Umthombo kids with Razia Dawjee (Umthombo facilitator)

Sbuja tells us about his experience at the Umthombo Wesizwe Children’s Project graduation event….

Saturday, 23 October 2010 was a great day of learning. I learnt the power of unity does exist but it is only strong between children.

It is very easy for children to work together and ignore their difference and focus on their similarities. There were children from different backgrounds, and I promise you that you could not be able to tell that the children were so different because they had the innocent spirit of having fun.

I have learnt from this day that when you really want to fit into a group of people, you will do whatever it takes to achieve that goal. For example: there was an German-English boy, called Luca; he was trying to do gum-boots dance. The other guys gave him a hard time by excluding him from the group initially but he kept on trying and trying. Finally he was accepted and at the end of the day he got most of the moves and it was a big success for him. This taught me that at first we may not like each other but in the end there are things that will bring us together.

I also learnt that children are quite strong spirited, they will always try to give all their best at what they do. Give them a task and they will gladly do it with ease, they will complain at first but that is only a child-like thing; they will always come around and after that they will still ask for more fun.

I learnt that when you want to engage with a group of people, you must have different levels of thinking (for example: speaking to an adult and a child require different ways of thinking). You must be able to switch between these levels of thinking and in this case a young mind was needed, talk on the level of the child. This is a lot of fun and you should try it sometime.

I learnt a lot and it would take a whole day to tell you all about it, thank you to all the Umthombo Wesizwe kids that allowed us to experience the spirit of cultural diversity with them!! Read more about this initiative here: http://www.uwfund.org

Sjuba