BENGALURU: Wearing red and yellow coloured sarees, the students of Government Higher Primary School, Mahadevapura, were doing some last-minute rehearsals of their dance for their performance at Chiguru, an inter-school cultural festival. In the midst of preparations, Sujatha H, a Class 7 student from the school, said, “Many students have come today. Though we are a little nervous, we are equally excited to perform in front of this huge crowd. We don’t get such occasions otherwise.”
Started in 2009 by Bengaluru based NGO Youth for Seva with 350 kids, Chiguru is a one-day cultural festival for students from government schools as well as those who do not attend formal schools. This year, the festival saw a participation of 3,000 students from more than 100 government schools in the city. The programme included group dance, clay art, group song, quiz etc. Tejaswi Surya, MP, Bengaluru South, who inaugurated the function, suggested students use a platform like this to identify their talents, their likes and work on nurturing it. “Everyone is gifted with a special talent. When you read about great personalities like Ambedkar, and Swami Vivekananda, you will find that they also come from regular families, but they figured their talents and worked on it. Don’t miss any chance. Participate in each and every competition, sometimes that’s how we identify our skills. And participation is your right,” he said.
Chiguru is taking place in 15 cities across Karnataka, Telangana and Delhi and involves thousands of children. “Our aim is to provide a creative platform for government school students or underprivileged children. We have also included children from several trust-run educational institutions,” Venkatesh Murthi, founder of Youth for Seva. He added that they rely heavily on corporates for funding.