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Our flagship annual inclusion festival celebrating the abilities of children with special needs through art, performance, and community engagement.
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An awareness event bringing together families, professionals, and community members to celebrate inclusion and abilities.
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These national days are celebrated by hoisting the flag together, singing patriotic songs and embracing the spirit of unity. Each child has a special ability which they use while making the Indian flags. Children draw or paint the flags and some even stick colored grains on their drawings. This activity teaches them about patriotism, helps them to learn about the flag's colors and develop hand and eye coordination. Some students even learn to identify the different states of India while coloring the map. Furthermore, the students engage in dancing on patriotic songs and learning the significance of unity that brings them all together.
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Unmish celebrated World Disability Day in 2015 by taking the children to Pizza Hut, where there was a physical menu card to choose from. They ate in a public environment confidently accepting the special glares from the onlookers and co-diners.
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In 2016, Unmish celebrated World Cerebral Palsy Day by coming up with Happy Street at Horticultural Garden for 500 special children to celebrate uniqueness. The attendees were 2,000 people comprising parents, volunteers, participants from various schools across the city and adjoining rural areas. It was also attended by ministers and actress Rituparna Sengupta. The event EK MUSKAAN KE LIYE got support from Millennium Mams.
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On Diwali, year after year, children paint diyas, make alpanas, and being dressed in traditional attires, they click lots of pictures. There is a takeaway for each child and every year, volunteers come to celebrate with us. The children are excited to dress up and embrace the community feeling.
Holi is a festival of colors and the children of Unmish celebrate it together every year. We put a 'gulal teeka' on each child's forehead. The children enjoy several activities like throwing water balloons into a bucket and making bags out of water balloons. This teaches them the skill of targeting and hand-eye coordination. Every year they are given special hampers of water balloons, pichkaris and buckets to take home.
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Unmish celebrates Christmas with lots of games, music, food and fun. Every year the children wear a red attire, and a special activity is planned. The children engage in decorating a tree, they dress up as Santa and distribute goodies and smiles to all passersby, the teachers and volunteers put up events for the children and the children put up dances. Every year, we make the children drink a little bit of a fizzy drink to understand the taste on their palate. Each year, we cut a cake and Unmish gives the children Santa caps and goodies.
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On Teachers' Day, the children show gratitude to their therapists. They show their appreciation by making cards and by putting up performances for their teachers. The children also do performances with their parents by using their special abilities.
The children at Unmish enjoy Children's Day differently every year — watching Jungle Book, foot tapping to peppy tunes, rhyme-time and enjoying with all their teachers. To make this day more memorable, the children take home a handmade card, a balloon, a cake, and a smiley. Children's Day celebration at Unmish is marked with a fancy dress competition with lots of fun, frolic, dance, and laughter. Children and Teachers put up performances and are treated with food, drinks, chocolates, and most importantly, they were all awarded as winners.
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In Unmish we celebrated the birth of Rabindranath Tagore. All the students and teachers were dressed in their traditional attire, they all were given garlands that they put around their neck. We started with a small musical dance performance by the students, who danced on Rabindra Sangeet, they also sang some of the Rabindra Sangeet. They all painted their own pots with white paint as a memory for him and ended the programme by taking these pots home with Bengali sweets which made the students very happy.
On Saraswati Puja, the children come dressed in traditional attire. They sit and pray in front of the Goddess Saraswati idol and chant prayers and take part in the aarti.
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The shopping event was one of our most exciting events where we took our children to the Big Bazaar store for a unique shopping experience. Each child was given a shopping list and a budget to buy all the assigned items. The main objective was to teach our children how to interact and behave in a social space. This was indirectly also a learning experience for the public present there to gain more awareness about children with special needs.
On Saraswati Puja, the children come dressed in traditional attire. They sit and pray in front of the Goddess Saraswati idol and chant prayers and take part in the aarti.
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The products made by the children are an expression through various arts and designs, which get visibility through the exhibitions we put up in Kolkata. The young adults get to live a dignified life where their products are bought because of the unique designs and creations and not out of sympathy. They make the products by recycling scrap material.