In the older days, Ladakh remained cut-off from the rest of the world in the winter months due to heavy snowfall and its difficult terrain. At the night, kids would sleep with their grandparents and listen to stories.

 As the narrator would start saying, "Yodh yodte sani" or "Yodh yodh sugle ju" which translates roughly to the popular English phrase, "Once upon a time." The kids would reply, saying

"En Ju':(Meaning "oh, yes sir" or an affirmation to go ahead with the story.)

This was a tool that helped the narrator keep checking if they were awake and listening. The storytelling would go on until En Ju was heard. If there was no response it indicated that the kids have fallen asleep.

Our project has been named "En Ju" as it involves puppets of the wildlife in Ladakh narrating their stories to the children and will be used to check if they are still awake and listening to the voice of the wild.

WHY PUPPETS?

The best way to make people aware of nature is to show them how its well-being is important for us to lead a healthy and happy life. If kids are taught this at an early age they would act as a catalyst for their peers and parents. Puppets have been proven to evoke emotions and imagination in children during the formative years of their education if used as a tool for mediation while telling their stories and teaching them concepts.

 Puppets also help in retaining the information for a long time because if not more they are equally effective & engaging tools of entertainment If folk stories about wildlife and good values are told to the children with the aid of puppets of locally found animals they will develop a stronger emotional bond towards nature, helping them take their first step towards conservation.

 As the saying goes:

You cannot save what you don't love.

You cannot love what you don't understand

And you cannot understand what you don't study.

To get the puppets made we collaborated with Snow Leopard Conservancy- India Trust in Ladakh. It is an NGO in that works with local communities in to spread awareness and protect the apex predator, the Snow Leopard and it's prey species.

SLC-IT has been working with self-help groups in villages that fall under the Snow Leopard habitat in Ladakh. Under their handicraft development program, the women have been trained in the art of dry-needle felting. 

We invited them over to SLC-IT office in Leh to make

felted puppets of the local fauna. The workshop also

included dyeing, sketching and colour theory as small

modules. These skills made them confident about

visualising and making the desired puppets.

This also helps familiarize the locals with the fauna and

they grow curious to learn more about them.

TRAINING THE PUPPETEERS

The next step involved training the trainers. We invited teachers from different schools in Ladakh, and a children's library was also invited as it seemed like a good space to space to experiment and get feedback from.

The two-day long workshop included modules on storytelling, theatre, and a basic intro to puppetry and voice modulation. Case studies on puppetry in education and cinema were discussed followed by modern-day challenges faced by the wildlife and people of Ladakh. We also played games and performed activities that helped familiarise the participants with the wildlife of Ladakh.  

Our participants made stories based on the challenges discussed above and performed an act with the help of puppets.

In conclusion, the workshop was well received by the teachers and they are very excited to try this in their respective schools with the students. We also received a lot of feedback from them on numerous other ways these puppets could be used in schools and library spaces.

Next, we aim to take these puppets to different schools, libraries and educational institutions in remote areas of Ladakh and find out if the children are still listening to these stories and replying with an "En Ju” ...