Daijiworld News Network (VM)

Mangalore, Mar 7: Through its History Expedition (HEX), the Gondwanaland Foundation, headed by sculptor John Devraj will be touring Dakshina Kannada on Tuesday March 7 and Wednesday March 8. The uniqueness of HEX is that it will record the history and working conditions of children and child labour in Karnataka.

The tour is a bicycle expedition of children to visually and empirically document the travails and tribulations of the children of Karnataka so as to raise knowledge, awareness and information about the status of child labour in order to eliminate it.

HEX through its project 'Of Legacies and Legends,' attempts to create child historians. Of legacies and legends is a visual documentation of the life and limes of working and street children, who are slaves of the modern day.

The aim of this project is to make street children rewrite and re-narrate their history. The project will truthfully and faithfully record the history of working children through the powerful medium of photographic images. The idea of legacies and legends is to create child photographers, child historians and child educators.

Through workshops held and spread across Asia, Africa and Latin America children will be trained in photography and educated in child rights. They will record them in pictures and word, the images of working and street children. The work thus produced will be mounted as a traveling exhibition and would be shown across in schools, colleges, exhibition halls, cultural centers in India and different parts of the world, with the support of the national and international networks of child empowerment.

The Gondwanaland team will perform its first street play at B C Road on March 7, the team will perform at Kankanady market here at 3.30 pm.

A 25-member team of 20 children and five adults will comprise the team for the tour in two districts. There has been a lot of groundwork that John, his associate Nakayama from Hiroshima, Vrata Chinmulgund and others in the team have done.