MY LETTER TO KIBERA KIDS

I'm Luca Aschieri, last year I met Calvin Juma and Florence Owino, they are husband and wife, and they are very socially active in their community. They immediately seemed like very interesting people with whom it would be nice to organize something important.

After talking to them for a long time I wanted to try to propose organizing a drawing workshop, for the children of their community.

It's been a year now, and the experience has been wonderful. We have grown and the boys have impressed me with their commitment and desire to get involved. 

I would like to leave, to all the students of our artistic laboratory, my letter for the new year:

I am incredibly grateful to all of you for the commitment you have shown this year, and I would like to thank everyone: those who have been with us since the beginning, those who have recently arrived, and those who unfortunately had to leave us because they are no longer in Kibera.

New challenges await us next year and I will need the commitment of all of you, the trust you have given us so far, and your advice.

In fact, my goal would be to help you and us become better people, and give you and us the strength and courage to cultivate our talents and our future.

This is why I will ask you two things first of all:

- To always support each other by helping each other in difficulties, and learning to work in a team.

- To participate in the workshops always putting all your effort into what you are doing. Both the commitment to give your best in your work and the maximum in helping your teammates.

If you are tired, or if your family needs you, do what you think is best.

The laboratory must not seem like an obligation, it must remain a place where you enjoy coming.

I hope that this year that we have spent together has been beautiful and useful, and I hope that the next one can be even better.

The greatest gift you can give me will not be to thank me, but to commit yourself to what you do, to believe in me and in yourselves, and above all to find a way to tell us what you think. To talk to me about your ideas, your doubts or your advice.

Because it's not just you who wants our help, but we also need your one. 

And we need to know you to know what is best to do.

I would like to try to give you some advice:

Think and reason a lot with your thoughts. Let them grow by sharing them with friends.

Start to think as if the world is much smaller than you think. Because as time passes we are all closer and closer, our problems affect you and your problems affect us.

And start also to think that you are important, that the future depends on you too, and that if you can't make your dreams come true on your own, you can find someone to team up with, and become stronger or better.