Jashn-e-Dosti - A celebration of friendship

This post is about the notebook Parcham created for raising funds.  Each year for three years now, we have chosen a theme to write about to raise awareness of the issues close to our heart and used it to raise funds for our work with adolescent girls.

This year’s notebook titled Jashn-e-Dosti (Celebration of Friendship) is a celebration of friendship, of diversity in India, challenging forces which seek to divide us along religion, language, caste and other artificial divides.

The theme we chose is a response to the horrific news of the abduction, rape and brutal murder of an eight year old child, of a teenager being killed by lynch mobs because of his religious identity, of killings in the name of the cow, caste pride and family honour.  Hence this diary with the theme of friendship; friendship which transcends the artificial divides of religion and caste. 

This notebook was a result of a poetry workshop conducted jointly by friends Aquila and Rabiya at the Parcham office in early 2018.  The poetry in the notebook is multilingual with translation in English.  All effort to bring this out was voluntary, from those who conducted the workshop, to the translators and children who contributed to the artwork for the poetry. 

We wish to thank all our friends and well wishers who work with us towards our dream of a more humane world.