Kids sharing their lives

Two of the projects the 3 volunteers worked on during their recent stint at our Model School were a pen friend program and a geography/cultural exchange program. Both programs are being run between students studying at Riviera and their peers studying at 2 schools in Australia.

The pen friend program is being run with kids from Year 3 at Bondi Beach Public School in Sydney. The first letters have been written by their pen friends in Nepal so these kids will soon be receiving a wonderful surprise in the mail - contact with a friend from an entirely different culture and part of the world!

The geography/cultural exchange is being run with kids from Year 7 at a high school in Eden on the New South Wales south coast. This program required the kids in Australia to prepare a postcard which detailed some of the geographical characteristics of the area in which they live. We then delivered these postcards to the kids in Years 7 and 8 in Nepal who had to create their own postcards to send back. The postcards from Nepal are on their way to Australia right now! This program has been particularly rewarding for the kids as their views of the world and what is 'normal' vary so much. The Australian kids obviously focused on beaches, bushland and native animals as features unique to their environment whilst the kids in Nepal have focused on the Himalayas, the many rivers in Nepal, and their religious customs as being unique to theirs.

As I was reading some of the postcards from Nepal I was very impressed with how perceptive the kids were and also how inquisitive. They were very quick to pick up phrases and expressions the Australian kids had used and also asked when they did not understand something. Some good examples were:

"What do you mean by AFL?"
"I don't understand your meaning when you refer to the bush."
"How big is a rugby field, can you play other games on it?"
"I am not sure if we have kangaroos in Nepal but let me tell you about tigers. They are flesh eating and I am afraid of them!"

Kids sharing such seemingly day to day subjects will benefit both sides enormously and help them to broaden their views of the world. We are hoping to expand these programs this year and are always keen to hear from schools interested in pursuing this type of exchange with kids from Nepal.