This resource aims to raise awareness among children of the issues surrounding food security in southern Africa. It was produced in response to the crisis in late 2005 to early 2006.

Children may have seen media images of starving communities in southern Africa. By looking at individuals affected by the food shortages in the region, this assembly kit will give children an understanding of how these crises come about and how people cope on a daily basis.

The main focus of the kit is the performance – four pen pals from the UK and Malawi writing to each other about their experiences.

For a quick assembly, all you need to do is photocopy the script, decide who is going to read each part, then have a read through or rehearsal before the performance.

Use the add-ons for creative ways to enhance the performance and develop a greater understanding of the issues.

The follow-ups offer a range of simple activities suitable for exploring the issues in more depth in class after the assembly.
 
The accompanying ten-minute briefing www.redcross.org.uk/fitmb provides teachers and other educators with background information on food insecurity. Please share this with colleagues.

This assembly kit is suitable for children aged 9 to 11.

• To help children gain a greater understanding of the key factors that prevent people from getting access to food.
• To help children to see beyond the media images of starving millions waiting for food aid.
• To dispel the simplistic idea that food insecurity is simply due to drought and that food aid from richer countries is the solution.
• To enable children to recognise that people in some parts of the world face an ongoing struggle for food security.
• To follow the experience of particular families in order to help children understand and empathise with the decisions they must make in order to survive.

The pen pals’ letters in this script focus on the dilemmas that two Malawian families face in their daily struggle for food. The unfolding events illustrate how their food insecurity arose from a series of problems which has left them unable to cope with the current crisis.

You will need to copy the script for the performers. You may decide that the narrator and/or Juma’s mother should be played by teachers.

Use the reflection follow-up to discuss the questions and feelings children are left with at the end of the performance.

Narrator
What do you see when you think about Africa? On television, we see deserts, starving babies, refugees and other sad images. But, there are also cities with shops. There are some rich people. There are television and radio stations, mobile phones, schools, factories and plenty of other things that people from the UK would recognise.

The countries of Africa are not as rich as those of Europe, but many people are surprised at how similar we are across the world. Even so, there are some very poor countries. Malawi is one of the poorest. Four out every ten people survive on a very small amount of money – less than 60 pence a day.

If some children from Malawi got the chance to write to children in the UK, what would they say? It would be a good way for us to find out what life is like there. At the moment, millions of people haven’t got enough food and are trying to survive until the next harvest.

This is Will. He’s been writing to a boy called Juma.

Will
My pen pal’s called Juma. He’s 12 and lives near Lake Malawi with his brother, his sister and his mum. His mum’s a teacher.

I told him I had a sister and two step-brothers who are over 30.

Juma
Dear Will,
It’s brilliant that your brothers are so much older than you. Our family’s quite big now because my cousins are staying with us. My mum’s not happy about the extra food for them.

Will
Do you play with your cousins? I bet it’s nice having them to stay, even if your mum doesn’t like all the extra shopping and cooking. My mum hates shopping too.

Why do you think it’s so good that my brothers are old? I think it’s boring because they don’t play with me much.

Juma
Here in Malawi, most people are either very young or very old. There aren’t that many adults left to work because they have died of AIDS. I’d love to have older brother who could help out.

My cousins’ dad died and their mum is HIV positive so they’ll probably have to stay with us forever. My aunt takes medicine, but she wasn’t eating enough good food and that made her ill.

About the extra shopping – it’s not that my mum hates it. She’s worried about finding the money to buy food for us all. I didn’t eat tonight you see – there isn’t any food to make dinner.

Will
What do you mean, Juma? Isn’t there any food in the country?

Juma
Yes, there is some food in Malawi. It just doesn't belong to us. And we don't have enough money to buy as much as we need.

Will
But if there is food, and you are hungry, why don't the people who have food just give it to you?

Juma
Are you serious? If you were homeless in London, would someone who had plenty of rooms in their house just give you somewhere to live? Well, it doesn’t work that way with food either.

We can’t buy maize because the price in the market keeps going up and up. Food is so expensive that we can only eat once a day now. I don’t really understand why, so I’ll ask my mum to explain it to you.

Juma’s mother
Dear Will,
First, I should explain that Malawi is a poor country and many people in Malawi live on very little money. Most of them are farmers. We grow our own food. People grow crops like maize, beans, rice, and peanuts. We keep animals like chickens and goats. In good years, we have some crops left over to store for the coming year. We also grow extra food to trade at the market for other things we need.

But for several years we haven’t had enough rain so the harvests have been bad. We’ve also been short of seeds and fertiliser. People haven’t had enough food for their animals. Many, many people in the country have been too ill to work because they have HIV or AIDS.

So that’s why people don’t have enough of their own food. There is some food in the market but everybody wants to buy it, so the people selling the food can charge really high prices for it.

Will
OK, I see now. So how do you manage?

Juma
We have lots of ways of surviving. Even though we don’t have much money, we work out what we’ll need every year and we plan what we’re going to do to make money. We plan how much food to keep to eat and how much food to trade.

Will
So what are you going to do now, Juma? How are you going to buy food?

Juma
Mum and I are planning to sell some of our things. I’ll try and sell my bike and, if it gets really bad, we’ll have to sell our farm tools. If we sell the tools now, we can probably get a good price before everyone else starts selling theirs. We’ll be able to eat now and until the next harvest. The trouble is, we’ll have more problems later. How will we be able to harvest next year’s food without tools? And we won’t have any money to buy more tools.

We’re going to have to make some tough decisions.

Narrator
Now we’re going to hear from two girls who’ve been writing to each other. This is Charlotte and she’s been writing to Nasipo who’s also from Malawi.

Charlotte
My pen pal’s called Nasipo. Her family keeps chickens and a goat. She lives with her six brothers and sisters and her grandma.

I wrote to her and asked her if she liked school.

Nasipo
Dear Charlotte,
I really like school. I worked on my homework until the torch ran out last night. My grandma’s angry because she can’t afford to buy me another battery.

I’ll have to help my big sister make extra mats so that I can buy a new battery. We sell the mats in the market to make extra money.

Charlotte
Dear Nasipo,
Did you get the battery? What happened to your mum and dad? Can’t they pay for the batteries?

Nasipo
My parents died a few years ago. I think they had AIDS. My grandma does her best to look after us, but she is over 80.

We haven’t got enough food at the moment. The cabbages in our field won’t grow. The soil is so poor. There’s not enough maize left until the next harvest so we can only eat once a day.

The worst thing is that I have to stop going to school. Primary school is free, but my grandma has to buy books and pens and I have to take lunch with me every day. It’s quite a lot of money for her and we need it to buy food.

Charlotte
I can’t imagine not having enough food. What about your relatives? Can you ask them for money? When my dad lost his job, my aunt lent us some money until he got a new job.

Nasipo
Our only uncle went away. He’s trying to find a job in South Africa as a farm labourer. There isn’t anyone else to ask, really. We’re all in a similar situation.

Charlotte
Oh, I see. What about the animals, Nasipo? Can you sell them and buy maize with the money?

Nasipo
It’s a good point. We’ve been thinking about it. We can’t afford to feed them because all our money goes on food for us. But if we sell them I don’t know if we’ll be able to buy them back in the future.

We could eat the chickens but then there won’t be any eggs and we really need to keep them for breeding.

I’ve found some bamboo seeds for the family to eat. The trouble is, they taste horrible. I can remember my mum bringing wild food home like roots and berries. I wish I knew what was safe to eat, then I could go and get food from the wild. I was too young when she died for her to teach me what to look for, and my grandma’s too frail to show me.

I just hope we can get through this so I can go back to school. I miss it.

Narrator
We’ve seen how Nasipo and Juma’s families have been coping.

What about you? Imagine what would happen to you in the UK if the price of food rocketed – to perhaps a hundred times what it had been. Then think that at the same time you had only a tenth of the money you used to have. You would get hungry pretty quickly. What would you do?

End of performance

Pick one or several of the add-ons to incorporate into the performance. They’ll give your assembly extra impact so you and your students will get more out of the experience. Think about the students in your group or audience and choose ideas that will suit them.

Drama add-on
Help the performers to get in character and explore what happens in the script by using the simple techniques of freeze-framing and thought-tracking. This will help the children’s understanding of the issues in the text and improve the performance.

Read through the script as a class and ask children to suggest which events have the most significance and why. For example, Juma’s aunt and cousins coming to stay; Nasipo’s grandma telling her off about the battery.

Ask the children to choose an event and practise acting it out in groups. Remind them to think about what led to the situation. When each group is ready to present their work to the rest of the class, explain that you will use a signal (a clap, for example) to show when they should ‘freeze’ in whatever position they are in.

At this point, ask the rest of the class to suggest what each character is thinking and how they are feeling.

Language add-on
Create authenticity by including some words in Chichewa – the official national language of Malawi, along with English.

• Moni – hello
• Muli bwanji? – How are you?
• Ndiri bwino – I’m well. 
• Zikomo – Thanks

Off-stage add-on
Create a powerful performance by placing the children playing Juma, Nasipo and Juma’s mother off stage. Will and Charlotte can be on stage, silently ‘reading’ the letters as they are read out loud.

This will help convey the distance between the pen pals and give the performance dramatic tension. 
 

These follow-up activities can be used after the assembly to explore some of the issues in more depth. You might use these directly after the assembly, or as a way to come back to the topic later in the term.

Reflection follow-up
Juma and Nasipo’s stories are based on real case studies from southern Africa. You can use them to start a discussion exploring the food security crisis.

Ask the children to reflect on each character’s situation using these and other questions to guide the discussion:

• What difficulties is each family facing?
• What has each family done to try to get enough food?
• What has each family done to get money?
• How has each family been affected by HIV and AIDS?

Comparison follow-up
Guide students to consider the support systems available to people in the UK when faced with problems such as loss of income compared to those available to many people living in southern Africa. What would happen if we were faced with a similar set of circumstances?

Use Charlotte’s situation to encourage children to recognise how a series of problems can reduce people’s ability to cope in a crisis even in the UK. Ask them what would have happened if Charlotte’s father hadn’t found another job and they’d had to survive on a lower income. What changes might happen and what decisions would have to be made?

Supply and demand follow-up
Play the What if? game to illustrate the concept of supply and demand.

The effect of supply and demand on the value of goods is difficult for most children (and many adults) to grasp. However it is one of the keys to understanding why prices can change and that higher prices means less can be bought for the same amount of money.

Ask children to think up a situation that could cause a change in either supply or demand – and the sillier the better. For example, What if the sweet-tooth monster ate all the chocolate and sweets in the shops? There’d hardly be any left so prices would go up and you couldn’t buy as much with your money.

Writing follow-up
Ask students to write a letter from Juma or Nasipo after the harvest. At this point, their situation will be much improved and they will have food from the harvest. But what decisions will they have made about selling tools and the animals? Will Nasipo have returned to school? Will the families have been able to buy seeds?

Encourage students to place themselves in Juma or Nasipo’s shoes. They will be looking forward to the future – use the ten-minute briefing to give students ideas about long-term action the children’s families might take.