On 16 October British Council Kazakhstan participated in the Yabloko (Apple) Family Festival with a special programme promoting the LearnEnglish Kids website. For several hundreds of children and their parents it was a unique opportunity to practice English in an interactive and fun way and learn more about British culture.

Yabloko Festival is organised in Almaty quarterly and extremely popular as a platform for family leisure activities. The British Council’s programme at the festival included various workshops and games for learning English. Also, under the support of the British Embassy, a series of mini-quizzes about British culture and London 2012 was organised.

Besides face-to-face activities, children also had an opportunity to visit the website and have a taste of the games and interactive exercises. As one of the parents mentioned afterwards, “When my child came back home, he was very excited about the event. He got very interested in the website LearnEnglish Kids and immediately started using it. He was very proud showing us the handicrafts he made at the British Council workshop.”

Organisers of the festival noted that the British Council workshops were very popular and the stand was the one which attracted the largest number of visitors and so invited the British Council to participate in the festival again. The next festival will be held in December to mark the Christmas holidays.

After participation in the festival the British Council English team received several invitations from schools and organisations working with children to run similar workshops for them.

The event was so successful thanks not only to the British Council staff, but also to the invaluable support from volunteers – students of the Linguistic College of Almaty. For volunteers it was an excellent opportunity to practice their communication and leadership skills and be a part of an event where children and parents find that learning English can be exciting and fun.

See more pictures from the event