherry, with the support of the NCSTC Division of the Department of Science and Technology. “As top-down form of health communication can be monotonous for children, we thought we would replace passive learning with a participatory model that would be an entirely student-driven exercise,” said T.P. Raghunath, Svarnim Director.

The initiative, launched under Svarnim’s School Health Action Research Project (SHARP), looks at tapping into the simpler tools of traditional theatre with the aim of disseminating key health-related communication for action-oriented results among schoolchildren.