During the week 5th class visited the Irish Aid Centre. They did some drumming, sang a Swahili song, danced and had a workshop about the U.N.

Here is an extract from Herkus Mecionis’ recount of the day…

On Wednesday 6th June, my class and the other Fifth class went on an excursion to the Irish Aid Centre.

First, we left school at 9.00am and started walking towards the city centre.  The kind kitchen ladies packed us fruit and scones and we took turns carrying the food.  We stopped at the Iveagh Gardens to have our snacks and to play.

Next, we went to the Irish Aid Centre.  Caoimhe, our workshop facilitator, split us into two groups.  I was in Group One. She gave us different names like climate change, solar cookers and energy.  When we heard our names in a story, we had to swap places with the person that had the same name as us.  Afterwards we lined up in birth order without talking. Later, we did a More/ Less chart. We had come up with four things we wanted more of and four things we wanted less of by 2030, for example: you would want less crime and more peace.  This helped us to understand what it must have been like for 193 countries to have drawn up the 17 Global Goals in 2015. We learnt about the United Nation’s 17 Global Goals for 2030 and watched a video about them. One goal is to have Peace and Justice for everyone and another goal is to have No Poverty.

In the second part of the workshop, we had to find Tanzania on a map of Africa.  We put on khangas. Khangas are colourful scarf- like cloths that some African people wear, which have proverbs on them.   We sang a Swahili song. We also played the drums. First I got a nice, big drum; then I got a bell shaped object, that you had to hit with a drumstick and it made a loud cling clang sound.  

The Irish Aid Centre helped us learn more about what they do and about African cultures.  I really enjoyed this experience and I hope that all young people visit this place.