Goodbye Kenya

With project over, I have now reluctantly left Kenya, although I know I will return as soon as possible. In the last week of project, we returned to all the schools we had taught at to collect teacher evaluation forms to receive feedback on our training from the teachers at each school. The principals of all our schools also wrote us recommendation letters acknowledging the changes they saw in their students. It was very encouraging to hear this positive feedback and acknowledgment from the schools. We got to see some of students one last time, and have encouraged them all to stay in contact through email if they wish. Many of them expressed interest in continuing to keep contact with YESS, in hopes of volunteering with them in the future. We were privileged to be welcomed into the schools when we returned to visit. I was especially touched when my class at Embakasi rushed to hug me and even share their lunch with me when I returned to say goodbye. It was so nice to chat with them for awhile about their other classes and day to day lives, as well as have a chance to answer any last questions they had.
We finished the project reflecting on the many challenges and successes of this year. We had meetings and plans drafted for future projects, always critically thinking of how to improve our partnership and the project we run together.
I want to say Asante Sana (thank you very much) again to everyone who helped make this year's project a success. Asante Sana for your support, words of encouragement, donations and prayers.
Goodbye Kenya. Asante sana for allowing me to changed in ways I can't describe and for the opportunity to work with an incredible generation of youth. I have met so many students who I know will be the change they want to see in the world.

Old and new...

So with the last day of teaching officially over there are so many things to look back on and a few more to look forward to; our list of goals hanging in the dining room has check marks all over, but we still have one more amazing week of activities to plan. I can’t help but feel sad that there are only a few weeks left in project, yet we have accomplished so much this year that it seems incredible we have been here for less than 2 months…

This coming week we have a fantastic line-up of events to facilitate. Our first outreach activity will occur on Tuesday and will consist of tree planting, a community clean-up and a VCT at Kasarani Sports Complex with our students from Blessed Hands Secondary School. Looking back at that first week of teaching with these students, it is unbelievable to see how much we have all developed as teachers. I can only speak for myself, but the first week I was a bit nervous to be teaching a group of 52 form 3 (grade 11) students who challenged our knowledge and amazed us with the questions they asked. I am looking forward to seeing this group of students again, maybe I will be able to convince the aspiring rapper “Napking aka Pumpking aka Rapking” to show us his talent, provided he doesn’t have another sore throat…

Our second event will be in Kibera and will involve the students from John Paul II and Kibera Glory, our final school. The day will consist of a VCT and student-led performances guided by members of the YESS club. The focus will be on HIV testing and community education around the topics we presented to the students. The students from Kibera are very driven and creative so we are confident that the day will be a great success. On Thursday we will be holding a networking conference at the Kivi Milimani where we are staying, with the hope to draw potential partnerships from the Nairobi area. At the conference we will be presenting our project accomplishments, current areas of development and future goals for the organization.

We have a bit of a break on Friday and then we will be going full steam into our final outreach activity which will be held at Embakasi Girls’ Secondary School on Saturday June 26th. This event will bring football (soccer) teams from every school that we taught at into a full-day tournament, with medals and trophies for the winning teams. We are planning to have a movie called “Shuga” playing for the students in the morning, which was developed by a youth group and focuses on similar topics to the ones covered in our curriculum. Throughout the day, we will have VCT counselors testing both students and community members in the Mukuru district and the Kenya Forest Working Group will be providing trees for the students to plant in their school grounds. One of our lofty goals is to see if Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai can attend this outreach day to encourage environmental responsibility and inspire students to become actively involved in the conservation of their community. Angie, Sheila and I visited her office today at The Green Belt Movement (the NGO that she founded to address environmental conservation and women's rights) to drop off a proposal. Hopefully she will find time in her busy schedule to consider our event, as it would be an absolutely amazing experience to have such a motivated, inspiring, and accomplished woman there to speak in front of the students...

Form 3 East - Embakasi Girls

Karabunda!

Karabunda - *clapclap clap clap* - Karabunda *clapclap clap clap* - Seniorita - *clapclap clap clapclap clap clapclap clapclap*
This is just one of the many psyche games we played with our students at Embakasi Girls Secondary School this week to get them excited for training! We were blown away by their enthusiasm and spirit. They taught us new psyche games everyday and always wanted to do “just one more!” after we finished teaching for the day.
Dan and I taught form 3 East (3East for short) this week. I am bias, but I can definitely say I thought our class was the most spirited of the school. We had a full two hours to teach each day at this school. This was so great because it meant we were able to thoroughly teach our updated curriculum for the first time (we just finished the updates last weekend) as well as have lots of extra time for questions from the students. On Thursday, 3East and 3West classes joined together since Dan and Kyle had to work out logistic arrangements in Kibera for outreach day there. Lorna and I taught the combined form 3 class responsible sexuality. It was amazing to see how much more open the girls were with their questions since it was an all girls’ discussion (only female students and only female trainers on this day). In the future, I think it might be beneficial to train males and females separately on this day. We had so many in-depth questions about menstruation and pregnancy that the girls probably wouldn’t have asked if there were males in the room. It was a great experience. On Friday when we arrived, my students presented me with my teaching manual that I had left behind the day before. In the front and back cover, they had written about 50 kiswahili words and phrases with the English translation and a note explaining they would like to help me learn more. They had been teaching me a few words each day after class, but they decided I wasn’t learning fast enough, so they challenged me to learn all these phrases by the time we return to their school in 2 weeks for sports and testing day. I will definitely miss these students.

St. Justino Form 4

Dan and I with our form 4 class and the trees they were about to plant!

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This past week, Dan and I taught the form 4 (grade 12) class at St. Justino. At first I was nervous to be teaching the oldest students in the school, but this quickly became my favorite class so far on project. Dan and I were much more comfortable with the curriculum this week, so it made it easier to be relaxed with the students while teaching. There were only 28 students in the class. They were curious, gracious and lots of fun. They challenged Dan and I with some really great questions. Thursday when we were teaching HIV, we didn’t get through the whole curriculum (We finished teaching it on Saturday), because we had half an hour of students raising their hands with one question after another. It was the best part of teaching this week. This class had had the YESS/QHO training in 2007 when they were in form 1. One of them asked me if I knew the trainers from that year, because she still remembered them. That was the same year that a YESS club was formed at St. Justino. One of my students is the chairmen of the club this year. She told me a lot about how their club is run, so we can assist other schools in starting a YESS club. To celebrate the 3^rd anniversary of their club, they are planning to publish a magazine this year. Saturday we returned to this school for an outreach day. We held a mobile VCT in the school for the students and their community. A VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing) is a service that provides HIV testing and counseling. We also planted trees with the students and picked up garbage around the school since it was world environment day. It was so nice to get to chat a bit more with some of the students outside the classroom. I will definitely miss this school. A week goes by so fast!

Outreach Day – World Environment at St. Justino

Yesterday, we held our first outreach activity of training week at St. Justino Secondary School, our third school of project. It was a partnership between QHO, YESS, and the Kenya Forests Working Group, a new connection made this year. It was a full day of events participating with our students in tree planting, community clean-up, and a mobile VCT (HIV voluntary counseling and testing unit).



Vivian, Heidi and I had a fantastic day with our form 3 class. We were the first ones to tree plant, and it was hard for us to reign in our students’ enthusiasm and prevent them from planting all of the trees before the other forms arrived! We planted a small number on the school property and then the rest at a local church ground. St. Justino is located in Soweto, a slum area in the Nairobi suburb of Kayole. It was nice to be able to put a little more ‘green’ into the area, and I think the students really enjoyed the opportunity.



After planting, we did some community clean-up just down the street from the school. It was good to help out, but also felt a little bit futile at times; picking up garbage generally just uncovered a new layer of garbage. Although it was frustrating to make little impact at the time, the main point of the activity was to try to set an example for our students and encourage a spirit of community service.



We finished off with HIV testing in the various classrooms at the school – about 25 of our 30 students got tested, which was really exciting. A large focus of our curriculum is on the importance of being tested, so it was great to have such a positive response. In fact, on the first day when we announced there would be a free VCT day, all of the students erupted into spontaneous applause – a pretty awesome moment. The day concluded with a final assembly, a YESS club meeting, and then a lot of games with local children in the school grounds. Saturday was long, but ultimately rewarding and our students really enjoyed their experiences. A great first start to our outreach activities!

Kibera and Curriculum

We are now into week 3 of teaching and so far the journey has been incredible. On Saturday, we finished up teaching at John Paul II in Kibera, which was a slightly smaller school than Blessed Hands. When speaking to the principal, we were told that students are selected according to specific criteria: all students are residents of Kibera and they must go through an extensive interview process and meet the grade requirements in order to attend the school. Ever since we visited John Paul II to distribute the pre-training questionnaires, we were excited to spend an entire week with this group of enthusiastic and bright students. I taught a group of form 1 students along with Gaddiel, Vivian and Craig, and we were so impressed by their curiosity and passion for learning. They asked us many questions that challenged us as peer educators and they were always willing to join in on some rowdy psych games such as "wind your toy" and "steam steam panda".

In addition to teaching and planning outreach activities for the communities, YESS/QHO are taking on a bit of a challenge this year. With so many motivated and inspired individuals on project, we decided that it would be a great opportunity to look at revising and updating our curriculum. This is quite the task for our team but we are all looking forward to implementing the changes hopefully by the time we are teaching at our last school. The decision to update the curriculum came from a realization that the general knowledge of high school students in Kenya is changing quite significantly and through their anonymous questions they have highlighted some aspects of our training that they would like us to expand upon. We are also looking at rearranging the order in which some topics are presented to enhance the curriculum's comprehensiveness and flow. So far, the curriculum has been very well received by the students but we are always looking for ways to improve. Over the next two weeks, we will be editing every section of the curriculum and we look forward to seeing how things will turn out!