Kitegang is a 501(c)(3) non-profit toy company, with its roots in Minnesota, and aspirations in every orphanage and slum around the globe, where children find themselves lacking the tools to dream a little higher. Operationally, Kitegang increases economic development opportunities on the margins of the developing world, especially focusing on manufacturing kites and other toys within urban slums, rural communities, and refugee camps, where children and their families face limited opportunities. The profits from these activities are then used to finance the distribution of kites and other inspirational toys to schools and orphanages requesting such resources. Utilizing these tools, we seek to help energize conventional education, and increase connectivity between children around the world. With the belief that play is a basic developmental need for children, Kitegang hopes to augment the larger efforts of the development community, and in turn make the world of tomorrow dream a little higher.
Toward this end, Kitegang has strived to partner with a wide variety of organizations around the globe to achieve the most meaningful results possible. For example, Kitegang is collaborating with the Tesfa Foundation, a front-line educational organization in Ethiopia, working to improve primary education in communities where an early step ahead can be critical. By exploring the potential benefit of offering parents part-time work sewing kites to finance their children’s education, Kitegang is striving to help at-risk families get all of the educational tools they need to succeed.
Beyond such long term investments in education and employment, Kitegang has also been proudly sticking to its outreach roots, sharing as much fun as it can with the kids who need it most. For example, seeing so many refugee children fleeing the horrors of Darfur motivated us to take action. Consequently, the Darfur Kite Festival was born as an annual project to help inspire and support the children of Darfur in the best way we knew how. Working together with SOS Children's Villages on this collaborative project, we have been pursuing innovative psycho-social programming on the front lines of Chad, attempting to help children both with special needs, as well as those children simply yearning for a bit of fun, recover from the emotional trauma of fleeing Darfur. After helping thousands of children build, decorate, and fly their own kites, we're hopeful that by expressing themselves and seeing the power of their own creativity, more children will find increasing reasons to smile at the future, while slowly coming to terms with their past.
A third example of the types of organization Kitegang works with is Raising Malawi, a large and dynamic group of orphanages in the southern African nation of Malawi. By supplying kites (and eventually other activities) to the orphans at Raising Malawi, Kitegang is attempting to offer support and encouragement to the children of communities ravaged by HIV and AIDS. While a small gesture, Kitegang hopes to augment the excellent work of regional orphanages that can ill-afford such activities and help the children do more than merely survive.
We thank you for visiting and warmly welcome all involvement in helping us inspire and support the children most in need around the world,
