Arabella back with her 'Arabian Nights' magic

BY CHANDANI Jayatilleke

ARABELLA Churchill, Director of Children's World and Children's World International, UK, who was in Sri Lanka doing post-tsunami rehabilitation work early this year is in the island once again to continue from where she and her team had left off.

This time Arabella and her juggling team would stay from November 17 to December 8.

She told the Daily News that the current Play Tour for the tsunami affected children has been organised by Impakt Aid and IOM and she will be travelling with the new Teardrop Relief Playbus and seven team members.

"During the 18 days of tour in Sri Lanka, we will be training the future Teardrop Relief Playbus team, which is very exciting," she said.

Arabella, who is the granddaughter of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and her troupe of jugglers and entertainers came to Sri Lanka in March to psychologically support the children who were affected by the tsunami.

And her team were able to bring the smile back to the faces of hundreds of child victims of the cruel tsunami, in scores of refugee camps down Sri Lanka's ravaged south western coast.

It was the right time to support the young minds and many children were benefited through her team's performances.

When Arabella was in Colombo in March, she promised us that she was coming again at the end of the year with a large group of people to perform and conduct workshops for children. And today, she has kept her promise and is here just before the first-year anniversary of the December 26 catastrophe.

During her 10-day stay in Sri Lanka, she extensively travelled in the South, meeting children, villages and village leaders and various voluntary workers and also witnessing the magnitude of both the physical and psychological disasters.

She also made a great many useful contacts which would be helpful in her future programs in Sri Lanka. "I hope to meet some of these contacts and further develop our relations in order to continue our future work," Arabella said.

She also visited Navajeevana Society in Tangalla, an organisation running a special school and a pre-school for children with special needs, creating prosthetics and other appliances, and carrying out a great deal of outreach work in the surrounding area.

Arabella's organisation, Children's World was founded in 1981 to provide educational, creative and social benefits for all children with particular reference to children with special needs.

They run a huge variety of workshops in schools and special schools, and also undertake out of school work and run two children's festivals each year.

Accordingly, her programme focuses on entertaining children and their families. "Fun, laughter and cooperative participation are great components in the rebuilding process. Therefore, our programmes are aimed at providing children and their families a bit more fun, especially after a disaster" she said.

Peter Simms, also known as Devilstick Peat or Peat, the charity's main performer and workshop leader was also with her in Sri Lanka.

They brought two parachutes for playing large-scale games, badge machine, cutter and the components to make 1,000 badges, face paints, bank bags and balloons for filling with sand for making beanbags, and 1,000 modelling balloons to conduct the performances.

Peat conducted many performances and short workshops for children in various camps and villages in the South and East during the tour.

Peat performed 15 minutes of stylish ping-pong ball, juggling and hat tricks to the children's delight. It was followed by a quick game of parachute lifting and parachute football games, which were a great success.

As Peat started spitting ping-pong balls at various camps, he instantly got an audience of around 70 children of all ages.

Arabella said her experiences with Sri Lankan children were great. "Last time, I watched how children enjoyed our performances - they were having such fun - but equally fantastic was watching the parents' faces watching their children's smiling faces."

According to Arabella, her last tour had been very successful, and she hopes that the current one will be even more successful.