A novel travel series for kids
Seven years ago, Akeelah Kuraishi and her husband Tim Minnick quit their advertising jobs to backpack around the world for 13 months. It was important to them that their travels take them off the beaten path, to remote villages in places like Laos, Borneo, and Burma, far from the Fodor’s and Rick Steves crowds. “Everywhere we went, people were so kind,” says Kuraishi. “We found that the core similarities are so much greater than our differences.”
Kuraishi traveled extensively throughout her childhood. Now, as a mother of two children, aged 2 and 4, it’s important to her that her kids grow up with a love of travel and a global perspective. With this in mind, she and Minnick started Little Global Citizens, a subscription service that sends a box to kids (aged 3 to 8) with the aim of introducing them to a new country each month. Each box is filled with items from that country. A recent box from Kenya was filled with Safari animal figurines, a children’s book called “Mama Panya’s Pancakes,” a child’s guide to Kenya (and accompanying adult’s guide), a Kenyan flag to color, crafts such as a DIY Maasai necklace, and more. Countries are chosen to highlight various cultural events relevant in that country.
“The more you humanize people from different cultures, the more children understand, ‘These are just people like me,’ ” says Kuraishi. “One of the first things kids see is a children’s guide written from the perspective of a kid in that country. It’s really important children can empathize with each other. And if you aren’t able to travel over the summer, kids can go back to school feeling like they were able to travel to a new country.”
(Visit little-global-citizens.com for more information. New York Post readers can enter the code NYPost20, which is good for 20 percent off the first box in a monthly subscription commitment.)
— Mackenzie Dawson