Children’s Day: Rotaract Club, Origami Society visit LUTH paediatric wards

The Rotaract Club of Medilag Golden, in collaboration with the Origami Society Nigeria, visited the cancer paediatric ward and other paediatric wards in Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) to engage the children in the art of creating origami.

According to the organisers, the programme was in line with rotary areas of focus, Maternal and Child Health, and was tagged ‘Origami in health for children in cancer paediatric ward’, which was held in commemoration of the 2022 Children’s Day with the theme ‘Investing in our future means investing in our children’.

The goal behind the initiative, according to the president of the Rotaract Club of Medilag Golden, Princewill Onyekah, was to identify ways to support children admitted in hospitals, which finally led to the discovery of origami in children’s health.

“Origami helps in developing fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and mental concentration,” Princewill added.

The project director of Rotaract Club of Medilag Golden, Somto Mbama, stated that origami is one avenue that provides both mental and physical stimulus with exercise.

“The use of the hands directly stimulates areas of the brain,” Mbama added. “Engaging the children in origami was quite helpful in lightening their moods, as most children were bed-bound and getting them to create figures and shapes was worth the experience.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED THESE FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE

The founder and president of the Origami Society of Nigeria, Oluwatobi Sodimu, was satisfied with the collaboration, as both organisations could maximise their strengths.

He expressed the importance of origami in inspiring healing of patients’ minds who have suffered anxiety, fear, and pain as a result of their conditions and medication regime.

“Caregivers could also relieve themselves from workplace stress through the art,” Sodimu said.

Dr John Adenle, chairman of the Origami Society Nigeria, stated that origami is one of the easiest forms of art, since it is made from paper.

The children were taught how to make several forms of crafts, how to make paper planes, and different ways to make heart shapes, swans, and ninja stars using colour papers.

Some caregivers in the wards, parents, nurses, and the like were also engaged in learning the art of origami.

One of the matrons, said, “I’m happy to know this and would engage my children with it at home.”

One of the mothers of the children said she was happy to see the origami arts and was fascinated to learn how to make some of them. She added that she had not seen her son play that much in a long time and that he had been in the cancer ward for close to a year now.

The children and their parents were given some gift items by the organisers of the project.
Attachments area

Kingsley Alumona