Connecting Children: Rafi.ki
Rafi.ki is a secure, online community which helps young people to learn together and create meaningful global friendships.
Rafi.ki works with over 60,000 students from over 2,000 primary and secondary schools in 120 countries across the world. The community is growing all the time, and we look forward to welcoming you and your students online soon.
We offer an exciting and ever-changing collection of cross-curricular educational resources on topics such as Global Health, Environment and Peace and Conflict. Students engage with one another directly using fully moderated instant messaging, video conferencing and drag-and-drop page creation tools.
Our past work
Just some examples of our past projects.
The Young People’s Commission for Africa
Charles Clarke MP
The Young People’s Commission for Africa (YPCfA) was a project organised by Plan UK and Gemin-i.org, which linked 25 UK schools with 25 schools in Africa between January and June 2005. It is currently the largest of our Gemin-i Plus Projects.
The Commission for Africa was set up in February 2004 by Tony Blair, to generate new ideas and action for a strong and prosperous Africa.
The YPCfA was designed to give young people the chance to engage in this debate and have their voices heard by the Commission for Africa and ministers of the EU and G8. The project encouraged young people in Africa and the UK to work collaboratively as they explored their impressions of Africa and its challenges and opportunities.
Link: www.ypcfa.net
Make The Link Break The Chain
This is now our third project with Plan International. The Make The Link Project is a really exciting one as it’s one of the first projects we’re running within Rafi.ki
As it’s the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery, Plan UK, Liverpool Museum and Gemin-i.org launched a collaborative project on slavery. The project involves schools in the ‘slave triangle’ (UK, Africa, Brazil and Haiti). Participants are investigating slavery, freedom, and liberty in history and in modern times to consider what they can do, both personally and globally, to safeguard liberty.
You can find out more by registering (it’s free) and logging into www.rafi.ki
The Bigger Picture
We collected 11,500 postcards written by children throughout Africa and the UK answering the question “What matters to me?”
The results were pretty spectacular.
To collect the postcards we were fortunate enough to work with the following organisations: The British Museum, The British Council, CAMFED, UKOWLA, Link Community Development, Dolen Cymru, Gambia One World Linking Association, Malborough Brandt Group, The World Food Program and the Youth Sport Trust.
Bob Geldof on the Bigger Picture Project
Gemin-i.org organised the scanning and meta-tagging of the 23,000 images and the creation of the web-application that displays them. We also helped coordinate the images being turned into giant cloths, which were wrapped around the British Museum for the launch of the BBC’s Africa Season.
The 25 separate cloths have now been split up and are being sent to various locations in Africa.
Fundraising Events
The Sumo Run
Whether you’re in training for the London 2012 Olympics or you just like dressing up at the weekends, the Sumo Run is your newest hybrid of serious exercise and self-expression. Except, of course, it’s not very serious… To find out more please visit www.sumorun.com.
The Sucata Run and Sucata Split
The Sucata events are bargain basement banger rallies where teams of up to 4 people drive to Portugal or Croatia over 4 days in bangers costing no more than £250. They take place over the Spring and Summer Bank Holiday weekends and culminate at the breath taking beaches on the European coast… To find out more about the Sucata Run please visit www.sucatarun.com and Sucata Split here.