Playing, singing and painting are special moments for the children in the Kenyan refugee camp Kakuma and in the nearby settlement Kalobeyei. It is when they are allowed to be children. Ten years ago, emergency pedaogy became aware of the devastating situation of the refugees in the ever-growing refugee camp in northwestern Kenya. As a result, an emergency pedagogy team from the Friends of Waldorf Education travelled to Kakuma to provide psychosocial stabilisation for the refugee children. This first mission took place in cooperation with the Nairobi Waldorf School. It quickly became clear that the children and young people needed long-term support and accompaniment, as well as a safe place in the midst of precarious living conditions in the camp. Further emergency educational missions followed before the Waldorf Kakuma Project (WKP), founded in 2015, continued the emergency and trauma educational work on site independently. Today, the Waldorf Kakuma Project's emergency pedagogy work is an integral part of the activities at the Kakuma Child Protection Centre and the Reception Centre in Kalobeyei.
In the child protection centre, the children are looked after daily by two educators and can participate in playful and creative activities. Taking into account the traumatic circumstances of their lives, a protected framework is created here in which healthy relationships can develop and the children can experience normality.
In the Reception Centre, on the other hand, there is no continuity. Several times a week, people arrive on the run and are provisionally accommodated in the initial reception. Waldorf Kakuma Project is also on site here every day and invites people to emergency educational play and movement activities. Hundreds of children often flock to the activities. Activities take place under the simplest of conditions, giving the children a sense of reliability, normality and joy.
The WKP staff who work in the refugee camp every day live in the camp themselves as refugees and know from their own experience what some of the children have had to go through. They come from South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Due to the international composition of the team, different languages are represented so that it is possible to communicate with all children and young people from these different African countries.
The Friends of Waldorf Education have repeatedly supported the Waldorf Kakuma Project with donations and training. In October 2022, ten years after the first mission, an international emergency pedagogy team travelled to Kenya again to support the daily work and to deepen the knowledge around trauma and education. The focus of the mission was the exchange and further training in trauma pedagogy for the staff of the Kakuma Waldorf Project. In addition to theoretical content on child development, there were practical units on working with young children, art and drawing shapes, as well as experiential education methods.