The Need for Positive Expression
Poverty, it is quite often a gruesome picture. Poverty stricken families have financial and medical needs, They suffer a great deal of stress constantly.
Today, many people are living in poverty all over the world. It means insecurity, helplessness, and marginalization of individuals and families. It means being exposed to vulnerability and humiliation.
Poverty impacts people negatively and hampers the growth and development of the society as a whole. Most times the family has no living intimates who own and can transfer the social, cultural and intellectual capital important to change the economic condition.
Cultural Capital of a person consists of social assets useful to a person like intellect, style of speech and dress. cultural capital includes the accumulated cultural knowledge that confers social status and power, It is how we distinguish people in our society.
Cultivating Cultural Capital
A lot of work gets done around financial and medical needs of the poor but children from poor areas are rarely offered free courses on Dance or other Art forms. This deprives them of the opportunity to embody this cultural knowledge that children from privileged areas get. In a social setting this distinguishes them from privileged children.
Even if a child of poverty is good at an art they usually don’t have the means to institutionalize their cultural capital and get recognition for it. This would mean they lose on exposure to people and events which could have led them out their poverty.
Curbing poverty cannot be seen just as an item of welfare, the lens of empowerment make their objectives clearer. Dance is one of the Art forms appreciated widely across class barriers, Hence Mukkti works with the kids of Shishu Vihar School, Dadar. Where their Dance skills are honed frequently.
Tiger roars of Exposure
One such occasion was the day the kids were visited by Tiger Shroff.
He is well admired in his field for his Dancing skills.
He danced with the children that day, the interaction was educational as well as emotional for the kids as meeting someone of his stature was a mere dream for them.
Mukkti aims to expose the children to more such people from whom they can learn and cultivate cultural capital in order to finally break the barriers of class.
