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Poet appointed children’s centre ambassador

Life & Style
LOCAL poet Tendai Maduwa, aka African Kid, has been appointed ambassador of Saidia Watoto African Children Centre

LOCAL poet Tendai Maduwa, aka African Kid, has been appointed ambassador of Saidia Watoto African Children Centre.

BY TINASHE SIBANDA

This comes hot on the heels of his recent appointment to the Kistrech International Poetry Festival Board of Advisors in Kenya. The other board members are Sukrita Paul Kumar (India), Jenny Maria Tunedal (Sweden), Laus Strandby Nielssen (Denmark), Matunda Nyanchama (Nsemia Inc Publishers, Canada/Kenya), Maurice Amutabi (Kenya), Christopher Okemwa(Kenya), Evans Gesure Mecha (Kenya) and Godspower Oboido (Nigeria).

“Maduwa qualified for this post due to his troubled past, growing up as an orphan. We understand he experienced a lot of challenges from poverty to lack of shelter, but now he is a motivator,” chairperson of the centre, Peter Kafunja, said in a letter of appointment.

He said they were moved by his experiences when he hoped from one relative to another, sometimes dropping out of school as well as having a brief stint on the streets of Mutoko and Chitungwiza.

Kafunja added: “We know this position is reserved for you and we commission you with our utmost respect to represent Saidia Watoto Africa; bearing in mind the institution is at its infancy stages and it encounters a myriad of challenges due to the surging numbers of needy cases at its dispol.”

In an interview with NewsDay, Maduwa said he was elated at the appointment. He indicated that he had recently been appointed Advisor to the Alexandra Cultural Creatives Indaba Committee in South Africa.

Maduwa said all these organisations had a personal experience and link with his work, like the Kistrech where he has been a regular guest poet during their festivals.

“I love children,” he said. “I love less privileged children, the children without immediate parents who others call using a harsh and provocative term ‘orphans’. It is against this background that I make it my responsibility to put smiles on their faces.

“That is the main reason why I spend my holidays and birthdays with children in various orphanages around Zimbabwe.” Maduwa said in every country he visited he always made it a policy to visit one or two orphanages to spend time with the children, bless them with gifts and uplift them through motivational pieces.

The poet said he lost his own mother eight months after his birth and his father died when he was only nine years old. His childhood experience pushed him to be a father to the fatherless as he knew what it meant to lack parental love.

“As ambassador of this organisation, I will work hard to help this home mobilise resources to help children. They need everyone’s help,” he said.

Maduwa said when he was growing up he only needed parental love and not money.

“Don’t give them because you need anyone to notice that you are doing it, but just help,” he said. “It is not necessarily about the Saidia Watoto, but all children’s homes in the world. Even those in Zimbabwe, just find one home you can visit and bless. Before you even think of all these homes and institutions, find that one child in your neighbourhood and bless them.”

He said it was everyone’s responsibility to put a smile on orphans’ faces.