Anjali children’s festival begins

Odisha Channel Bureau Bhubaneswar, Nov 11: The 13th Anjali National Children’s Festival was inaugurated by Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at Adivasi Exhibition Grounds here on Tuesday.The theme for this year is ‘Solidarity and Brotherhood’.As many as 16 teams from outside Odisha, including a team from Nepal, and 36 teams from different parts of the State are participating in the camp.Tripura, Uttarakhand, Assam, Manipur, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Haryana, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir, Telangana, Pondicherry, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu are the States participating this year.Students from different mainstream schools of the city like Mothers Public School, DM School, Stewart School, Sai International, KIIT International, KISS, Kendriya Vidyalaya Guru Nanak School, and numerous government schools will participate in the various events and activities. Children from OLS, BBC school for the Deaf and many other special schools will be a part of the camp.The festival is being coordinated by 162 college students and past volunteers from various mainstream colleges of the city like Ravenshaw University, BJB (Autonomous) College, Centurion University, OUAT, Biju Patnaik College of Social Works, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, Utkal University, Institute of Media Studies, Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal etc.On the opening day of Anjali, all its members including the chief coordinator Sruti Mohapatra, staff, volunteers, participants from across the country and within the State, guests, celebrities, and different people from different walks of life joined a carnival in the city to mark the journey of love.The festivity centre of the camp will be celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi, Eid-ul-Fitr and Halloween on November 12, 13 and 14 November respectively complementing this year’s theme of solidarity and brotherhood.Religious speakers from three major religions will be giving their views on communal harmony.A very attracting feature of Anjali this year is the sand art by famous sand artist Padmashri Sudarsan Pattnaik.To add to the excitement of the Children tattoo artist Om Acharya has been invited to the camp.Different workshops such as art, cartoon, modern dance, craft, first aid, magic, music, terracotta and pottery, ventriloquism, balloon sculpture, creative dance and paper quilling and paper jewellery are being conducted by resource persons.