Train up a child in the way he should go
Fady and his wife Marian are so enthusiastic about the SAT-7 KIDS channel, they drove into Cairo from their home in Tanta, 100 km away, to tell us about it.
The couple introduced SAT-7 KIDS to their two-and-a-half-year-old son, Fares when he was just 18 months old. Since then Fares has become a huge fan, switching back to SAT-7 KIDS if his parents are watching something else.
And Fady and Marian are so pleased they have become SAT-7 supporters, in regular contact with presenters and with Amgad, SAT-7’s Supporter Relations Manager in Egypt.
“In our culture we teach children from a very young age,” Fady explained. “We give children the freedom to make their own choices at 20 or 30, but at a young age we want to give them the foundations.” SAT-7 KIDS fits the bill perfectly, they said, “because it’s safe, there are no bad words or actions” and because they wanted Fares to learn about Christianity from a young age.
The programmes “teach the children how to love, how to pray”. “During any programme when the presenters pray, he does the same automatically,” Marian said.
As well as creating a climate of faith and hope for children, SAT-7 KIDS has a ministry to adults. During the post-revolution turmoil of the last three days, Marian said, “All the prayers on SAT-7 saying not to fear or worry about what happened, first encouraged the adults and then they encouraged the kids.”
“We are used to living with these pressures,” Fady said, but watching SAT-7 KIDS has “been a way to run away from all the noise around us.”