The old Neighbourhood of Bow Bazaar

Bow Bazaar is an old, bustling neighbourhood in Central Calcutta stretching along Bipin Behari Street to Mahatma Gandhi Road, between the city's old college district and primary train station, Sealdah. This locality is bustling with a market of jewelers, carpenters, and musical instrument craftsmen, and is also made of crooked alleys and lanes — notorious for being home to one of the city's red-light areas and famous for being city's oldest Chinatown.

This vibrant locality is the first site where Kalam will be implementing Neighbourhood Diaries. In partnership with Sanlaap, a local human rights organization, Neighborhood Diaries will begin work with 12 young resident living in the locality's red-light area starting the first week of November.

Sanlaap has been working in Bow Bazaar's redlight area for over a decade now. It established an after-school youth community center at the local Bow Bazaar High School where youth from the surrounding slums and redlight areas attend after-school academic support classes, creative art classes, other youth empowerment programs.

Neighbourhood Diaries will be setting up a studio in Bow Bazaar High School as an evening program for youth associated with Sanlaap. Presently, conversations continue with Sanlaap on youth selection, computer safety, and the mobilizations of community involvement. Thus far it has been determined that Neighbourhood Diaires will take place once a week with a group of 16-19 year olds.

With more logistics cemented in the coming week, we are eager to start workshops after Durga Puja, and see how youth journalists will give voice to Bow Bazaar.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *