Children of World Vision Senegal celebrate

A group of drummers faces the audience.

In the crowd, there are girls wearing matching pink and blue dresses, smiling from under sparkly, sequined-adorned headscarves, ready for their dance performance. They sit amongst the other children dressed in crisp World Vision-logoed t-shirts.

The hall is filled with excitement for the upcoming performance.

Children’s Camp

After three weeks at camp, 105 children from Niakhar and Sine Area Development Programmes (ADPs), from the district of Fatick, are participating in the closing ceremony.

The camp was a partnership between World Vision Senegal and the Department of Education in Senegal.

It targeted and benefited children who had excelled at school but also those who come from disadvantaged families, or gone through a difficult period in their lives. The latter included children with a disability, or children who had gone through traumatic experiences – such as losing their homes to fire, a common occurrence in rural Senegal and West Africa in general, due to the use of open fire for cooking inside the homes.

At the closing ceremony, children engage in a series of plays, singing, dancing and drumming. It is the culmination of three weeks of activities - sightseeing, playing, engaging in sporting competitions, learning about their rights and responsibilities.

 At the foundation of all their activities lies a number of things – that children are capable and creative; that they can be entrepreneurial; that they understand their rights and can stand up for important issues.

During the closing ceremony, several plays are performed. Children depict various scenes about girls’ and women’s rights, child labour, and the need for Senegalese to be proud of their culture and roots – in response to many of their countrymen harbouring dreams of migrating in the hope of making a better life for themselves elsewhere.

Confident and strong children

One thing that underpins all of these performances is the fact that children can be confident and strong, and what better way of proving it if not the several children with disabilities who take the limelight and delight and touch the audience with their dancing - the same children whom on their arrival to the camp were shy and afraid to mix with the other children.

“Kids proved it today that they are capable of so many things. Not only have they participated but they have made a difference. Today they proved that they can be creative, courageous and hardworking – true leaders,” says Diegane Ndiaye, World Vision Base Manager for Fatick.

“None of this would have been possible, however, without the support of World Vision Senegal,” adds Cheikh Mouhamed Diabaye, the head of the camp.

By Adel Sarkozi