“ For the first time in my life, I realized that there is something called sound! Life before the hearing–aid was like seeing the rain without hearing the pitter-patter; seeing the lightning without hearing the thunder. The little machine made my life so much better; it was like watching a talkie movie after seeing silent ones all my life.”

Now, this is one personal story we can’t really say we had expected to hear when we began YAP, or the Young Author Program, a creative writing program aimed at school children, who have a flair for writing, and would turn them into published authors.

Yet YAP is as much a creative writing program as a life skills program, only these life skills are mined from the collective experiences of the writing group. And here we had the biggest example; a young girl telling us her lived story of resilience, like little else. If you think hers is a story that you should read when you are in the mood for some heavy-duty motivational stuff, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Sample these lines- “Interestingly despite the many disadvantages of the hearing aid, I have one major advantage. While someone scolds me or I don’t want to listen to anything, I just cut off the outside world!”, says this impish 14 year old.

When we set out to establish YAP, there could have been myriad points of view, but the one thing all of us as co-founders were sure of, is that we wanted to offer children a safe space wherein they could work alongside other writers, secure in the knowledge that they were fully supported. By laying bare the deepest recesses of her heart, this young girl had shown that we had got this important piece of the puzzle right!
 

No conversation about YAP will be complete without a confession! For all our (misplaced) impressions about Gen Z, each time we have released a book we have been gobsmacked with the sheer choice of topics. From drug addiction to disability, from mental health to family ties, the children have explored a whole range of human experiences and the many dilemmas- that is life. That it has been a pleasure to encounter assured voices that belie the age of its writers, is an understatement.

Above everything, the sensitivity with which the children have written about these topics leaves you filled with hope, and that’s saying a lot in the otherwise mortifying times that we live in! On that note, I am so reminded of a song called “ Hope in Your Heart” – something that all of us could do with:

“You can be sitting sad and lonely
Crying in the shadows, crying in the shadows of your mind
But then you hear a story,
It echoes in your memory and you no longer feel alone.”