As the tumultuous year came to a close, we realized that we had covered a lot of ground during the pandemic. Our continuous Expressive Arts interventions at the Place of Safety and Special Home for Boys at Majnu ka Tila (The Home), New Delhi, came to a complete standstill when the lockdown began. Shifting the Threads of Humanity program online was a uniquely challenging and rewarding endeavour.

At the Home, all activities were halted and the boys felt an increasing sense of loneliness and isolation. A lot of the participants we had earlier worked with started getting released on early parole and bail. Once they were released, the next step would have been for them to get enrolled in educational activities or look for immediate employment, both of which were difficult given the nature of the lockdown. We realized that there was an urgent need to continue our work, thus started a back and forth with the staff at the Home and a lot of calls to the participants who were released.

We conducted our first online Expressive Arts workshop at The Home in April 2020. However, slow connections and broken schedules meant that our workshops were not as consistent and effective as we wanted. As the lockdown lifted, we installed a full-scale video camera and computer setup at the Home to smoothen the workshop process and gradually, things started to change. Meanwhile, our calls with the boys outside had also started rolling. We scheduled a day each week where we would connect with the boys online, both inside and outside the Home. We started addressing different needs. While the boys inside spoke about their need for interaction in the newly restricted space, the boys outside were dealing with an uncertain world. The ultimate goal, however, was to use Expressive Arts to work on the Emotional Health and Wellbeing of the young adults.

As things started opening up, we shifted to a part on-ground, part online model. Two of our facilitators started visiting the Home weekly, following all norms of sanitization and social distancing. The weekly workshops with the boys outside reduced invariably, not because of a lack of interest, but because most of them started finding jobs and/or helping out their families in small businesses. We are still in touch with them, connecting once every week, understanding how they are doing, navigating in this changing world.

Owing to social distancing norms at the Home, a lot of the boys inside started getting released as well. The population inside kept changing, and we decided to phase out our Covid-specific interventions in December. Simultaneously, we kept working towards starting a comprehensive program aimed at rehabilitation of CICLs. The challenges, learnings, and stories that have come along the way are truly to be treasured. While the year taught us that the future is unpredictable and uncertain, it also gave us a lot to be thankful for. We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the Superintendent and Staff at the Home for their constant support. We would also like to thank all the contributors to the program, whose contributions were truly invaluable in the continuation of our efforts.