Background | The project | The results

Background

Dunga is a small fishing and agricultural village in West Kenya. In addition to struggling with poverty, it also has to contend with such fatal illnesses as cholera, typhoid fever, malaria and AIDS. The community wanted to give their children a picture of a brighter future.

At the request of the local community Cre8 set up a pilot project in August 2006 together with the teachers and pupils at the primary school.

How it all began
In 2002, Ben Hekkema, began sponsoring Moses, a poor boy living in Dunga who needed money for the most basic necessities of life including school. Through him, Ben came into contact with the school for orphans in Dunga. After they heard about the kind of work he did in the Netherlands (setting up art educational projects), they wondered whether he could do the same thing for the children of Dunga. Ben travelled to Dunga and through Kenya a number of times and fell in love with the country, the culture and the people (see his weblog). He decided to take on the challenge and, together with a number of friends and colleagues, he set up Cre8 East Africa.

Moses (left) is doing very well. He is a second year student at a good high school in Kisumu and plans to become a doctor.

About Dunga
Dunga is a small community in Luo. The village is part of the city of Kisumu but it has a rural atmosphere with traditional huts. There is no plumbing, sewage system or electricity. The population of Dunga is about 3000 with about 800 living in the area Dunga Beach, where the school is located. Sixty percent of the people there are children. The inhabitants earn a livelihood by tending their plot of land, fishing or running a small shop or business. The majority live below poverty level (less than one dollar a day). Forty per cent of the population has HIV and many adults have died. A number of Dunganese have decided to tackle the problems.
An example of this is the collaboration between the Dutch/Kenyan organisation, Dunga Development Foundation, and Pandipieri, a local Catholic community centre, to set up an informal primary school (private school) for the poorest children. Children from ages six through fourteen attend the school. There is a nursery school for the younger children. A sponsor programme has been established so that the children can attend the school or a vocational training programme.

The project

The Okang' Machielo project has three parts:

1. A training programme run by Sami Gathii and Ben Hekkema the main focus of which was to explain to the educational team (team of teachers? teachers at the school?), about education in the arts and to introduce a more coaching style of teaching.
2. A week of working with the children culminating in a festival
3. The follow-up during which the school continues on its own with the art educational activities.

Working from within the community
Remaining true to its own goals, Cre8 spoke with members of the community, listening carefully to the desires, needs and expectations expressed by the local people and the improvements they hoped this project would help bring about. We looked at the power of art education and how it could be applied to the group we were trying to reach. How could we attain a broad base of support within the community and how could the children get others in the village of Dunga involved in their activities?

For many residents this was a new approach: working with local talent in combination with outside expertise where necessary. In addition to the challenge of the project itself there was the added challenge of establishing a working relationship between different cultures.

Preparation
The team of Kenyan podium artists and educators met together regularly in the period leading up to our arrival. These meetings, which were run by Alphonce Omolo, were an important means of starting up the group process between the schoolteachers and the artists. They were also able to deal with some of the practicalities.

The first week
In the first week, Sami Gathii and Ben Hekkema gave dance and drama workshops. The underlying goal was for the participants to get to know each other better, to work together and to learn to work with children in a more participatory way.

It became clear that the participants had very different backgrounds and levels of experience. The schoolteachers had little or no experience with the arts and the art educators had varying degrees of expertise. The group had a lot of energy but little concentration. The exercises were therefore geared towards improving concentration or releasing energy. A large number of exercises also focussed on collaboration between the artists and teachers. We constantly sought ways to link these workshops with their future work with the children. How could they apply what they were now experiencing to their work with the children?

The second week
During the second week the teachers and artists worked in pairs with the children. The children were divided into groups and took workshops in the following arts: drama, dance, mime, stand up comedy, music, rap, drawing, painting and sculpture.

Each afternoon the children presented what they had done that day in their group. They worked towards a final presentation: the festival. Two hundred children, ranging in age from six to fourteen, took part in at least some of the workshops and 185 children took part in the festival.

The Okang' Machielo (Luo for 'the next step') Festival.

The festival was held on the last Sunday. The afternoon began with a parade that started at the Dunga Beach Harbor and ended at the school. The parade was occasionally interrupted by short sketches and plays, dances, songs and a tree planting ceremony.
The procession led to the schoolyard where a podium had been set up. This is where the various groups held their presentations. There was also an exhibition showing hundreds of art works.

The exchange between Kenya and the Netherlands.
During the Okang'Machielo project we worked with five Dutch schools. Cre8 hopes to change the prevailing image of Africa as the 'dark continent' and introduce nuances and more constructive ideas in its place. Our projects aim to bring Africa to life for the Dutch children and vice versa.

The Cre8 team held workshops in five Dutch 5th grade (group 7) primary school classes and one first year high school class. The theme was: "What do you know about Africa and what would you like to know?".

Each workshop began with a short presentation on Africa, Kenya, Cre8 and the project in Dunga. A discussion or dialogue based on questions and statements about Africa was always a part of the workshop session. At the end of the workshop we explained how to work with the Cre8 suitcase, told about the weblog and how to continue to communicate with Cre8.
The following weblogs provide more information: Cre8inschool, Dorus Rijkers school, Paltrok school en Montesori-boz.

The themes central to the project were the environment, hygiene and health. There was also information about everyday objects that Kenyan children use, particularly those pertaining to the themes (for example: a stick serving as a toothbrush, herbal soap as a cure for eczema and a broom made of local materials). The children discussed the differences and similarities between the two cultures and the reasons for this.

The Dutch children filled one suitcase per class with objects which they considered representative of their everyday lives. They were also given the opportunity to keep their own weblog which Cre8 would edit and maintain. Because this was a relatively new phenomenon, not every class made full use of this opportunity.

In Kenya the arrival of the suitcases was greeted with enthusiasm. The children enjoyed seeing that Dutch children use nearly the same daily objects as they do. The form we chose was also a hit with the children. Poems, comics and drawings all made by the children, plus small objects such as a toothbrush and a piece of soap. All things that the Kenyan children could relate to.

During the weeks that our team spent in Dunga, the children were busy making and collecting things for us to take back to the Netherlands. Once back, we returned the filled suitcases to the classes where they came from. The Dutch children were delighted by the creativity displayed by the children of Dunga: fishing boats and huts made out of natural or found materials, for instance, and impressive poems and drawings.

The results

The audience's reaction.
The whole village came out to see the festival. There were a large number of highly placed persons. Everyone reacted with enthusiasm and wonder at how many children we had been able to reach in such a short time. People were also impressed by the way in which the children left their own mark on the project.

One of the older villagers came up to us and said that in all his many long years in the village he had never seen anything this wonderful and that he was proud of what the children were showing. The Lion's Club of Kisumu, excited by the festival, offered to sponsor the school for a year so that the children could take part in a national art festival for primary schools.

Continuation/strong>
The community agreed that the arts programme would continue in Dunga as a programme of after-school activities and that the village would organize an Okang'Macielo Festival 2007. For all kinds of organisational reasons, this didn't happen. For several months a small team of enthusiastic volunteers, under Mike Aboge's direction, worked with dance, drama and the visual arts. This programme soon stopped however because of a lack of time and because it became too much of a burden on the teachers. The school does plan to pick up the thread again and to organize a follow-up to the project.

The participants, the school board, and various community members who were involved, all agree that the project had a positive influence on Dunga and was a stimulating and useful experience for the children. They are proud that 'their children' displayed so much talent during the festival that the town received a lot of positive press, including coverage by the radio and national newspapers! It was also good to focus public attention (and that of the children) on the subject of the environment, hygiene and health, even if it hasn't yet led to any lasting changes. It was difficult for the school, which is run by volunteers, to carry off a large-scale project like this one, without help from an outside organisation. The stagnation of the follow-up programme made that clear. It isn't always easy for a Dutch team to penetrate the background, hidden rules and power structure of a community like Dunga. Difficult, but not impossible.

This pilot was a learning experience for the organisation. It enabled us to try out a number of things and to formulate our goals for the next project.

Some important conclusions:

• Cre8 and the partners must agree beforehand about mutual expectations and goals.
• Cre8 must select the members of the artistic team so that they meet up to high professional standards.
• The documentation (both audio-visual and written) of the project is very important.
• The exchange with the Dutch children/youths will play a greater role in the next project.
• Cre8 doesn't expect to move mountains, but sees its contribution as that of a catalyst bringing change to a few people and perhaps helping many more to think in a new way.