Martial arts is about changing Lives – Live in Heart
To Live in hearts we leave behind is not to die – Thomas Campbell
Life around you does not deceive you and it does not lie to you. It is unfair. And those who claim that thinking of life as anfair is only one perception and not necessarily the way your life is are not telling the entire truth. Being born in a country where food, water, education and employment are easily accesed by everyone makes the claim that life is about one percetion and how you choose to respond to difficult things that happen to you might be true.
But for many people in the world these kinds of privileges and opportunities are only a dream. The dream of enough food, water, education, safety, shelter. In a place where full equity and basic human needs have not being achieved yet due to systematic disadvantages, children of Kibera Slum are working every day toward that dream. They took part in building a world where every person can achieve what they choose. Every time they step into their dojo in the slum they send a meaningful, powerful and purposeful message to all of us out there. “We are worth, strong and powerful and the world needs to see us shining hope.”
We believe in building a world where every child can achieve what he chose to pursue. And we believe their meesage will reach out and touch your bottom of the heart and make us all grow with them together.
On this occasion we as a group of martial artist under Avi Nardia Academy have recognized the need of this children and decided to help them train in a more safe and controled environment. This is why our first thought was to provide judo mats so they can have ground training instead of only punching and kicking what their training mostly consisted of before. My wife Aleksandra Nardia has traveled to Kenya in January 2020 with a blessing of Mr Kennedy Odede (the owner of Shofco) to meet their needs and provide basic equipments that every martial arts school should have i.e. mats, sticks, t-shirts.
Along the way we have learned that part of their program in the Kibera Martial Arts School goes to art and reading classes and that their martial arts instructors take a good care that children occupy themselves with good quality program throughout the day besides being regular in the school. They have music classes, dance, architecture, etc.
Being born into the priviledged life style where we don’t face basic human needs deprivation we want to ask each and one of you to think about what is your privilege that you can use to help this community of children and make their world a little bit a better place?
We want to thank to all our friends and instructors who are helping this children to have a better life and future. Big thank you to Alfredo Tucci for generously publishing articles about children in Kibera and another big thank you to Mr Kennedy Odede for allowing us to be part of this amazing project in Kenya.
We will finish this text with a quote saying: “There’s nothing I admire more than someone planting trees under whose shade they may never get to sit”
