You and your family arrive at New Life Church on Saturday, just after noon.
You walk through the doors and are met by Red Cross workers. They give you instructions.
As part of the role play, your children are told that that they can’t find their parents. They are given inquiry cards and passports. Your family is told that you will see some powerful sights as you walk through slums in the church gymnasium.
You are told that after walking past the slums, your children will have the opportunity to visit various countries, get their passports stamped and complete various tasks, for which they will be rewarded with gold coins. Those coins can then be given back to help out the people living in the slums.
You’re feeling skeptical before you step out of the church foyer, into another world.
A skinny wood plank is the only path to follow amongst garbage. You watch as your kids stare at other children, who wear rags for clothing and have dirt on their face. The smell isn’t great. The street children tug at the bottom of your pants and ask for money. You briefly make eye contact with one pre-teen who is puffing on a cigarette. You quickly look away.
A middle-aged man is instructing the homeless children.
“Look him in the eyes when you ask for money,” he tells the kids.
You can’t help but look at this man and when his eyes lock onto yours he pulls you in and whispers, “I know what you like,” and then glances over at a girl, who can’t be older than 14, wearing tattered clothing.
You feel as though you have left your comfort zone. Your children look stunned and you want to run and get out of the make-believe Kelowna gymnasium, which, sadly, isn’t make-believe for some.
As you exit the slum area your children are quick to move onto the next phase of the event: Completing activities to earn gold coins, which will then help those who lay with cardboard blankets.
***
“We want this to be a conversation starter for families,” said Nico Deschner, event coordinator of the Global Children’s Villages.
“We want to raise awareness how people in other countries of the world live and how we can become part of the solution and help make a change in other people’s lives.”
Saturday’s Global Children Village event was part of Global Citizen Kelowna week.
Deschner said the event was powerful for many people who walked through the makeshift slums.
“People I’ve talked to so far, they’re shocked at how accurate some of these (images) are. They say, ‘I’ve been to places like Guatemala and Thailand, and this is reality.'”
Building that reality took an entire week to set up, according to Deschner.
Along with physically building the slums, Deschner said the actors also had to prepare how they would conduct themselves to make a maximum impact. He said that they tried to keep it family friendly, while still impacting adults with subtle references to more R-rated issues like child prostitution.
“We wanted to keep it PG, of course. But especially with some of that stuff (child prostitution), kids are not aware of it yet, but adults are.
“We don’t want to just shock them, we want to bring them some understanding that they can be part of a solution.”
According to Deschner, the slums in New Life Church were not reminiscent of a specific country or area; rather, a general image of poor living conditions found in various parts of the world. He said that the team did their best to try and eliminate any clichés during Saturday’s event so that the message could have its desired effect.
Deschner, who is the family pastor at New Life Church, said that members of the church stepped up to help bring the idea to life.
“Most of the actors are people of the church who have been on missions trips.”
One of those actors was Cameron Drew. He said that being an actor in the slum was more difficult than he anticipated.
“It’s amazing how few people can maintain eye contact. Some people walk through and they won’t even glance in this direction at all; they find anything else to look at rather than us. It’s wild, actually,” said Drew.
wpaterson@kelownacapnews.com
