DuPont Graphics recently helped children in Darfur to make and play with their own kites. DuPont™ Tyvek® print media was donated to make more than 15,000 kites for a festival in Darfur, which is located along the Chad-Sudan border of Central Africa. The festival was created by Kitegang, a non-profit toy company that arranges toy manufacturing workshops in urban and rural communities of the developing world to create jobs and training opportunities for people living in poverty. Kitegang needed a material that could be efficiently cut and sustain the weather conditions in Darfur. With its light weight, durability and strength, Tyvek® was the ideal solution. “The donation of Tyvek® provided thousands of children with the ability to create, design and build kites that would not tear or fade,” said Patrick McGrann, co-director, Kitegang. “Seeing the natural resilience and optimism among the children during the kite festival was incredible. The festival could not have taken place without the support from DuPont.” DuPont Graphics is exploring ways to support Kitegang’s future endeavors to continue to bring hope to children and families in Darfur.

http://www2.dupont.com/Media_Center/en_US/daily_news/may/article20080520b.html

We’re pleased to share that Gaiam, the intrepid yoga and lifestyle company, is partnering with Kitegang to test the psycho-social benefits of large, colorful exercise balls with the traumatized kids of eastern Chad so in need of innocent fun. We look forward to getting the first shipment of 100 balls to our Sudanese partners in May so that the kids can kick and bounce and goof around to their hearts content!

Kitegang is pleased to share that it had a great chat with Dick Gordon on American Public Media’s “The Story.”

Tune in and check it out April 17th on a public radio station near you or at http://thestory.org/

Our congratulations to Kitegang’s ace designer, Cameron deZevallos, for winning a Silver Addy Award and a People’s Choice Award at the San Diego Creative Show. These awards, from the American Advertising Federation, are a well deserved acknowledgement for Cameron’s excellent work promoting the 2007 Darfur Kite Festival.

Well done, Cameron. Looking forward to seeing the Darfur Kite Festival artwork for 2008!

Blue Sky Divide, folk rock stars from LA, is hitting the studio in early March to record 3 tunes for Kitegang. We’re stoked to gain their inspiration and encourage all to keep tabs with BSD at http://www.blueskydivide.com/

Kitegang would like to take a moment to honor the passing of Wham-O founder Richard Knerr. By bringing us the Hula Hoop, the Frisbee, the SuperBall and a ton of silliness, he made all the difference to a generation of kids young and old.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/weekinreview/20schwartz.html?ref=us#

With our thanks.

Heartfelt greetings to all from the refugee camps of eastern Chad.

I write to share that we are beginning to conclude the first chapter of the Darfur Kite Festival, an experiment that has yielded results beyond expectations. Of course in this corner of the world, one can only begin to conclude anything, as life is so astonishing, you learn to avoid definitive statements. But even with all of the unforeseen challenges, I’m proud to report we’ve succeeded in changing how thousands of refugees and humanitarians alike view the horizon.

For example, even as our efforts to bring a small dose of hope and inspiration to the children here have been interrupted by incursion, counter-incursion, and now re-incursion of rebel forces, we’ve persevered. After all, even with such instability, the needs of the children here remain unchanged. No matter what happens, their curiosity and hope, at some level, persist. So Kitegang, along with our partners SOS Children’s Village and the United Nations, attained the notable milestone of helping the children of Oure Cassoni refugee camp make and decorate thousands of kites to begin to heal their emotional scars and help address their inspirational needs. With donated materials as diverse as fabric from Dupont and millet stalks from the refugees themselves, the sheer number of kites produced and participants involved was staggering.

The lessons, however, were far from one sided. As we began this project, one of our goals was to fly more kites than had ever been flown before. Yet another one of our goals was also to be as inclusive as possible, and in this regard I have learned that in certain cases it is better to fail collectively than to succeed alone. So it is with tremendous perspective that I share the news that the Darfur Kite Festival has yet to set a new record for the largest number of kites flown at once. We could cope with the violence. We could even cope with the Harmattan – the brutal wind across the Sahara. But it’s the completely unexpected things that really kept us guessing, such as the kids liking the kites so much they’d run home and stash their new prizes away as cherished heirlooms to be savored only with plenty of anticipation and careful planning. So while more than enough kites were made to obliterate existing world records, we must be content with a daily dividend of seeing dozens of kites flying every time we arrive in the camp, instead of using all of our powder in one shot. And for this, I thank the kids for their wisdom.

So after the fact, what does everyone here have to say? “Why aren’t you doing more” is the common refrain. I think they understand that prior to Kitegang’s arrival there were more AK-47s and RPGs than toys to influence 17,000 kids. And now as our project winds down, that ratio is clearly in favor of fun. Or to paraphrase the words of the top UN official here visiting our program, “We need to not just provide food and shelter to these children, but also smiles — the future depends on it.” Consequently I leave the Sahara next week with a rolodex of names and locations to further our efforts. We might not have everything ironed out just yet, but with the help of countless Darfur refugees, we took a big step in the right direction.

To celebrate the project, I attach one picture, in hopes of summing up what I see here as simply as possible. In short, thousands of kids just waiting for something – anything – to take off and give them hope beyond what they know seemed the most fitting.

Oh, and you may recall from the last update the child who was shackled in the closet. Well I did go back, and I’m proud to say the kids all came running out with kites. Of the thousands that were made, I had little clue who was making what and for whom. Yet I’m glad to see our efforts are reaching those who need them most. Hopefully next time we’ll be able to do more.

For any of you who are curious for an update on the ground (and in the skies) along the Chad-Sudan border, I pass on this quick update explaining a one-week delay in the culmination of our efforts with the kids of Darfur. The timing might be a bit unexpected, but the Darfur Kite Festival has stumbled into an unexpectedly large opportunity to help a lot of very troubled children, and so we want to be as thorough as possible.

In short, this is a difficult email to write, as by themselves, all of the facts seem so troubling. The routine that I drive 30 miles under military escort each morning to visit the 17,000 children in Oure Cassoni refugee camp. The fact that most of the kids I spend time with wear mystical amulets quoting the Bible, Koran, and Torah — all working in concert to protect them from bullets. And of course the young girl who came into our tent yesterday just to cry, as she’d recently fallen victim to genital mutilation.

But what these stories fail to communicate is the awesome amount of love that exists in what could be argued as the worst place on earth. One could be forgiven for being intimidated by the prospect of 28,000 impoverished and battle-scarred Muslims living in tents, but the honor and generosity of the community proves impressive. It’s the children, however, that are truly inspiring. Seeing their natural resilience and optimism in the face of such challenges reminds me that we are all born with something special – something that holds great promise if we can only encourage this connection we all share at some basic level.

Toward this end, I’ve joined the only effort to nurture the emotional needs of the kids here, teaming up with SOS Children’s Village to help the kids laugh and scream and hug and play and everything else so useful for kids who have experienced so much emotional and physical trauma. So be it the epileptics, the child rape victims, the acutely depressed, or any other children that simply need an excuse just to be kids again in this harsh environment – know that we’re doing what we can to help. And I think it is really making a difference. And apparently so do a few others, as the United Nations has asked us to delay our finale for the Darfur Kite Festival until next Thursday, so they are able to fly more people in to take part, as apparently kids aren’t the only ones that need a little inspiration.

The team sent for BBC/ Reuters to cover the event wasn’t pleased with the change, but the extra time will hopefully allow us to involve even more kids. The attached photo is from a home visit I made yesterday, where these children have an older brother who isn’t allowed out to play. He’s tied up and lives in a dirt closet because of a mental handicap. With luck, our goal is to get him washed up and out to play under the sun for our record attempt next week. After all, as far as the pessimists are concerned, we need all the kids we can to break the world kite-flying record. But of course giving kids like this a reason to smile is the only accomplishment we’re truly shooting for.

Catch up with you all next week,

Patrick

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1107/p20s01-woaf.html

A ‘kite runner’ says it’s OK to have fun in Darfur

Patrick McGrann wants to help refugee children take back their skies, create jobs for the needy, and maybe even set a world record at the ‘Darfur Kite Festival.’

By Jay Weiner | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

Minneapolis

For Patrick McGrann, the sky isn’t his limit. It’s his field of play, his diplomatic space. It’s where he performs hand-to-hand acts of kindness and low-budget economic development for street kids in Kenya, rural kids in Burma (Myanmar) and, coming soon, orphans in a Darfur refugee camp.

Amid the sand, winds, and despair of Sudan, Mr. McGrann is poised to launch a unique effort in hope of rehabilitating traumatized children. He’s going to tell these young people of Darfur to … go fly a kite.

Actually, thousands of kites – all at the same time.

“Everything they’ve known in the skies has been bad,” says McGrann. “Their skies have been filled with Sudanese bombers. Kites seem to be one of these disarming things.”

Working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and SOS Children’s Villages, the Austria-based aid organization, McGrann was set to leave his hometown of Minneapolis Nov. 6 to help stage the “Darfur Kite Festival.” There, at the Oure Cassoni refugee camp, in a land where kiting is not a traditional pastime, McGrann plans to instruct children in kite construction and, then, kite flying.

With Universal Children’s Day on Nov. 20 as his target, he wants as many as 3,500 kids to raise colorful nylon kites in unison toward those skies to set the world kite-flying record. “With kites, everyone becomes an optimist,” he says.

If you’re keeping score at home, the world kite mark hovers around 1,100, set by Scouts Australia last summer. But McGrann is no Kumbaya-singing Boy Scout, and Kitegang, his fledgling nonprofit organization, is no troop of Pollyanna-ish do-gooders.

His Kitegang plan is to create jobs and business skills in impoverished pockets of the globe by establishing kitemaking enterprises and, then, distributing many of those kites to children in need. Kitegang, he claims, will be the world’s largest not-for-profit toy company. Already, the year-old Kitegang has trained postadolescent gang members in Nairobi, Kenya, to assemble kites.

“Patrick is an enthusiastic, energetic, entrepreneurial guy,” says Margaret Zeigler, deputy director of the Congressional Hunger Center in Washington, D.C. McGrann held a fellowship with the center six years ago. “He picks up on things that, I think, a lot of people miss. When there’s a problem to be solved, he addresses issues in his own way and has fun doing it.”

War. Hunger. Disease. Corruption. Environmental devastation. Those scourges of the developing world … how can anyone have “fun” with those? How can you put a kite in a kid’s hands and claim some sort of psychosocial victory when it’s a meal or shelter she truly needs? Isn’t Kitegang frivolous?

“Most people that pose that question – … very honestly – don’t have the experience that I have,” McGrann counters in a recent interview here. “There are groups that are already there in Darfur, filling medical and food needs, doing so many great things. But, tell me, what happens when you hear, ‘Darfur’? Let’s see, I’ll skip to the next article. You know it’s going to be bad news…. Who wants to watch them getting a vaccination? Who wants to see another food line? That’s a downer. Instead, see some kids having a good time in the worst, most miserable place on Earth, and, if we do set the [kiting] world record, well, that’s surely a different spin on Darfur.”

He pauses his rapid-fire self-defense, then adds, “This is what I can do. People who ask, ‘Why kites?’, well, they must have more money than I do. Why don’t they do something?”

He’s doing his Darfur project on a kitestring: about $10,000, his own frequent-flier miles for part of his plane ticket, corporate contributions of materials – like Tyvek house-wrapping material for kites from DuPont – and volunteers.

• • •

Part Indiana Jones, part Che Guevara, part Mr. Rogers, part Kofi Annan, McGrann grew up in Minneapolis, his father a well-connected Democratic lawyer and lobbyist and his mother the owner of a cutting-edge women’s clothing store. After attending Breck School, one of the region’s high-end private schools, he trotted off to Trinity College in Connecticut and dived into economics. After graduation, 10 years ago, he zoomed to Australia, got a job in a bank, lived on the beach, dated the bank’s personal trainer; life was good. But, as the Internet began to blossom, he became intrigued with the website of a rebel group in Papua New Guinea.

Without a care but with a bulging backpack, he met up with some rebels in Indonesian Western New Guinea, hiked through that mountainous nation and, eventually, had a confrontation with machete-and slingshot-carrying gangsters. “That was the catalyst for me to go back to graduate school,” McGrann says. He got his master’s degree in science and technology policy from the University of Minnesota, and from there – minus the machetes – his journeys continued.

He traveled to Bolivia on a MacArthur Foundation grant, helping rural towns with economic development plans. He received a fellowship with the Congressional Hunger Center and the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), first with peasants in Peru and then at IFAD’s Italian headquarters.

There, in Rome, a stunning event altered his career trajectory. Some IFAD colleagues refused to go to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 because there were no business-class seats left on flights to Johannesburg, South Africa.

“That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he says. “I’d grown up seeing Sally Struthers on late-night TV talking about hunger…. These people wouldn’t [ride] coach to a conference. But I wanted to see hunger for myself.”

He managed a trip on his own to Ethiopia in 2003. At first glance, he recalls, “I’d seen much worse in the highlands of Bolivia and Peru,” until, while hitching a ride on a truck, McGrann watched a young man dying of AIDS deposited at a remote clinic, its doors locked, with no lights.

It was time to come home to Minnesota, work in his mother’s shop, settle down, and meet a nice woman – which he did. As it turned out, his girlfriend’s family owned a jewelry business that needed to be restructured. McGrann helped her navigate those financial waters, and the two decided to take their profits – about $100,000 – and invest in something good. He favored economic development in poor countries. She favored kiting, a love of her grandfather’s.

Thus, Kitegang was born, with initial stops in Burma, Malawi, and Kenya, showing children how to fly kites and teaching others how to make them. Even as his romantic relationship fizzled, McGrann’s work carried on. Through his connections with aid groups and the UN, the world record awaits him, barring unforeseen circumstances, that is. The recent arrests of French journalists and aid workers for trying to “adopt” children from Chad concerns McGrann. He suspects that controversy will trigger more scrutiny of unorthodox initiatives such as Kitegang.

“But I know the folks there really want to set the world record,” McGrann says.

They want to take back their skies.

DARFUR KITE FESTIVAL: BRIGHTENING SKIES FOR CHILDREN
U.S.-based non-profit teams with UN to break kite-flying world record

Minneapolis, MN, USA – November 7, 2007

In the desolate African environment of wind, sand and despair, thousands of children are ready to break the world kite-flying record.

Darfur is best known for war, famine and massive global humanitarian efforts. But Kitegang, a Minnesota-based charity, has plans to brighten the days and skies for thousands of children in Darfur.

With the help of partners SOS Children’s Villages, a German aid organization, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Kitegang will host a week of kite-flying activities in refugee camps throughout the region from Nov.14-20.

And a world record is at stake.

Activities will include thousands of refugee children making, decorating, and flying their own kites – all projects that are encouraged to help the kids begin to address the trauma and stress they have experienced in being expelled from their homes in Darfur.

“Kites seem to be one of most efficient ways we can begin to bring joy back to children who have lost so much,” describes Kitegang.

The festival will conclude on November 20th – Universal Children’s Day – when it is anticipated that a new world record will be set for the largest number of kites flown at one time. The current record is 1,127 kites at one time, in Australia earlier this year.

Kitegang hopes to have the Darfur kids raise more than 4,000 kites towards the clouds next month.

“The fact that such a record will be set by children reclaiming their skies from hostile Sudanese aircraft, in one of the most hostile regions on the globe, will just make this accomplishment all the sweeter,’’ continues the nonprofit.

Kitegang is the world’s first and only non-profit toy company. Formed by a band of lifelong friends, Kitegang’s mission is to marshal all of its available resources and contacts to lend a hand to children isolated in crises around the world.

Kitegang, a 501c3 charity based in Minneapolis, has strived over the last year to empower youth in areas of conflict by inspiring their creativity while also supporting them with the tools they will need to follow through on their aspirations. Such activities have included two kite-making factories providing employment and job training in East Africa, as well as the distribution of kites to 5,000 children in orphanages and schools throughout underdeveloped nations, such as Burma, Ethiopia, and Malawi.

Adds Kitegang’s Christopher Neher, “We’d like to believe we’re beginning to make a difference. It isn’t Earth-shattering quite yet, but hopefully we’re beginning to help inspire and empower those youngsters who really deserve it.”

Among corporate supporters of Kitegang and the Darfur Kite Festival are Big Image Systems, Dupont, and Pure Digital Technologies.

Big Image Systems has volunteered to engineer several large kites and decorate them with children’s “artwork of hope” that was submitted by students from 14 nations, youngsters eager to let their peers in Darfur know they’re not alone.

Dupont donated material for the children in the refugee camps to make 3,000 kites.

And to document it all, Pure Digital Technologies has donated camera and video equipment that the refugee children and teachers will use to create a documentary, ultimately sharing their experiences with a much larger audience.

For further information and updates on the festival, or to receive footage or still images from the festival, please email patrick@kitegang.org.