I cannot wait to talk about one of the kindest projects that I have ever seen! I am not even sure, that the word "project" is suitable to describe activity of these people. Founders of the creative association "Yaradan" establish conditions for identification and development of abilities of children aged from 12 up to 16 years, including disabled children, from needy families, from boarding schools and shelters and also contribute to their adaptation in society. They help children to expand their consciousness, to believe in themselves and their power, to learn to realize their creative potential. In doing so, all participants of the project, both trainers and trainees, pursue one goal – to be happy!
Having attended their project presentation, I learned about the direction, new to myself – humane pedagogics. This teaching method forms the personality who is guided in life by humanistic spiritual values. The most important ability of such personality is ability to create in any area of life. Well, isn’t it great? In the “Yaradan” project children learn to draw from Vyusalya Agaraziyeva, to photograph from Leyli Alekperova, to play music from Anar Yusufov, to cook from Natalya Golumb, to dance from Nigar Sultanova and so on! In order to learn how such idea was realized, I spoke with Nigyar Rzayeva – the initiator and, so to speak, the "mother" of the project.
“If to take a little look back to my childhood, youth and my life in general, then it becomes obvious that the project “Yaradan uşaqlar” ("Children-creators") is a certain program, which was planted in me since childhood, then grew up with me together and, to my great happiness, already begun to flourish. The project’s history began in December, 2017 with the YARADAN exhibition of the ceramic artist Vusala Agaraziyeva. Within the traditional “Reincarnation” project Vusala offered her individual project and presented it in the Old city’s Kasum-bek bathhouse (XVII c). The idea was that five representatives of different artistic professions created works with the common topic "Creator". The subject, creative collaboration and the collected energy developed into the project “Yaradan uşaqlar" (“Children-creators”)”.
Nigar is a writer with master degree of political science. Not so long ago her books "Soul Breeze" and "Creator" were published.
“Children of the project are my first pedagogical experience. I have no special skills in this area, the only thing that I have is communication experience with my daughter and desire to develop and grow together with children. Working with children, I do not aim to pass them my knowledge. The whole principle of working in the project comes down to our accepting and loving them as they are. We help them to get rid of multiple fears, to glance in the most secret corners of their hearts, to go beyond the imparted stereotypes and just to live here and now. And, of course, our main tool is creativity. Creativity is what everyone is gifted with by the Creator, and it has healing and constructive power, harmonizing everything inside and outside of the person".
We, the people, are always more comfortable with describing everything in terms. We chose a concept of humane pedagogics as its principles describe the best what we do. And its essence, again, is concentrated around love, belief in abilities of each child, their development, and respect to a child as person. All the lessons, keeping their individuality, overlap and complement each other. I understand that it is hard to imagine, that’s why it is necessary to spend one day with us at the lessons. We are learning and changing ourselves together with children from the first day of study, and what we do now is a revelation and huge happiness to us".
When launching the project, besides the general lessons, the “Yaradan” team planned to allocate separate creative directions for each child. However in two months children rebelled and asked to involve them in all spheres captured by the project. As a result, children prompted right decision themselves and now they study everything that is presented to them with pleasure, turning each their meeting into a holiday!
“In the project participate children from various institutions and families, and all of them have their own traumas and life difficulties. Having passed a pretty big path with them, we saw in practice: they are all talented and all of them are open to everything new. And, especially, to being happy. In art they may be better at some things, than at others, but all children use any available opportunities with pleasure. Plus, mutual activity, self-confidence, love and possibility of the impossible unites all of them. When we just started, it was a little difficult to all of us, both children and adults. Apart from our educational psychologists, we had no experience of communication with deeply traumatized children. Kids who got used to sufferings and did not trust adults sat in their tight cocoon. We were untying this cocoon step by step. Some of them kept long silence, some refused to eat, others went into themselves...There were a lot of things that now does not have sense to talk about. Patience, love and self-improvement led to fantastic results. Now we are feeling like a big strong family. By the way, my 15 year old daughter is also a participant of the project and she told me recently that «Yaradan» changed her attitude to a lot of things, especially, to people and herself.”
