Schools draw on ‘comic’ relief to make learning fun

KARACHI: Getting her students to study was a nightmare for Sonia, a teacher at the CPLC community school. But then, one day she asked them to make comics as homework for a history lesson.

“When the children made comics at home, their parents also started showing interest,” she says. As it is, it was easy to get parents to take interest in their children’s education. “Parents started asking things like: What is the king’s name? What year did this incident take place?” The struggling teacher realised that she had finally discovered the ‘art’ of teaching.

And she was not alone. Abida Naz, a principal at the City District Government Karachi Girls School in Baldia Town, experienced the same thing. When the art of comic making was introduced at her school, her students even started addressing social issues with their art.

“In their comics, the girls started talking about their problems, sometimes they were as simple as the inability to watch television when they wanted to, or study when they needed to,” says Naz.

Sonia and Naz are two of the many teachers who attended training workshops organised by the World Comic Network (WCN)-Pakistan.

These low-cost workshops are successful because they do not need the support of any technical skill.

“People who are uneducated can also use pictures to get their message across,” says Sonia.

The network started in 1997, when the WCN, a Finland-based NGO, came to Pakistan with the idea of training teachers, activists and students in the art of creating storyboards for comics that dealt with local issues.

Thirteen years later, WCN-Pakistan has proven many skeptics wrong with the publication of its first comic anthology, “Bolti Lakeerain”, in April this year. The book is a collection of comics made by people across the country over the past five years.

“They are not aimless sketches on paper. Each page narrates a story with a significant idea behind it,” says Nida Shams, a graphics designer and trainer at WCN-Pakistan, who compiled the anthology with Sharad Sharma.

The book addresses all sorts of issues, from water conservation to harassment, a lack of education, health and thousands of other concerns faced by the people of Pakistan.

The NGO aims to publish “comics for a change” and pursues the medium to create a platform for people so they can voice their opinions.

WCN-Pakistan calls this art “grassroot comics”, the only difference between them and the regular comics being that they are created by ordinary people instead of artists.

“All that is needed is a pen, paper, a Photostat machine and a good story,” says Shams, who is of the belief that ordinary people can learn the art of making comics without any elaborate infrastructure.

Once the participants of the workshops complete their body of work, an exhibition is held to promote their ideas.

“It can be held practically anywhere. A bus stop, a park or a festival. No grand venue is needed,” says Shams.

So far, the WCN-Pakistan has held workshops in Karachi, Hyderabad, Makli and Thatta in Sindh, as well as in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad. And that is definitely a happy ending to this story.

reporting by Sidrah Roghay

Published in The Express Tribune, July 16^th, 2010.