Attachments
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Community-led arts programmes like ‘social circuses’ are gaining attention globally as a way to help disadvantaged youth build resilience, confidence, and skills. ‘Social circus’ is a type of psycho-social intervention that uses circus arts to physically and mentally engage young people in marginalised situations in a way that supports community building.
This evaluation brief, conducted by Samuel Hall, focuses on one such initiative in Afghanistan, which empowers young people in conflict settings who are vulnerable to mental health and developmental difficulties due to the impacts of trauma.
When the global social circus organisation called the Mobile Mini Circus for Children (MMCC) began in Afghanistan in 2001, its founders dreamt of reaching as many children as possible, to help them be full of joy and enthusiastic about life despite its hardships. Through a pedagogic model that brings together education and entertainment, a ‘social circus’ format was developed and adapted for the contexts where the MMCC works. In the challenging context of Afghanistan these founders realised that where infrastructure for child care and schooling may be lacking, social circuses could be a unique source of community building, of home, learning and of joy for the children, and of integration for the most underprivileged. In the isolated environment characteristic of certain war zones, where resources are often limited and events unpredictable, the aim of this initiative became to build a model at once mobile, flexible, able to reach as many children as possible, and to grow with them as a support system throughout their youth.
Over the last 21 years, the MMCC model, inspired by child-centred participatory pedagogy, has developed and grown in both scale and impact. The model is built on the assumption that when working in a context where resources continue to be limited, children and communities themselves are key assets to developments.
The MMCC thus challenges traditional models of early childhood education by asking the question: can children discover their strengths by themselves? By working under a structure where children teach others circus arts (like juggling, which requires little to no resources), they learn that they can create and develop skills and relationships themselves while building their own confidence and capacities.
The MMCC programme engages communities in a responsible manner aligned with a localisation agenda, which the international community can learn from and build on in Afghanistan. Unlike much of the international aid system present in Afghanistan throughout the last two decades, the aim of the MMCC has not been to introduce an external structure, but rather to build (on) the strength of local capacities. The model is built on a simple and replicable structure– one that is influenced, felt, and built upon by those living it.
The MMCC approach supports children and youth by addressing their mental health needs and encouraging a sense of belonging and societal contribution, which in turn supports the health of their own communities. Their aim is to create a sense of security and community for children who have faced multiple traumas, who work in the streets, or who live in informal settlements where their rights as children may not always be fulfilled. According to Schmeding (2020) “the setting of the social circus in Afghanistan uses applied performances to further an emotional culture that enhances healthy childhood development through introducing children to an environment in which they feel safe, interact as a part of a community, and in which they are given the space to experiment with physical and psychological challenges in a safe environment”.2 By participating in the social circus activities, they can focus on what it means to be a child – to smile, laugh, and exchange – while learning strong foundational and unique skills built on discipline and mastery, and thus gaining a true sense of hope for the future.