BENEFICIARIES 15 boys and girls 14/15-year-old.
DESCRIPTION
The KYCS is a programme that teaches circus / performing arts to unprivileged, at-risk youth from slums and empowers trainees to use their marginality to express themselves and establish a new relationship with the society that has often excluded them. At Kasikonda, youth learn basic circus skills: juggling, acrobatics, clowning… the works. The skills are only part of the education. The true beauty lies within the life lessons which the participants master.
Occasionally in the circus, someone’s life can literally be in another person’s hands and this forces to learn trust, communication and teamwork and it’s the goal of Kasikonda that youth will take these fundamental lessons and use it in everyday life. Another important part at KYCS is helping trainees to develop soft skills. These abilities can be difficult to define, teach and standardize, but they are critical for self-awareness, emotional and stress management, resilience, perseverance, patience… all interpersonal competencies that are vital for relationships, schooling, employability and integration into the community.
At the end of the training, an essay will be realized and the Kasikonda audience is primarily paediatric wards, which both provides a welcome respite for sick children and gives the youth a chance to perform. These dual goals embrace an additional educational purpose. Performance, by its very nature, is simply people being amazed by what you can do by the building of self-esteem and confidence, another important life lesson. It’s the Kasikonda goal to project that confidence onto the patients comprising the audience, who frequently have damaged self- esteem or the occasional feeling that they are being treated as their disease as opposed to a person with an illness.
EXTERNAL LINKS
Cirque du Monde… the social approach from Cirque du Soleil
The Social Circus Map from Cirque du Monde … we are listed!
