Topic: "Kalasamvaad- Creative Dialogues to Re-Imagine Learning"
Gitanjali is the founder of Snehadhara Foundation, an educationist, a social entrepreneur, an Arts Based Therapy Practitioner and an Arts Practices for Inclusion (API) Educator with over two decade’s experience in teaching a diverse population of children and adults. Snehadhara’s inception in 2012 was aimed at looking at innovatively using Arts Based Therapy (ABT) for learning. The motivation was to explore a significant train of thought from an action project to a long-term sustainable practice.
The pioneering attempt was to look at interventions with an integrated, holistic approach to address the various learning, therapeutic and social inclusion needs of children/adults across special needs groups. This has got her to pioneer the first ever Arts Practices for Inclusion programme in India. Over the past few years Snehadhara has worked with around 1000 children through direct and weekly interventions, with over 50000 children through indirect interventions in schools and other receptive environments and trained over 2000 professionals in about 400 organisations across the country. Over the past two years, Snehadhara’s international journey has carried its best practices to Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Qatar and Nepal.
She has many awards and accolades to her credit and her work has been recognised in various platforms internationally. To mention a few - Snehadhara Foundation is one among the 6 global progressive institutions as a LEAPS (Leading Educational Advancement through Progressive Schools) partner school along with Lumiar Foundation, South America and UK; Hub School 21, France; NuVu, US; Kingsland Pre-Prep, UK and Agora School, Netherlands. Gitanjali was invited as a key speaker at the Conferencia Internacional in Buenos Aires.
She is a recipient of the Millennium Alliance Grant 2017 as a social innovator of one of the top five Innovations in the country for Education for the project ‘Kala Samavesh -Inclusion and Education of Disabilities. Gitanjali has been awarded the 2nd Creative Art Therapy Award 2020 in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the field of Art Therapy by the Sancheti Healthcare Academy as a recognition to the silent heroes who have done exemplary and exceptional work in the field of Creative Art Therapies. She has been conferred the Super Achievers Award, 2017 to recognize her outstanding contribution in the field of Disability in and outside Karnataka.
She has also been an ACTIVATEE speaker at the 45th International Association for Experiential Education (AEE) Conference in Montreal and has also presented at the prestigious TEDx platform.