With Venezuela now three months into a coronavirus quarantine that has kept children locked indoors, music and art teachers and storytellers are for the first time moving their classes online.
Artists have taken on the challenge, concerned children are not using their imagination or developing their talents amid continuing uncertainty over when they will be able to visit concert halls or meet under the shade of trees again.
Though COVID-19 virus has caused a similar shift in many countries, Venezuela’s children are at unusual risk due to a dire economic crisis that has exacerbated child malnutrition and weakened access to education.
The United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, has said that as children learn by playing, parents should play with their kids each day at home, Reuters reported.
After preparing a youth dance program that was set to include a performance at a Caracas theater, dance troop Imagirodanza now teaches virtual classes twice a week to girls and their mothers.
Imagirodanza director Carmen Perez, 51, had a group of daughters and their mothers drape sheets on their backs and imitate birds as part of an online classes.
The quarantine has forced the group to reinvent itself “so that we didn’t become irrelevant,” Perez said.
Story tellers now film themselves reading children’s tales from their balconies and send the videos to families and schools that hire them to keep children motivated during the extended lockdown.
“I had never done anything digital, I did everything outside,” said Nury Delgado, 53, of storytelling group The Enchanted Frog that has entertained children with the support of bookstores for more than a decade.
Many now see the online world as being the reality for children in the near future.
