By Rakeli Gichuki
ActionAid’s Global Platform Nanyuki is currently abuzz with
activity, the task in hand being preparations for the global citizens festival
to take place in Nanyuki town right outside Nakumatt Supermarket. The idea of having
a festival came about from previous global citizen course participants and current
facilitators. The previous global citizens course participant thought that it
would be important to have an activity that is captures the underlying philosophy
of the course, while the facilitators thought would be important to celebrate
global citizenship with a festival. Thus, the festival embodies ideals from
both parties since it is a celebration of global citizenship. Furthermore,
festival presented an ideal way for the global Platform Nanyuki to have its
presence felt in Nanyuki town.
Moreover, Nanyuki is a town that hosts foreigners
from different parts of the world, from British, Italians, American et cetera,
all with different agendas. The festival then is an ideal way of raising the
consciousness of the people of Nanyuki on global citizenship a fact they live
with every day. In addition to the above, the festival is also a way of
appreciating the people of Nanyuki for being host not only to the global
platform Nanyuki and but also to the myriad of foreigners living in the town.
The preparations for the festival entailed a number of
things. The first step was a brainstorming session started three weeks ago in Dar-es-Salaam
using the concept of Future
Workshop. Secondly, when in Kenya, the participants had to figure out what
the theme of the festival would be, and this was easy seeing that our
predecessors had thought about it, we agreed unanimously to have the theme of
the festival be a celebration of global citizenship. Thirdly, we had to come up
with the message that we would want to share with the world. Since we are a
diverse group from different parts of the world, we all had different messages
that matched with the theme. We therefore decided that we would all want a
chance to share our individual messages. Christine’s, a facilitator in the GCC,
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| Christine holding up her message |
message is Solidarity. For her, solidarity is all about building relevant
alliances that foster the movement of social change.
Abdul-Hanan
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| Abdul-Hanan holding up his message |
a global citizen course participant, message is Umoja. Umoja is a Swahili word
that means unity and for him Unity across geographical borders is essential if
the notion of global citizenship is to thrive.
Next, we had to come up with various country presentations
for our various countries to present during the festival. For the Kenyan’s the
presentation is about our independence. It features the union jack flag giving way for to the Kenyan flag after we won independence. The Ghanaian’s participants
presented a historical timeline of the major events leading up to independence.
The Danes presentation featured prominent persons in their country as well as
interesting facts they thought people should know. The Zimbabwean also gave a
brief historical background of their country as well as popular tourist
attraction sites. The Tanzanians talked about two most important natural
features of their country, which is the Ngorongoro Crater and Mt. Kilimanjaro.
A lot of effort went
into ensuring that the festival come to life. It took us roughly three days to
put everything together and by Friday evening, everything was in place, simply waiting
for the big day.
