CHILDREN'S DAY

By Ogbonnaya Amarachi

May 27th every year is celebrated as Children's day and so many people celebrate these young ones, both the privileged and less privileged.

Beautiful Onyinye Foundation, a Non-Governmental Organization that caters to the less privilege children in Nigeria had an outreach  for her Lagos Angels (Volunteers) to Royal Diamond Orphanage home, Ojodu Berger, Lagos state, on the 27th of May which is known as children's day.

It was a busy day for the BOF angels, as they are fondly called (Volunteers) who went to the orphanage home as early as 9 am on Sunday, Children's day to spend time with the kids with so many activities planned for the day.

We followed them to The Redeemed Christian Church of God to cover the church event as most of them rendered rendition in various languages and other activities, the children were excited.

After the church service, they were taken back to the home with the angels guiding them, the first activity of the day was making of greeting cards, the children were so creative in their various capacities that they made beautiful greeting cards with the supervision of the angels.

The next exercise was making of rainbows, the children were given seven different coloured papers which were folded inside out and a rubber pipe used to bind the centre together and the ends cut out stylishly, they were spread out after that to reveal beautiful looking butterflies and rainbow colors, the children were ecstatic at their designs.

After that was, "The Walking Rainbow" which the children were taught how to make rainbows with cups, water, color and paper towels.There were six cups, three filled with water and the rest empty in between the filled cups and colors poured into them and the paper towels placed through them all and the colors started spreading, they were kept aside for thirty minutes.


Then we made fruit kebab, a mixture of various fruits (Pineapple, Apple, Carrot, African Apple and Watermelon) put together on a kebab stick, they absolutely loved the one as they ate so many fruits on one stick.

By this time, the excitement had gone overboard, they were in high spirits, jumping all over the place, chocolates and biscuits were given to them, the next activity on our itinery was how strong is the spaghetti. An exercise aimed at showing the strength of unity, they were asked to bundle the spaghetti as one and place a shoe on it to see if it could hold it, they were asked if it could before the exercise started and they doubted the spaghetti was very strong until a shoe was placed on it and it stayed, next came a sneaker, it stayed, a tray was placed on it and it didn't give way, bottle, it still held it and it convinced the children that there is indeed strength in unity and it sank into them, they also learnt that the spaghetti is indeed a strong food.

The last event of the day was baking of cupcakes and this session was led by angel Amarachi, a seasoned caterer, assisted by the other angels, the children all participated and had fun doing it;they added the ingredients amidst excitements and creamed the cake, all of them and even put the batter into the cupcake pan whilst it was put into the oven by Amarachi. The way was long for the kids as they couldn't wait to have a taste of their sweat.Whilst waiting for the cake to bake, the children were given questionnaires to fill, guided by the angels were they were asked the activities they did in the last couple of hours and how they participated, this was to know the level of impact it had on them and their level of participation, it was not surprising that they all wrote beautifully and correctly.

By this time, it was past 6pm and it was time to call it a day, the children were happy for the time well spent and the company they had, accompanied by all the gifts they. Their matron, Mrs. Favour was all grateful as she beamed from ear to ear and prayed from the depth of heart for the foundation, its owners and the angels.

This is by far, the best outreach I have gone in my over seven years of volunteering as a person, the smiles on those children's faces will stay a long time in my memory, I remembered the kid I mentored there, Cynthia, when asked who her best angel was, looked for me everywhere, just so she could point to me and peck me, it was emotional for me.

Thank you Beautiful Onyinye Foundation for this opportunity of being a blessing to these children through volunteerism.