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’ve adapted our interventions to prioritize children’s well being, leveraging the power of art and low tech platforms. All resources keep children’s well being and socio-emotional learning at the centre 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.


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 (you can subscribe here too!) 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 disseminating inspiration within their own communities.
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.

Your continued support has enabled us create safe spaces for well being and learning for children across different context and we are so grateful for it.

Thank You and Stay Safe,
Team Slam Out Loud

Dear Supporter,

We're extremely excited to share that over the last few weeks, Slam Out Loud brought this year to a close with several highlights!

1. Our children Abbas, Jyoti and Chanda were invited to perform at Spoken Fest Delhi, India's largest spoken word festival where they performed original poems about their identity, how they feel and more.

                 

         

2. Several of our Jijivisha fellows from the 2018-19 cohort concluded their fellowship with community Art Melas in their respective communities - where children organised a showcase and performed to an audience of their parents, teachers, friends and more.  

 

3. Lastly, we celebrated BOL - an end of year Jijivisha Art Mela where children from our local Jijivisha communities culminated their year long journey at SOL, gaining agency over their voice. These children have been part of our performance and visual art classrooms for over a year and performed for the first time as young artists. Along with special performances by children and our fellows, there was also a specially curated photo walk featuring photographs and art works created by our children at Slam Out Loud, along with exciting activities, the SOL origin story and more!

BOL was hosted at the American Center, New Delhi marking the first time the entire Jijivisha community at SOL came together in such large numbers.

                 
Thank you for being a part of our journey till now! Please feel free to write to us with ideas, questions, love and more.

We're extremely humbled to share that the last month has been one full of successes and learning for children and team at Slam Out Loud. Here are some key highlights:

a) Slam Out Loud was selected by HundrED to be one of the 100 inspiring education innovations from around the world. With a focus on 21st century skills and a wider global perspective, this will enable our journey even further in contributing to making change happen worldwide. Supriya, a child from our program and Pratibha, our team member were invited to Helsinki to present their journey and learning with audience comprising of policymakers, educators and other children. It was also an opportunity to learn about other exciting interventions across the world and foster collaboration.

b) Slam Out Loud was selected as one of the 25 teams to participate at UNLEASH+ pre-accelerator program in Shenzhen, China. The program was a week long boot camp cum competition that enabled us to revisit and refine aspects of our work and pitch our solutions to audience comprising of social sector experts, business experts, venture capitalists, philanthropists and CSR heads. Slam Out Loud was one of the 2 winners supported by Deloitte. Apart from a cash prize investment, we shall also receive support from Deloitte Foundation for our solutions to reach a new level.

c) To bring a close to this amazing month, three of our best and brightest children are also performing at India's largest spoken word festival - the Spoken Fest in Delhi on 30th Nov and 1st Dec. Slam Out Loud's partnership with Spoken has enabled children's voices to reach masses and bring alive our vision for everyone to see. We look forward to having you in the audience. Here is the link to know more about the event and book your tickets.
November has proved to be a highlight for us in more ways than one and we're incredibly grateful for your support as well as to share our journey with you!