Mobilization of community through youth theatre group

Society for Human Development is working in Toba Tek Singh. It works for the development of the people. It organizes people on community level. It works for the betterment of women, children, youth and workers in the society. It works to educate and to get aware people so that they could form prosperous and peaceful society. It uses different ways for the mobilization of people like it organizes meetings, seminars, training, workshop and theatres on different issues.

Theatre:

Theatre is a strong medium to mobilize people on different issues. Theatre helps people to understand, to get clarity on different issues. Society for Human Development is using theatre for awareness and mobilization community. It is a very useful and helpful tool to educate people. Society for Human Development uses interactive theatre to mobilize people. It is very useful for grass roots communities to understand the issue, performers meant to convey.

First step:

Society for Human development started theatre with its staff members. Staff members of SHD used to go to the different communities and performed theatre on different burning issues. It proved very helpful because by theatre, it was easy for people to understand the message, performers meant to convey. They even gave feed back, their likes and dislikes about the issue.

Move ahead:

Then SHD involved youth in theatre. It organized youth on community level so that the interest of people increases. The response was great as people were more interested and organized drama teams in their remote areas.

Issue based theatre:

Interactive theatre, SHD used to perform issue based theatre. It tries to educate, to aware people by high lighting different issues. It has organized theatre on the issues of education, women rights, child rights, labor rights, farmer’s rights, minority’s rights, peace and interfaith harmony, water, Indo- Pak relations and so on.

The details of interactive theatre from 2001 to2004 are given below.

year	Issue	venue	No. of audience
2001	Joint elections	Islamabad Rawalpindi Lahore Faisalabad Shantinagar (Khanawal	2000 500 5000 2500 200
	Peace	St. Peter’s high school, Toba Tek Singh Francisabad Lasani hotel, Toba Tek Singh	50 70 300
	Water	Berrianwala St.Peter’s primary school	40 70
	Water	Berrianwala St.Peter’s primary school	40 70
	Asian youth day (peace)	Toba Tek Singh Mumbai, India	1000
2004	World social forum( women rights, farmers rights, hudood ordinance)	Mumbai, India	Over 1 lac
	Indo-Pak relations	Rawalpindi Lahore Qasoor Hafizabad Jehlem Chakwal Duska Multan Peermahel 291G/B, Toba Tek Singh	300 300 200 200 300 400 300 150 200 100
	Tenants rights	Islamabad Peerowal, Khanawal KC, Toba Tek Singh	6000 5000 150
	Child rights	Jhang Gojra 291G/B, Toba Tek Singh St.Peter’s, Toba Tek Singh	170 150 150 200
	Women’s rights	295G/B, Toba Tek Singh 424J/B, Toba Tek Singh	70 women with Japanese delegation 200
	HR	2^ND Peace rally, Lahore	6000
	Syllabus	Lahore and Toba Tek Singh.	450 200
	Disabled Women	KC, Toba Tek Singh	100
	American attack on Iraq	KC, Toba Tek Singh	70
	Education	District Council, Chakwal	600
	Peace	Jesus & Mary School, Toba Tek singh	100
	Pakistan Youth Rally	Lahore	250

Future plans:

Enhance the theatre skills of grass roots communities for social mobilization
Reach out to the communities for breaking social taboos through community theatre groups
Perform on the issues like honor killing, sexual harassment etc