Dearest SOLmates,

At SOL, pandemic-induced school closures have strengthened our vision of making children's voices heard everywhere and through Arts For All, we have adapted our interventions to deeply focus on nurturing children's well being through exposure to high-quality arts-based experiences. Our SEL-focused learning content is currently disseminated to almost 4.7 million children, across 23 Indian States and 19 countries.

We recently closed an eight-week pilot project with the Government of Patiala in India, disseminating art activities to 1.4 Lakh+ children every day, and have also partnered with Gram Vaani to enable art access for children with low internet bandwidth through an audio-visual platform. Over the last few months, we have also partnered with state actors such as BCG, Leadership for Equity, and the Government of Gujarat, enabling us to scale and reach more children across India and Slam Out Loud’s art learning resources are now also available on Kiwix - an offline free of cost reader for children with limited to no internet access globally. Slam Out Loud's work has been published in a series of Education continuity stories from the coronavirus crisis, a joint initiative by the World Bank group, Harvard Global Education Innovation Initiative, HundrED, and the OECD as well as been featured by WISE, Qatar Foundation and UNESCO MGIEP. We are now piloting our IVRS model and WhatsApp Chatbot with Tech4Dev in order to democratize access to art learning and hope this is a step in the right direction to amplifying our children’s stories.

Here are some links for you to experience the joy of Arts and wellbeing. Feel free to try them and share your experience and feedback!

1. The link to our latest set of mindfulness and fun art-based learning videos does in collaboration with some well-known artists: Project He [Art]
2. The link to our at-home- DIY style art-based activities available on Youtube for social and emotional well being of children through Poetry, Visual art, Theatre, and Storytelling.
   
   All this would not having been possible without you having our back, through the especially tough 2020. Thank you so much for your continued support! We are deeply grateful.

Join us to #UnmuteIndia here: https://milaap.org/fundraisers/slam-out-loud

Dear Supporters,

To you, the incredible people who have been with us on this journey of adapting to a new normal - with much gratitude and joy, we share  - three reads we created this year!

1. We are thrilled to announce that Slam Out Loud’s art-based intervention for student well being and socio-emotional learning has now been selected as a case study for OECD and World Bank’s joint initiative, mapping some of the best and most innovative Education Continuity Stories across the world! 

To know more, you can read Slam Out Loud’s story here on the World Bank's Website or here on OECD’s web-page!


2. WISE, Qatar Foundation and UNESCO MGIEP spotlighting SOL's work on leveraging arts

Published on WISE, Qatar Foundation's website, SOLmate Jigyasa's reflective essay titled What Happens when Children Engage with Art? offers insights about how art based education has a profound effect on children because it creates a space where children's' ideas, feelings and identity are accepted without iteration.


Published on UNESCO MGIEP's  Blog on Medium, SOLmate Aastha's article explores the possibilities of art in socio-emotional learning and well-being of young learners. By using evidence of the physical changes that art creates in the human brain, she shows how socio-emotional learning and art communicate with each other.


While 2020 has been a tough year, we are so humbled by all the growth, learning and unconditional support that this year has brought to our doorstep. Thank you for keeping us going!

Till you hear from us again in the next year, here is wishing for each of you to close this strange year with hope, gratitude and soaring spirits!

Shukriyaa, for being a SOLmate.

Love and light,
Team Slam Out Loud

Dear Supporters,

With some 826 million (82.6 crore) students kept out of the classroom by the Covid-19 pandemic without access to a household computer, the past few weeks have made our privilege so visual and for us as educators, highlighted the divide of access in digital engagements and learning. At Slam Out Loud, our shifted reality has strengthened our commitment to making children's voices heard everywhere. We have adapted our interventions to prioritize children’s well being, leveraging the power of art and low tech platforms. All our resources keep children’s well being and socio-emotional learning at the center because this is what children need at this time. The idea is to enable children to form deeper connections with themselves while engaging with their families too during these uncertain times and use art as a medium for a creative outlet.

A brief glimpse of our journey these last few months, is captured below:

Art Alerts through WhatsApp

We’ve created an online series of high quality arts-based experiences in Hindi and English (and coming soon, in more languages!) aimed towards learning through poetry, theater, visual arts, and storytelling. Children, parents and teachers receive these byte-sized activities through a daily WhatsApp alert which engages them in hands-on activities, helps them share their art and interact with accomplished artists. The service is completely free to use. Through safe spaces for creative outlets and sharing, our children have been attempting art activities within their homes everyday, as well as attempting our DIY-Theater course (available on YouTube) to learn the art of theater within their own homes.
Our WhatsApp channel helped us reach 70000 children daily, across 16 countries and 23 states in India.



Audio Activities via IVRS

To reach out to the most vulnerable children, who do not even have access to a low tech platform like WhatsApp, we now intend to launch localized audio versions of these activities and scale them through IVRS and radio platforms. During our pilot for IVRS, a child wrote a beautiful acrostic poem, and we're so grateful to share it with you:



Your continued support has enabled us to create safe spaces for expression, well being and learning for children across different contexts and we are so thankful to you, for being a part of our community!

Thank You and Stay Safe,

Team Slam Out Loud