It is a summer afternoon. The fashion designing students of St Teresa’s College, Ernakulam, are pretty busy designing the walls of St Joseph’s Lower Primary School, a 106-year-old school in Moolampilly on the outskirts of Kochi that faces one of the tributaries of Periyar. The walls have pictures of Dora and Bujji, minions, animals and other objects that children like. If it is a summer vacation activity for the fashion designing students, the facelift is an attempt for survival for teachers of St Joseph’s. The number of students has been decreasing in the past few years and the teachers believe that the new ambience would attract more children.
“The children have started migrating to schools with better facilities with the arrival of Container Road which offered better connectivity to the city. We hope our efforts would bring about a change,” says K.S. Jessy, head mistress of the school. The school now has 50 students. They need 60 students to run it properly.
It was Alex Attullil, a well-wisher of the school, who proposed this project. “The students of St Teresa’s had there for a competition. I found their art interesting and asked the authorities if they could do something here. Thus, the project kicked off,” says Alex, a lab assistant at St Paul’s college, Kalamassery.
The work is done for free. “This comes under extended activities of the department,” says Lekha Sreenivas, HOD of fashion designing department. The students began their work on May 16 and completed it within four days. They themselves developed the concept while Dhanya and Ben Joe, their teachers, helped them with the sketches.
The focus is on alphabets and numbers. One wall has minions staring at numbers walking as a group. However, the core idea is Dora and her companion Bujji walking into a forest where they encounter different things. And, they tell children about it in alphabetical order. For instance, they first see an ‘Ant’ and then a ‘Bee’.
“The project has been truly an enriching one,” says Lakshmi Kalesan, fashion designing student. “They were so cooperative and provided us materials on time despite financial difficulties,” says Liya babu and Sherin Treesa. “We took references from the net and improvised them.” Now, the walls have come alive and Dora and Bujji hope more children would walk in to listen to their stories.
