This document outlines the Project Hakuna Matata, which aims to connect people around the world through art by having students write short stories or poems inspired by profiles of 19 people living in the Kibera slum near Nairobi, Kenya. The stories will be compiled into an e-book with proceeds going to support education in Kibera. Students do not need any cultural context and can take one or two inspirational sentences from the profiles to create their own fictional stories. The project is organized by Rene Nekuda from the Czech Republic to bring awareness to challenges in Kibera and support the Amani Kibera education project.

1. Instruction / Manual / Contacts / Basic information
Project
Hakuna Matata
Hakuna Matata

2. Main Goals
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connect the world
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show, that art can help and change something
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show, that there is no we and they in a deep human way
of meaning
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show, that we can understand to each other without any
cultural context (that we have similar problems or
themes to discuss)

3. Basic Information
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you can find 19 interesting people from the biggest
African slum Kibera (close to the Nairobi city) here:
http://www.renenekuda.cz/projekt-hakuna-matata/
(now it’s a secret page)
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there are forms about their lives and very short videos
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students should write short stories or poems inspired by
one of these people

4. Methodology
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student read the form
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think about the themes from the form
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student should write a short story or a poem inspired by
one of these people
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we will publish international collection of these short
stories and poems

5. What Is Important
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students don’t need to know any cultural context (why? because the main goal is to
show that we have similar themes to discuss or we have similar problems to resolve
so we can understand each other)
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text (short story or poem) should be only inspired by (so it means that result shouldn’t
be about man or woman from the form and it shouldn’t be about Kenya) – student
could pick up one or two sentences from the form (sentences like My biggest fear is
love; or I love swimming, but I don't know how to do it.), think about it and write his/her
own story from, probably, European setting
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maximum length for a short story is 1500 words
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we will need the text from you by the end of February 2014 (maybe later)
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best languages are English or French (we will translate it into Czech)
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we don’t need all of the 19 stories from the form; 5 is enough

6. Why And Who?
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all of the money from selling this collection will be send back to
Kibera to support education of children in the slum (try google
these words: Amani Kibera project)
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everything will be organized by René Nekuda from the Czech
Republic (teacher of creative writing at the Literární akademie –
private university of creative writing)
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three schools are working on this project now (Literární
akademie from the Czech Republic, Le Coin Bleu from Belgium
and one university teacher with his students from Kenya) +
maybe more schools from EACWP

7. What Else?
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we are also planning a supporting concert in Prague (probably in
June 2014) in MeetFactory (one of the most famous art place in
Prague) with famous Czech groups (like Never Sol or Floex)
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working on this project isn’t paid (it’s a charity project), but it
could be a very interesting exercise for your students
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we can translate your text into Czech and prepare English and
Czech e-book documents and send them back to you (and you can
do anything you want with it)
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hakuna matata means in swahili no problems or problems don’t exist

8. Contacts
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you can find Project Hakuna Matata on this website:
http://www.renenekuda.cz/projekt-hakuna-matata/
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forms are in the navigation menu on the left side (with
numbers)
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contact e-mail is: kontakt@renenekuda.cz (if you have
any questions feel free to write me)
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you can use logo of this project anywhere you like (find
it also on the website)

9. Thank you for your interest!

10. Thank you for your interest!