How It Works

The program comprises five key learning outcomes:

• sharing information about AIDS orphans and abandoned children and understanding their situation – learning about another country and its diverse people
• giving and receiving and how they affect our lives – simple theory and practice of philanthropy aimed at introducing students to the Orphans’ Ambassador concept
• Pledge- to-tell—an activity aimed at involving the children in a grassroots movement to inform others of the orphans and the world they live in
• learning how to knit/crochet and connecting it to the giving of squares—our currency of hope—to make blankets, to warm an orphan
• creating alphabetical, numerical and visual scrapbooks for the orphans. These also foster the students’ creativity and are distributed with the blankets to pre-school orphans to alleviate the effects of a lack of neural stimulation
• team work, messages of hope, the tools for enacting change, and fund-raising.

These learning outcomes are delivered through four simple lesson plans. The lesson plans include targeted information on the AIDS orphans crisis and activities to support the students’ understanding.

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The awareness-raising theme to the program encourages independent thinking and thought processing. Students can be as creative or as guided as they like in developing innovative ways to spread the word about the plight of the children in southern Africa.

We understand that as an educator, your time is precious. That’s why we have made the lesson plans to follow a simple, but effective structure, each class building upon prior learning:

Lesson one: Sharing stories about AIDS orphans, and understanding their plight

Lesson two: Giving, receiving and spreading the word

Lesson three: Learning how to knit and knitting squares

Lesson four: Wrapping up

The program makes use of separate documents containing background information for the educator, lesson plans, activities, and handouts. You have access to a Powerpoint presentation that highlights the plight of the orphans with poignant and powerful photographs and a list of useful resources.

The program design also allows you to draw on single or multiple elements if it is too difficult to set aside four classes in your busy curriculum.

KasKids™, a global program

So far, more than 250 schools around the world have implemented the KasKids™ school program.

Why is this a global program?

In today’s world, students are exposed more and more to different cultures, providing them with a rich life experience.The AIDS crisis is not confined to Africa, although it has greater prominence there than elsewhere.

But with this experience comes responsibility. Nelson Mandela once likened the world to a human body. If an arm or a leg is infected with gangrene, we don’t ignore it, we act to save it in order to save ourselves.

So it is only right that we teach our students that in belonging to a global community, we need to work together to help these children whose lives have been so greatly compromised.

Change is vital, as Richard Stearns, President of World Vision, USA, stresses:

“I believe this could very well be looked back upon as the sin of our generation…and our children 40 or 50 years from now are going to ask ‘what did you do while 40 million children became orphans in Africa?’”

Let us not have our children ask us that question. Let us equip them with the knowledge and the tools to change the orphans’ situation, one square at a time, together as part of our global community,

Examples of what we achieve when we work together

Springside Girls’ School, Philadelphia.

One of the first schools to take up the KasKids™ concept is Springside Girls’ School in Philadelphia, PA, in the United States. It started as a small Grade 8 project involving 30 girls learning to knit under the tutelage of Debbie Posmontier.

At a major event, the Springside girls presented hand-made KasCare blankets to the choristers of the world famous Soweto Gospel Choir. It was  performing on stage at Philadelphia’s international Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, to an audience of 850. The middle school choir, Musica Mundi, performed to the audience in the foyer while they were handed out Pledge for an Orphan leaflets.

Cedarwood College, Johannesburg South Africa

KasCare co-founder, Ronda Lowrie, presented the KasKids™ concept to Cedarwoord college, a special needs school in Johannesburg. The program coordinator asked her how many squares the children should aim for.

Ronda suggested a figure of 200 would be miraculous in whatever time-frame they could afford. Six weeks later she was asked to attend a school assembly to receive the squares children had made.

It was a moving ceremony attended by the whole school. She was handed not 200 but just short of 4,000 squares. The whole school community had been involved.

Becoming a KasKids™ School