It’s hard to remember our lives before they shut down due to the pandemic. We were abruptly put on hold and we all had to make adjustments to what we knew as ‘normal’.
We suffered, endured, and as humanity always does, we persisted and found a way to adapt. During the pandemic, we heard the phrase the ‘New Normal’, not knowing what it truly meant.
Well, we are living it in our current lives. The pandemic feels like a distant memory, a brief pause to find new ways to live.
As we always say at UKSD, every adversity is an opportunity to create something better and stronger and if we are not part of the solution, then we are part of the problem.
Due to this opportunity, we have been able to develop new strategies and initiatives that have actually increased our impact both locally and overseas.
The bread and butter of our program has been our KidzPlay4FreeProject. Recently, we have enhanced this initiative to not only provide free of charge sports programming to young people as way to develop life skills and raise awareness about social issues.
We are now working more closely with schools to help build peer to peer connections across all grades form K-12 while helping to advance educational literacy skills, within the youth we work with.
Our active citizenship initiatives have grown beyond anything that we could have ever imagined. Due to the new virtual world, we have been able to develop strong realtionships with like minded organizations across the globe.
These programs have helped to create projects that have created a deeper understanding of other cultures while collaborating on projects that have literally changed lives and bettered some of the most poverty stricken communities on the planet.
Due to this, we have revamped our programming slightly and created two new initiatives, Projects Through Play and the Sustainability Project.