Children
Children
Everything we do at Paper Boat is led first and foremost by the children.
Our purpose is to listen to young people – inspiring and enabling them to change their world.
Through innovative collaborative partnerships we have set sail together for a world that unlocks the infinite potential of every child.
We believe imagination, creativity and collaboration are the key to that lock.
For children to be creative they need to feel safe and loved.
Children’s Hubs are locally owned spaces located at the heart of some of the hardest to reach communities where children come to connect, play, imagine and create through a range of activities including photography, film making, art, social drama, music, journalism and creative writing.
Paper Boats
By 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 flowers 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 their 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 starts.
The fairies of sleep are sailing in them, and the lading is their baskets full of dreams.
Ijaya is one of the many youngsters who explore creativity with us in our Children’s Hubs.
Before we met her, she believed that her whole world was limited to the confines of her village.
Alongside the poem by Rabindranath Tagore, she was the inspiration for the little girl at the front of our paper boat, carrying shiuli flowers and baskets full of dreams towards a brighter future. Shiuli flowers, or night-flowering jasmine, feature in many Indian stories about the cycle of life, hope and dreams for the future. Now Ijaya is at the helm of her own boat, setting her own course, and guiding her peers through rough seas as she sails determinedly to see what’s beyond that next horizon.
For over half a century, Paper Boat has worked in India and Thailand with more than 50,000 children. As with Ijaya, we have equipped them with the skills, experience and personal qualities needed for creative problem solving and leading change within their communities.
“Do not limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.” – Rabindranath Tagore
