Send A Wish - DIY candle
Theme: Design for a current affair
Slavery has been an ongoing situation in Ghana that had went on for years.
The aim of this project is to bring forth awareness toward this problematic affair and educate the public by tying a link with an NGO that works to help minimal as much problem the current affair targets face, which in this case, are the child slaves, Free the Slaves.
Inspiration:
A piece of news found on the site of BBC news, the news spoke about a
young boy's story who was given away by his mother at the age of 10 to a man
who forced him to work as a fisherman under dangerous condition, treated as a slave.
Harsh punishments such as physical abuse would be dealt on the child if he were to
retaliate under any form. To some extreme cases, death could happen to them amidst work and
would be simply disposed into the sea without a second thought.
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Using this story as an inspiration, i came up with an idea of an activity that raises
awareness towards these sea slaves and helps to educate the volunteers as well as
public audience who would be participating in this activity, and also a form of ritual activity to
represent each coconut represents a sea slave who gave their life working to death.
Ghana is popular for their abundance in cocoa and coconut production.
Taking their agriculture practice in mind along with their exotic patterns which is important to them as they believe each patterns shows different meanings,
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I decided to go forth with my project in creating an activity that encourages the participants to carve and create candle holders out of coconut shells after the coconut flesh and milk has been used.
This ritual activity is done in the perspective of the participant , in which each coconut represents a person's wishes/condolence to the sea slaves who died out in the sea as they worked.
A pamphlet is designed to be given to each participant to educate the audience about the current affair as well as how the craving of the coconut candle holder could be made.