Written by Canadian SportWORKS Officer, David Cobos
David’s international experiential learning experience is funded by the Queen Elizabeth Scholars (QES) Program. This collaborative initiative is made possible through the leadership of the Rideau Hall Foundation, in collaboration with Community Foundations of Canada, Universities Canada, and Canadian universities. Through its promotion of international student exchange and civic engagement, the QES program is helping to grow young Canadians into global citizens while promoting Canada as a destination for the world’s top talent and attracting top talent and international research leaders to Canada.
Hi Everyone,
I can’t believe it has already been three months since I’ve been in Kenya, I swear it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long.
After having a busy schedule in October with the visit of both the International Olympic Committee President and Commonwealth Games Federation President and our first school event in Kibera, due to schools closing down on October 24th, we moved our focus from schools to community events during November and December.
In the first week of November, I started with a pre-visit to the Dandreg Community and Development Centre in Dandora. I went with Martin who is a volunteer for the National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOC-K), he has connections within different communities around Nairobi and has been a great asset in helping us plan these community events. During the pre-visit, Martin was told more about the area and what the community/development centre does (Dandora is home to the largest landfill in Kenya). We met Martin’s contact, Enock, who arranged this meeting with two head teachers and the director of Dadreg. They gave us a brief overview of Dadreg, explaining how the school supports children and youth who are near or working in the Dandora dump site, by providing them with education and vocational training. After hearing them out I felt that CHEZA Healthy could add value to what they already doing within the community. When I told them what CHEZA Healthy is, what we aim to do, and how our program could be beneficial to their community, the director was excited to run our program. Overall the visit was great, we built connections that will help us collaborate on future events and hopefully make a positive impact on the community.
On November 18th, we got exciting news from our CHEZA Healthy leads that the Dadreg Dandora event was confirmed for November 22nd. Everyone who was participating in the event planned ahead, and created an event plan for the time frame we had, what activities we were running, and how we were going to engage the participants. It was a great experience because it felt like we were getting the ball rolling on community events and wanted to make a lasting impact within the community.
The day before the event on November 21st, Jess, Martin, and I got approval to do a pre-visit for a children’s home that’s called I-Afrika, they also run a school within the grounds called Aubrey Newman Academy. They help kids living in the streets around Nairobi, provide them with an education, help them in the transition process as they grow, and reconnect with their families. One of the main highlights of this visit is that when we toured the school, we met kids who stay in the shelters the academy provides for them. The teacher explained to us how some of the kids made their own version of tether ball using a plastic water bottle tied to a metal pole of a basketball net. It was amazing to see the ingenuity of these kids and even the teachers didn’t know what this game was originally called until we mentioned it. The pre-visit was a success, we met the director at the end of our tour and he liked the idea of hosting a CHEZA Healthy event in December. Once I wrote a report on the visit our supervisor was excited as he wanted this to be the last event for the whole NOC-K office to participate in before the holidays.
November 22nd, the day of the Dandora event is here!!! We had around 300 participants!!! We were expecting 150 but more and more kids started coming from around the community they heard the music and saw the activities we were doing, it was awesome. Even though we started later because our venue was occupied for some time, we were able to adjust our event plan and still run most of the activities we had planned out for the day. I was teaching kids ages 6 to 11 years old about NCDs, the benefits of physical activity through sport, and explaining to them different ways to stay active. The best part was when I quizzed them at the end and most of them answered my questions correctly. When it came to running the actual activities, seeing the kids have fun was one of the highlights of the day, we played a couple of rounds of British Bulldog and some of the kids were taunting trying to make me catch them. We even did an egg race with potatoes as a fun mini-game and even though the kids didn’t completely follow the rules in both activities, the important part was that they had fun. Overall the event was a success and even though we didn’t get to run the mini-football matches like we planned we were able to teach the kids and community members what CHEZA Healthy is.
Another exciting thing that happened this month was that we were able to watch two premier league football matches after the Dadreg event at Dandora stadium, the community members and coaches who helped at the event invited us. It was our first time watching professional football teams in Nairobi. Also, one of our co-workers got married and we were fortunate enough to get invited. While the bus ride was 7 hours away from Nairobi, it was a great experience to witness a traditional wedding in Kenya and to be a part of it.
Even though we don’t have much time left, I’m super grateful for all the experiences and events we did this month and I’m excited for what we have planned in our last month here.
I want to say thank you to everyone in the office for celebrating both Jess’s and my birthday this month.
Until next time,
David Cobos