Celebrating International Day of the African Child

The International Day of the African Child has been celebrated on June 16 every year since 1991. This year Kids League Kenya and our UK partners have worked to raise the profile of the day

The idea

We have a ‘Twinning program‘ in place. This has provided a global platform for connecting children from Kenya and the United Kingdom. It is an idea that allows children to access others on the other side of the world, expanding their experiences and creating global ambassadors. This is also a platform where they can share.

Our current Twinning Schools

We are currently a group of six schools, including Repton Primary School, St. Edward’s School, Fleckney Primary School from the United Kingdom. These schools meet regularly with our partners Kengeleni Primary School, Kongowea Primary School, and Pentrose Community School from Kenya.

Twinning on International Day of the African Child

Our latest twinning meeting took place on International Day of the African Child.

This year’s theme was ‘Children’s Rights in the Digital Environment’. This theme focusses on safe guarding children accessing the digital environment, it highlights the limitations to access to the internet for children in Africa. This lack of exposure to technology and innovation can be a limiting factor for students.

We focus on the access to technology and a ‘global view’ with our students. Our Internet Corner gives students access to the internet to pursue their interests and learn in a safe environment. Our twinning scheme is enabled by technology and it always great fun for all the participants and it was an excellent day to meet online to enjoy a live interaction! The students had the opportunity to ask general questions from both sides during this session.

A new experience

Kids League Kenya have recently been donated a new location for twinning with enough space to increase the number of students from Kenyan schools. A total of fifteen students joining representing a total of 4,000 students from the three Kenyan schools and 400 students from the UK participated. Four hundred!

Students from the UK dressed up and also had a series of activities to learn more about Kenya as part of their educational experience. Thank you to all the teachers for embracing the theme and making it such a success.

Exciting news

We are thrilled to announce that two schools from both sides will be joining us!

When Ann Dudley (our international Liaison volunteer) visited Kenya, she had the idea of spreading the good news to other neighbouring schools. Together with Julie (our administrator), they approached Khadija Primary School, which is in Kids League Kenya’s target area. Khadija school is eager to join us and we recently received word from one of our volunteers in the United Kingdom that a school in Nottingham is interested in joining too. Welcome!

If YOUR school is interested in joining the Kids League Kenya project then please get in touch with Lewa in Kenya or Ann in UK to hear more about it!

What’s next

The next activity for the schools to participate in is writing stories and filming videos of traditional stories.

This project will run from now until September during which time all of the videos will be collected when the students will be ready to meet online again.

It is hoped that some videos and written versions of these stories might serve as the beginning of a collection of traditional African stories for publication in Kenya.