Orphanage Fun Days

Jan

Orphanage Fun Days

Orphanage Fun Days at Greensteds

fun On a termly or bi-termly basis, we bring a bus load of children from Arap Moi Children’s Home to Greensteds for a day of fun activities. Activities to date have included: mask-making, bouncy-castle, football coaching, swimming, horse-riding, sports, drama, baking and a dance workshop. The children gain much pleasure from the activities, the open green space they can play in and the generous amounts of food we serve them. Most importantly however, is the ‘buddy-system’ we employ on each Fun Day. Each child from the Home is paired up with a Greensteds student who stays with the child for the day, serves them their food, cuts it up for them, ties their shoe laces, buys them treats from the school café and attends to their every need throughout the day. Genuine bonds are built up throughout the day, and the children at the Home talk about their buddy for months after the Fun Day. These days really are a highlight of our school’s calendar.

Account of Orphanage Fun Day on Sunday 16th January 2011

Community Service at Greensteds began early in the new year with 28 children from Arap Moi Children’s Home being invited to spend the day at Greensteds with an action-packed programme prepared for them. This is the sixth time we have invited the children for a Fun Day and almost all the children have now been involved. The Fun Days are an absolute highlight for the children and each Tuesday when we take students to visit the Home we are inundated with questions about the next one. Greensteds provides the perfect environment in which to host the children.

On this occasion, the activities around which the children rotated were swimming, art, drama and baking, each of which were led by a teacher and a group of extremely helpful student-leaders. We have found that the buddy-system is a very powerful way of ensuring that the children feel safe and to begin to develop friendships. On this occasion our buddies ranged from Year 7 all the way through to Year 13, and we now have absolute trust that our students look after their buddy’s every need for the day.

Over 50 students volunteered their time to ensure the children had a wonderful day to remember, and 10 staff were involved. It is a superb way of providing children who have such difficult backgrounds with a day of pleasure (not to mention fine food), as well as enabling our students to learn that there is much to be gained from giving our time and effort to those who are less fortunate.

Last Updated on Wednesday, 26 January 2011 12:32