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Inspiring & enabling children to change their world:
Voyaging beyond the horizon
Why “Paper Boat”
Paper boats speak to the child in all of us because making paper boats is something that children from diverse cultures have done for hundreds of years. From rural India and urban Japan to wealthy Kenya and poor America. Transcending status and privilege, this simple, playful and creative act inspires joy and wonder in the hearts and minds of children. In making a paper boat, a child learns to create something new with what they have, and to see their imagination shape reality. A piece of plain paper or scrap of discarded magazine is transformed – two dimensions become three. Imagination takes wing and then takes shape.
Paper Boats
Rabindranath Tagore
Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running
stream.
In big black letters I write my name on them and the name of
the village where I live.
I hope that someone in some strange land will find them and
know who I am.
I load my little boats with shiuli flower from our garden, and
Hope that these blooms of the dawn will be carried safely to land
in the night.
I launch my paper boats and look up into the sky and see the
little clouds setting thee white bulging sails.
I know not what playmate of mine in the sky sends them down
the air to race with my boats!
When night comes I bury my face in my arms and dream that my
paper boats float on and on under the midnight stars.
The fairies of sleep are sailing in them, and the lading is
their baskets full of dreams
Simple, beautiful, ephemeral – we need to look after our paper boats. Paper boats that embody a child’s dream – a hope that their fragile little vessel will defy all odds, traverse mighty flowing rivers and navigate boundless oceans to reach distant shores. Pushing the paper boat down-stream or launching it on a vast ocean is an act of hope, of faith, of daring to dream…the journey that the little paper boat can take is one of infinite possibility.
As a charity we are working towards a world that unlocks the infinite potential of every child. We celebrate spaces where children can enjoy their childhood, delight in creative learning and which instill in them the confidence to set sail and navigate their own unique journey through life.
