MERUNDOI, in collaboration with the Guyana National Commission for UNESCO, ended the first phase of “Puppetry: a viable Industry for Social Change” workshop with a simple ceremony last Friday.

The event saw 18 elderly women receiving certificates of participation in puppetry design and performance at the Catholic Life Centre, Brickdam, Georgetown.
The women, who are all over 60 years of age, were drawn from the 60+ blazers seniors club. They took part in a five-day workshop which started on June 10 and ended on June 14.

Equipped with a skill to take them through their twilight years, the women expressed optimism in using their new-found knowledge to provide edutainment for the younger generation and to become entrepreneurs in the field.

Merundoi collaborated with the Guyana National Commission for UNESCO to roll out the “Puppetry: a viable Industry for Social Change” project in four phases last year. The aim was to create a puppetry network where people can use the skill as a form of edutainment and also become entrepreneurs.

Executive Director of Merundoi, Margaret Lawrence, in her short address to the gathering, said the first workshop was done with seniors to propagate oral traditions.

“Because they have so many stories that they could tell and they could share with young people,” she said

The other three phases will target councillors and librarians, teachers and dramatists and persons in the performing arts. To this end, Merundoi has collaborated with librarians at the National Library, the Unit of Allied Arts and the National Drama School.

Lawrence said that these groups of people are identified since they are better suited to deal with children who might be vulnerable to abuse and they can use puppetry to get stories of behavioural change across to them.

Merundoi applied for the puppetry project under UNESCO because of the nature of its work.
“We do radio drama, street theatre and so on; this is another edutainment tool that facilitates skills to tell the stories. It is targeting victims of trafficking-in-persons, vulnerable populations like the seniors etc,” she said.