By Millicent Senava Mannah
As part of its humanitarian drive, Orange Foundation, an appendage of Orange SL commemorated this year’s Day of the African Child, on the 16th of June 2022, which had as its theme “Eliminating Harmful Practices Affecting Children” by organizing a party for school children at the company’s Headquarters on Hill Station.
Pupils from the Milton Margai College of the Blind, National School for the Deaf, SOS Harmameigner, Maranatha Primary school, and Albinism Family benefitted from the gesture by the telecoms company.
Giving an overview of the celebration, Orange Foundation Project Manager, Desmond Spaine, narrated the history of the Day of the African Child to the children. He intimated that, continentally, the commemoration is held in remembrance of the 1976 massacre of children in the black township of Soweto, South Africa, during the period of the barbaric ruthless apartheid regime.
Desmond Spaine continued that the children who were massacred went out on the streets to protest against White Supremacy, which according to him, was used as a leeway to suppress the exercise of their fundamental human rights. He furthered that although the children were harmlessly protesting for their rights to be educated in what they considered to be the appropriate way they were indiscriminately fired at by the white Police and most of them lost their lives.
The Project Manager averred that the remembrance of the Day is not meant to mourn the massacred children but rather to draw the attention of policymakers in the country to the relevance of children’s education.
He dilated on the importance of the co-existence of children living with disabilities and normal children devoid of discrimination and stigmatization.
The representatives from the different schools, who escorted the pupils, expressed their profound thanks and appreciation to Orange Foundation for the joy and laughter put on the faces of the children maintaining that indeed Orange SL is positively impacting lives in the country.
Climaxing the party, which was permeated with the serving of food, drinks and gifts was the organizing of activities intended to make the pupils happy and they included music and chair, singing and dancing competitions.
