10 A Program for Nurturing the Potential of Indigenous Community Children from Arunachal Pradesh, India

"Culturally diverse students are those being reared in any group that differs significantly in values and attitudes from the dominant culture.” (Barbara Clark, Growing Up Gifted,p.499.) There are number of attempts to study and feature diverse gifted children from varied communities and ethnic groups across the world.The initiatives generally focus on needs and challenges emerging from the socio-economical and psycho-social backgrounds of these children. Nurturing the gifts of these diverse populations is necessary in order to keep them from falling through the cracks.

The poster will introduce and briefly review a project initiative carried out to explore and nurture the potentials of the identified sample of children coming from varied indigenous communities in Arunachal Pradesh, India. Underlining the uniqueness of the program which comes from the blend of on-field concentrated inputs given through workshops and remote resource building; the poster will elaborate on the program design, which focuses on the use of different methods and tools to deliver the program content. It will include different domains covered through on and off-field inputs. Detailed observations of the responses given by the students and their cognitive and affective expressions and feedback of both the facilitators and the children will also be included. The purpose of the presentation is to throw light on the needs of the globally underrepresented population located in highly remote regions of India and the ways in which the hidden and overlooked potentials are explored and nurtured.

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