CAFOD blog

Our latest idea for Wednesday activity day at the Streetchildren Project was an arts and crafts day.

I had brought some wire and a selection of tiny coloured beads from England for making jewellery. 

Janet decided to make papier-mache pinatas by covering inflated balloons with newspaper dipped in flour and water.

Pauline learnt a few origami instructions from the internet for a paper-folding workshop.

Finally, one of the project’s staff, Adhanom, agreed to supervise a painting workshop so that every child would have the chance to do at least two activities during the day.

As ever, levels of enthusiasm were probably higher than skill levels, and that goes for the instructors as well as the students!

Janet, the art room and the children ended up caked in flour and water and, mysteriously, a large number of balloons appeared around the project – some of them filled with water!

In all, 20 pinatas were made in teams of four, and they are now drying out ready for painting.

We have yet to figure out how to use them without children being injured in the rush to pick up scattered sweets!

In my classroom there were gasps of excitement when the girls saw the beads, especially those with letters, and the little multi-coloured ones.

They quickly set to work making bangles that incorporated the colours of the Ethiopian flag.

I had planned three jewellery sessions, but by the time the second one ended there were no beads left. Not sure where they all went, but they didn’t all appear on jewellery!

Pauline’s workshop was very popular. She taught them how to make a paper cup out of a sheet of paper, how to make a jumping frog, and how to fold a piece of scrap paper into a football strip.

The latter was the most popular, with the children colouring their finished strips in the colours of their favourite football teams (mostly Man Utd and Arsenal of course).

The children have obviously so rarely done anything creative in school - for example, they had to be taught how to use paints and brushes.

Although the students are mostly 12-18 years old, the pictures had the same naive quality as those I saw when I taught primary school.

But they were so proud of their efforts, each group insisting on having its photograph taken with the finished painting.

Posted by KathleenOB

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