Cigarettes, Plastics, and Equality!

Our first ever Themed Program in Tunisia

Lights Camera Learn is finally back in Tunisia after two years with a first-time-ever themed program.

During the past sessions, we have noticed how much kids are learning from our unique edutainment pedagogy, and that's why we thought of introducing urgent and very locally relevant topics to the kids.

In Tunisia, it's very uncommon for parents to teach their kids about tolerance, human rights, environmental issues, the dangers of smoking and alcohol, etc….

But, we are aware of that, so here we are educating children about these different themes, after getting their parent’s permission.

We chose four themes for this program. We carefully selected those that are a bit sensitive, challenging, and have a massive effect on a kid's life or mentality.

Racism & Colorism

Adults tend to assume children are too young to be aware of race, a study finds. But research showed that at 4 or 5 years old, children notice race. That's why racism was one of our topics.

We organized workshops and discussions about melanin, personal experiences, and children found out that their friends also suffer from racism and that racism is not only experienced by black people. There even was this kid who confessed that his friends were bullying him for having freckles. The day after, both our team and his friends came to the school with freckles to show him solidarity. 

Sexism

At ages 5 to 6 years, most children are rigid about gender stereotypes and preferences. At that age, children already know how a specific gender should act, dress, and do.

We played games about gender roles and discussed feminism. We also introduced some new terms to kids, such as consent, victim-blaming, and gender equality. In this era of technology and social media, we found that kids already know about these topics - however, incorrectly. So, we wanted to correct those internalized social constructs and teach children that their actions do not define their gender. 

Plastics

Plastics and everything that falls under the environment-climate spectrum are already taught to kids in schools, but our curriculum is innovative and out-of-the-box. For example, we guided our stars through the life cycles of different plastic products and the process of recycling. We also played games such as memory games to teach kids new environment-related words in English.

Smoking

Researches show that in 2015, 2.3% of middle school students smoked cigarettes in the last 30 days. Of course, children are told that they should not smoke. But what we taught them through games and workshops are the dangers of smoking. For example, we wanted them to have an idea about the impact the cigarettes have on their breathing systems, so we asked them to run around the room and breath through a straw which was a struggle. Then we explained the consequences cigarettes have on someone’s body and health. 

Let’s Rewind
The first week of the session was dedicated to the development of the team. We had training and outdoor activities just like camping and horse riding to get to know each other and become closer so that kids understand how crucial teamwork is.

Our session was not only limited to workshops, games, and discussions. As always, children in our session wrote, directed, and filmed three different movies about our topics. 

We made sure that the information they learned in the stations gets implanted in their memories through scriptwriting and acting. 

COVID-19

Since this session is our first since the global pandemic, we struggled with dealing with the Covid19 situation. But we made sure to take all medical precautions. Unfortunately, some of our members caught the virus in the last few days of the program and we had to postpone the red carpet to a later date. 

We did not let the virus be an obstacle to the success of our session. We evaluated the circumstances and settled on taking a break. Our red carpet event was held virtually to ensure the safety of the kids and our team. We thankfully completed our program with four finalized short films that you can watch on our Youtube channel.

What helped us reach the educational progress of the kids is the structure of our team.

Our team was diverse. We had members from different fields, genders, ethnicities, religions, cultures, sexualities, and countries.

But we were very close and always on the same page. We showed the children that despite our differences, we worked together lovingly, flexibly, and effectively. Our differences are what made our program thrive, because each one of us always had a unique value to add.

We have seen the very fast progress of the kids when it comes to them learning from our activities.

Children learn very quickly and it showed. Some were very shy at first but then they blossomed and started asking questions.

And it turned out to be a very successful approach as the kids were reflecting on the content of the workshops and discussing the topics we focused on with their peers during breaks and lunchtime. At the end of the session, our stars showed great performances in our final quizzes.

We were more than satisfied with the result of the program, not only we educated our stars on topics that society does not usually address but we also helped them improve their English skills.

We are very excited about our next session as it will definitely be more successful than the previous ones. 

Applications open end of this month, and this year’s theme is Amazigh Language, Culture, and History.