Activity 10:
How to Choose a Travel Buddy    

Purpose

  • To encourage participants to build relationships with other community members. 

  • To allow participants to find a travel buddy in their community.  

Location

  • Comfortable seating area for pairs of participants to talk to one another   

Materials  

  • Bean bags (one per two participants)  

  • Whistle  

Things to Observe

  • Participants are enjoying the interactions with their travel buddies. 

Safety Considerations

  • Ensure that participants live relatively close to one another so that they are not walking alone on their route.  

Guidelines

  • First explain the travel buddy idea: a pair or group of children living close to one another that can travel together. Tell them that often it is safer to go to places when there are a number of people together.  

  • Ask the large crew, “Who lives close to one another?”  

  • Once you can identify which participants live near one another, pair these individuals up.  

  • Ask the pairs to sit and have a quiet conversation. They should ask each other these questions:  

    • Where exactly do you live?  

    • Where could we meet that is midway between our homes?  

  • When the pairs have finished having their conversations, they should be able to tell if they are well-suited to be travel buddies. If they are compatible, ask them to tell you.  

  • At the conclusion of the day’s session, you should meet with the participants’ parents/ caregivers and provide them with the following information:  

  • Travel Buddies helps minimize the risk of traveling alone over long distances to reach a destination. Travel buddies should be living in an area close to a meeting spot.  

  • Parents/caregivers of buddies may wish to travel together to send their children off once they all meet in a common zone.

Instructional Considerations  

  • Join in and participate in the activity rather than standing on the side watching.  

  • Watch for possible tensions that may arise due to the nature of the activity and ensure any conflicts are prevented or resolved quickly. If someone gets frustrated, ask them to help find a positive solution to the problem.