Pen Pal Projects
Our Pen Pal Programme connects Saharawi children with English-speaking primary schools around the world. These exchanges promote child to child communication in English, and involve cultural curiosity and creativity with classrooms across the world.
Through both digital and traditional means, Desert Voicebox students are inspired to learn about other cultures, share their stories, and build friendships through their growing language skills. They spend time crafting scrapbooks, writing letters, and connecting classrooms through video exchanges.
These exchanges are one of our proudest branches of Desert Voicebox’s work, and one of our fastest growing.
Through this initiative our students:
Strengthen their English language skills
Are empowered in their identity as Saharawis
Share their knowledge of their culture and history
Gain valuable international exposure from the isolation of the refugee camps
The Pen Pal Project was first launched during 2020, and it has continued to blossom each year. Since early 2025, we have seen a burst of interest from other schools worldwide. This is a demand and opportunity we hope to be able meet one day with our goal to expand Desert Voicebox to the middle school in Boujdour camp and into other primary schools .
Learn more about our aspirations for a Desert Voicebox Middle School
After a long distance on a slow camel, the students at Selby opened their letters from Desert Voicebox !
The UK Summer Programme: Pen Pal Meet-Up!
During the first ever Desert Voicebox Summer Programme, where our students were able to travel and spend the summer in the UK, they were also able to meet with their pen pals from the Selby School in person!
It was a beautiful celebration of friendship without borders and a special moment for our program’s coordinators to see their efforts pay off too.
"Desert Voicebox is so important for our school and for our children... There is so much demand for the programme and we hope that it can grow in the coming years."
– Salka, Director of Lal Andala Primary School
What’s next for the Pen Pal Programme?
One of our biggest joys is having seen the Pen Pal Program receive as much interest as it has from new schools across the world. We hope to continue to expand and adapt our letter writing and relationships to meet these new classrooms, while still balancing our student’s daily curriculum.
UK Schools Engagement Proposal — Saharawi Curriculum & Exchanges
Over the next year, a new chapter of our programme will allow us to partner with interested classrooms in a more intentional way.
By embedding accurate, human-centred learning about the Saharawi people — including their culture and right to self‑determination — into lesson plans, we hope to build a sustainable pathway from one-off exchanges to curriculum adoption across multiple subjects and year groups.
This would outline a scalable, curriculum‑linked model for UK schools to engage with Saharawi history, culture, and contemporary issues — deepening empathy and understanding while strengthening pupils’ literacy, oracy, and global citizenship.
Are you an educator interested in partnering with our student exchange programme?
We are excited to connect and share the Saharawi Story with you and your students.
We encourage you to connect with our Programmes Coordinator to express your interest! Please send an email to: sandblast.outreach@gmail.com
How it will work:
We are in the process of partnering with a small set of UK schools to map their existing school curriculum and insert well‑spaced “Saharawi Lens” lessons, spaced through out the year. Each lesson would use the current class topic as a doorway to Saharawi lived experience.
Through the basic Saharawi curriculum we hope to develop over the coming year, we aim to approach principals/administrators for the following school year—inviting them to embed this curriculum in selected classes (or multiple classes) school‑wide.
This process would involve mapping the curriculum by meeting with each teacher, supported by co-designing the lesson in collaboration with them. Allowing us to continue the exchanges between students with a tie to each topic, this will in turn provide a more impactful, meaningful, and intentional experience in the classroom.
Additional creative exchanges in development are:
Art Project Swaps
Filmed Performances
A Film Club
Hassaniya Language Exchange
Zine Making & More !
