Elisabeth, a dark-skinned girl living in Kibera (Kenya). Silvia, a light-skinned girl living in Madrid (Spain). The two girls are both nine years old and tan.

They are both waiting impatiently for recess so they can go outside to play. Elisabeth plays with a ball made out of plastic, while Silvia plays with swings. They are both enjoying their time despite their different toys.

After recess it is time to go to class, math class awaits. Silvia has a blackboard in her class and each student has got their own book, their own notebook, their own pencils and their own desk. Elisabeth on the other hand, shares a desk with four other classmates, and in her class they have two books and a few sheets of paper to share between forty students. In spite of this, they both work hard, do the exercises with enthusiasm and they spend an enjoyable and entertaining time learning math.

At lunchtime, Silvia and her friends run to the school ́s cafeteria where they have a full menu day after day. Elisabeth simply does neither have a cafeteria nor food at the school, so at that time she goes home to do the laundry our take care of her younger siblings.

And so Elisabeth and Silvia share their desire to play, have fun, learn and feed. However, within all this that unites them there is something that sets them apart: the conditions in which they each live their life, where one has difficulties to fulfill simple dreams while the other has it easier.

This is why they are like sisters. Sisters of distance. Sisters connected through the red thread we talked about earlier. Elisabeth with her dark skin and Silvia with her light skin. Sisters. A sisterhood that allows dealing with these differences so that they both have the same facilities of being girls, they are children with the right to live a dignified childhood.

Well, this type of sisterhood is what makes the children of a school in Spain recognize the reality of how other children live across the world. In this way the children strive to do activities of different types so that their siblings of distance are able to have books, notebooks, food etc. The purpose is that all these things can stop being luxuries for them and they can insert it in the children’s education. In this way they can improve the quality of education of their siblings so they have the same opportunities and conditions as in Spain.

This is the base of the collaborations with schools that we do in Kubuka: one school being the sibling of another school. They know the conditions of life on the other side of the world, and grateful for this, they work for a common goal: that someone’s birthplace should not guide the path they have to follow in life.

Casilda Cernuda. Awareness Department