Sophia Jansen and David Mason

10-year-old Sophia Jansen is the initiator and co-organiser of Sophia’s Garden Concerts for the Mobile Mini Circus for Children in Kabul. Inspired, at the age of 7, by a television programme by Dutch journalist Floortje Dessing who visited a mobile circus for children in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sophia was determined to help raise money for this cause. She came up with the idea of a home-garden concert with musicians and circus acts. Now, 3 years later, 3 concerts have already taken place! 

David Mason is the co-founder (with fellow-Dane Berit Muhlhausen) of MMCC, Mobile Mini Circus for Children. Since 2002 MMCC and its local partner AECC, Afghan Educational Children Circus, have performed and created workshops for more than 2.7 million children in 25 provinces all over Afghanistan. The combination of entertaining and essential educational messages about health, landmine awareness, peace and back to school/importance of education, delivered by professional Afghan artists in a purely local context, has proved to pave the road for cultural activities even in parts of the country where music, singing and other forms of artistic expression have been suppressed or forgotten for decades. MMCC/AECC has grown into a countrywide education program focusing on teaching children to lead.