“They (our community members) are very excited learning about other cultures and will want to share their experience in the next session…we shall do an interview with them on a variety of topics…it very nice hearing their wealth of experience..”, this is how one of our NGO partners has shared feedback on today’s cultural exchange club session.
Nearly every month we invite our local NGOs and communities we are working with in India and Kenya to the MMH cultural exchange club sessions – simply fixing a specific topic such as food, gestures, children songs, interesting events and many other topics to talk about. The communities then prepare short videos or share directly on how they do/ live it. And while doing so they discuss, share, enjoy and grow together…
What started as a small pilot has become now a very interesting and also exciting monthly activity – on all sites. Many community members do not just join these sessions regularly, but also dress with pride, stay together to see what “people like them” in other locations and countries share … and then talk about it – even after the one hour session where we all are connected.
We can only grow when we experience, that’s what also here makes a big difference.
Today we have talked about “special days”.
From our Indian communities we learned about temple festivals, how communities and families collect and then prepare food together to enjoy these celebrations. We learned about “Tero buru”, a mock fight and chasing away of death spirit in the Lake Victoria region (watch here) , about circumcision traditions in Western Kenya and gifts fathers hand over to the sons and about the importance to have a birthday party and cake for children living in Nairobi’s slums. Children in the slums are not seen. Our local partner had founded a MMH children club. Now all children in the club who celebrate birthday in the same months have their own club celebrations with cake and a lot of fun.
You can watch here birthday rituals on how one of our partners is doing it with children in the children club:
Go Kenya, go future! 
Great initiative, Manuela. Loved to be part of it!
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You are very much welcome – let me know if you want to engage again.
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