Kafka hosts 'sports and citizenship' session at 64th Children's Literature Festival, Lahore

The Children’s Literature Festival (CLF) took place in Lahore, Pakistan from 21-22 January, with children singing songs and participating in learning activities. The Children Library Complex was decorated with colourful banners and streamers, and each hall and room was utilised for the CLF sessions, activities, and exercises. Almost 30,000 children from 600 schools participated in the Children's Literature Festival.

Kafka, a youth-led organisation founded by Ravians in 2010, organised sports for citizenship, gender equality, and inclusion sessions with Youth Assembly Foundation. Children from multiple schools participated in ‘sports for sustainable development’ focussed inclusive activities. The field was named as ‘Sana Mir Ka Maidan’.

Founder Kafka and sports sociologist Umair Asif has engaged children in various activities. He said team-based inclusive sports activities are essential in our society to promote citizenship, sportsman spirit, and critical thinking. Also, he said we need to teach children social and moral values that will help us to enhance tolerance and resilience among our children and young people.

Activities included:

Domes and dishes

• Children learned skills such as team-work, inclusion, responsibility, mutual respect, and fairness. Such activities help children to change behavior on the positive side and make them more responsible as a citizen.

Chicken and fox

• In this activity, a group of children protects a chicken from a fox as a team. They have learned how to show responsibility towards each other in society. Such an experience of activities helps children to adopt these positive values in their lives afterward on a long term basis.

Traffic lights

• The activity taught kids how to follow rules being a good citizen. Also, they have learned and experienced different skills such as critical thinking, communication, and sportsman spirit.

Run and learn

• It was one of the major activities on the second day where special children were also included in the activities to promote the idea of inclusion. 

This article was submitted by the Kafka Welfare Organization. Visit their website for more information.