Children of Fire bring peace
The Auckland Park-based organisation spent a day at the Russian Embassy to protest against war.
Children of Fire, the charity that has been rebuilding burned children for 26 years, has been teaching its children current affairs and compassion.
The children are said to have been studying conflicts on the world map, from Tigray to Yemen to Ukraine.
They recently went to the Russian Embassy in Pretoria to protest against the war in Ukraine. Burns survivor Nelson Tshabalala (19) reflected that people seem to assume that children do not have opinions or knowledge. He said that the public seems to think that children should not be seen, nor heard and that they do not understand war.
For the day, children were dressed in yellow and blue, took yellow roses from Auckland Park Florists to give to the Embassy in peace. They took flags and posters and they presented poems to the Russians.
Their teacher, Ithabeleng Shai (26), noted that it is interesting that people will try to give very young children toy guns and model soldiers and yet, they are uncomfortable with them learning about a real and current war, where children just like them are being killed.
On their visit, children met Alexander Arefiev, the Embassy’s Third Secretary. For the first time in their young lives, they started to become aware of fake news, propaganda, and the terrifying repercussions of lies at the highest level.
Words added that have now been added to their vocabulary now include ‘civilian’ and ‘military’.
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