‘Let Them’ takes Zim’s heritage to kids

As parents or guardians’ schedules get busier, their responsibilities get hectic and even their missions get them away from home leaving children at the mercy of television, video games or the internet.
And by virtue of being minors, still growing up, they can only develop and take their destiny into their own hands if we “let them”.
Decisions and actions made at family, community, national and international level have direct implications on the future of children, hence, the need to call onto decision makers to let them.
Let Them is a trust conceived with the kids in mind as a way to teach and preserve the country’s cultural heritage.
Let Them is an acronym for Lively Entertainment Thrust in Talent Harnessing and Empower-ment of Minors. The trust relaun-ched last week at the Phat Sams Arts Lounge at the Westgate Shopping Centre in Harare.
To mark the return of the trust, a number of activities were lined up for kids and families and the general public.
These included a theatre production, fashion show, dance show as well as performances by Nyenyenye, the magician and Tito the cartoonist and Michael the stand-up comedian and Jnr Bantan on the turntables, among others.
Chido Musasiwa-Gutu, the trust’s executive producer, said “we want our kids to remember our heritage through the art of story telling and we are doing this through theatre performances of our ngano (folktale)”.
“When we say Let Them, we mean let children be children. Our target age group is the four to 18-year-olds, and we are saying we would like our kids to be proud of being Zimbabwean and not only know our stories, but our actors, musicians, stone sculptors, clothing designers, writers, poets, etc,” she said adding that the country’s creative genius and know-how should be passed on from generation to generation.
In essence, the project provides the opportunity for children to be mentored and entertained simultaneously through ngano, theatre and drama, crafts and competitions in a creative and kids-friendly environment. Ultimately, the trust would want “to introduce a festival of the arts for youth where they can showcase their talent”.
Musasiwa-Gutu said the trust has only been doing theatre performances in schools and aims to continue with these in 294 schools both government and private schools.
“At this point we have one team of actors — this is largely due to the fact that we don’t have sponsors that are financing the project,” she said.
Last week’s show was largely an appeal to the corporate sector “aimed at presenting what we are doing and how we plan to execute our larger shows and without them this project cannot continue on a daily basis, but maybe like a once-a-week event”.
“Without sponsors in terms of financing or donating of services our ngano will be lost and we will not get the insights from kids in schools on what they perceive as their heritage nor can we pass on what we know so that it is passed on from generation to generation,” she said.
The event was sponsored by Eversharp, Spar, Bakers Inn, MedTech, Chido Advertising, Countess k, Colin Czeerate for production of Let Them clothing, Jnr Bantan, Phat Sams Arts Lounge, Tito, the cartoonist, Simba, a web designer.