Netherlands Foundation for Childrens Welfare Stamps

Stichting Kinderpostzegels Nederland (children's charity) is one of the members that submitted a request to the Innovatiefonds (Innovation Fund). It did so for a special project: W-Ish. A cooperation between the Dutch Ish group and their partner organisation ASPA.

The Dutch Ish dance theatre institute has a long history. It works with underprivileged young people. For example, youngsters with problems at home, early school leavers or those living in homes. Ish tries to give them a perspective for the future by training them to be dancers.

They not only learn dance techniques, but also everything to do with production, costuming and promotion. The confidence in the young people's talent and will power is central to this. They perform at schools to demonstrate to others what one can achieve if one puts his or her mind to something.

Karin Matthijsse from Kinderpostzegels explains how Ish ended up in India. ‘A number of years ago, we arranged an exchange between young people from the Netherlands, India, Mali and Senegal using PSO funds.

Part of the programme was a performance by the dance troupe Ish, who provide career perspectives to underprivileged young people in the Netherlands by training them as dancers, theatre makers and choreographers.

They do so in a creative manner, combining various dance styles, from streetdance to African dance and even martial arts. Their motto is: every young person has a talent. And as long as you work hard you can achieve what you want.

One young person from India was so enthusiastic about this work that he got involved and our partner organisation ASPA was brought in. The latter works with former child labourers, children from broken homes, victims of abuse or former homeless children.'

A comparable initiative now exists in India, with nine young people: former addicts, kids with terrible family circumstances or kids rescued from child labour. They combine traditional Indian dance with modern influences. Those young people wanted to be professionally trained and supervised. That has now been made possible with money from the Innovatiefonds.

Karin: ‘Ish's staff train the young people in all aspects. And together they prepare school performances, which - in turn - inspire other young people to develop their talents and make their dreams come true.

They primarily visit the slums in India. And we have already been hearing that this increases the self-confidence of the youngsters who have watched the performances. Ultimately, the idea is for the young people trained by W-Ish to then go on to train their peers. In this way, the project innovatively works on capacity development, by using young people as peer group trainers.'

Another of the Innovatiefonds' objectives is to create room for innovation within PSO member organisations. Did Kinderpostzegels notice that? Karin: ‘I can provide a good example: we wanted to draw up an evaluation form for Ish's training in India.

 And both Ish and PSO said that that was an old-fashioned method, why not use video or something.' We could indeed further develop our result measurement. PSO's feedback improved our focus in this.'