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!

Third School

The third school we are teaching at is called St. Justino Secondary School. We have taught one day so far because today is Madaraka day, which is the day that Kenya gained its independence so there is no school. I will explain about the first day of teaching. When we got to the school we had the first general assembly in a big hall at the school. The students seemed to be very excited and had so much energy for the psych games we did. Gaddiel and Dan led the first psych games and then we did the opening speech where we all say our names. It’s really funny when we do this because after everyone said our names all the students would repeat them and then laugh. We did a final psych game before splitting up into different forms. This week I am teaching with Tony again and we have split the form three’s into two groups so Tony and I teach half and Matt and Vivian the other half. It is kind of nice because the classes are so small so the students are not shy and feel free to say anything they please. The first day consists of a lot of skits that Tony and I preformed I think the students quite enjoyed them, even if it was just because we were not the best actors. At the end of the lessons we do anonymous questions the questions for the first day were very funny with many comments.
I am so excited to go back for the next four days of teaching.

John Paul II YESS Club

On Saturday, May 29, after teaching our last lesson to our John Paul II secondary classes, we held the first YESS club meeting. I guess I should begin by explaining what exactly is a YESS club. YESS, the youth empowerment strategic scheme, is the name of our partner organization. Together, QHO and YESS have decided that starting a club at each school we train will be a way to make our project and objectives more sustainable. We have many ideas for this type of club, but ultimately, the club will be whatever the students make it to be. This particular Saturday afternoon we met with a group of students from all forms (grades 9-12 in Canadian terms), who expressed interest in participating in such a club at their school. We discussed options of possible goals and activities for the club. The first club activity will be aiding our project in facilitating an outreach day at their school. The students identified a venue nearby where they would like the events of this day to be help. They brainstormed for possible outreach activities and decided on a mobile VCT (volunteer counseling and testing – the service that provides HIV testing and counseling). The students decided they would like to create drama presentations about the topics we taught them throughout the week (Life Skills, Gender Roles and Relationship Boundaries, HIV/AIDS and Responsible Sexuality) so they can educate their community about these topics during the testing day. This is a very exciting opportunity for the students of John Paul II Secondary School to act as peer educators in their community, and have the option to choose to get tested for HIV, along with members of their community.

As a project, we are looking to partner a VCT counselor with each YESS club so that the club can form a support group for HIV pre and post testing. We would like to also provide each club with the guarantee of a resource person within the YESS organization, who can support the club throughout the year, through answering any questions the students pose, linking the club with contacts to fund their outreach events and to visit the clubs throughout the year to maintain contact. Before the end of project, we hope to deliver 2 handbooks to each club that contains the material in our curriculum, ideas for outreach activities, structure for leadership and possible topics for the club meetings. This first meeting was a success, and although there is much work to still be done in facilitating these clubs, we are off to a great start.

Students at Blessed Hands filling out their post trainning survey to let us know what we taught well and what to improve upon at our next school.

curriculum updates.

john paul II secondary school.

week MBILI of teaching over.

may 24- may 29

teaching form three with matt and angie this week at john paul II secondary school in kibera was unreal. the class was so energetic and hilarious. we have a rap that we teach our students whereby we ask “are you somewhere, in the future, do you look much better than you look right now?”. and they chant back “I’m somewhere, in the future, and I look much better than I look right now”. basically everyday they made us both start and end class with this rap.

the questions asked at this school, although similar to those asked at other schools, had an emphasis on leadership and success in our class. we had students asking:

“do you emphasize on leaderships and if please, when?”

“is it true that the road to success is always under construction?”

“is it true that whenever one gets the key to success,

someone comes and changes the lock?”

although the overall goal of our curriculum is to empower students by providing them with information to make positive, responsible decisions in their lives, leadership is not a topic that is specifically addressed. for this reason, at the end of the week, in our final empowerment speech about positive self-esteem, matt created a new section on leadership. although brief and informal, his speech on leadership consisted of the following five steps:

1. take initiative
2. look beyond personal interests
3. set an example
4. consider all options and ideas
5. never give up on your goals

our class was very receptive to all of the ideas and topics that we discussed earlier in the week, but during this talk about leadership, every single student was listening intently. not only were they giving matt their full attention, but they were even taking notes.

for this reason, we are currently performing extensive editing of the curriculum to keep the information we teach current and accurate. specifically, we are applying the past five years of our teaching experience to update the kits with material pertaining to the issues facing our students, especially those raised in anonymous questions.

this is a huge task to undertake during the project, in the midst of teaching, planning outreach activities, organizing mobile VCTs for each of our schools and networking for the YESS organization, however the individuals on our team are extremely motivated and willing. i know that their hard work and dedication will translate into a new and amazing curriculum, and hopefully these edits will be incorporated into our future teaching on project.

Some QHO and YESS trainers at Blessed Hands Secondary School in Nairobi demonstrating how HIV attacks our bodies T-Cells, weakening our immune system.

knowledge is power.

blessed hands secondary school.
teaching week MOJA.
may 17 - may 21.

this week, with kyle and lorna, I taught a form four class at blessed hands secondary school. they were amazing. unlike nakuru, where we trained last year, the students were very vocal and opinionated. they were not afraid to ask questions during our sessions, both for clarification purposes and to keep us on our toes. it was encouraging and refreshing as rather than just readily accepting our teachings, they internalized the information and formulated questions that displayed they really understood the material.

during the HIV kit, they asked questions regarding transmission in very unique situations that I’d never even considered. requesting the details about how HIV positive parents can give birth to an HIV negative child. inquiring about the mutation of the HIV virus, and the possibility of it becoming resistant to the various anti-retroviral treatments available. and acknowledging and dismissing the various stigmas and stereotypes that surround those individuals who are infected with the virus.

one anonymous question, in particular, that we received in the middle of the week demonstrated that the students were combining the information we taught in the various kits, in order to make responsible and positive life choices. to preface the question, I’ll share some of the topics that we teach about in life skills on the first day and gender and relationships on day two.

the life skills kit aims to give students a clear understanding of how to be successful communicators, how to express their interests assertively and how to respond effectively to peer pressure. through a variety of skits and relatable examples, we hope that the students gain an understanding of how these skills are relevant to their experiences and are able to apply these skills in the future. in the gender and relationships kit, we empower the students to determine their boundaries in their relationships and to assertively communicate these limits. in all relationships, we stress that each person can set their own relationship boundaries, and individuals must respect their own and other’s boundaries.

the question asked,

“you taught us that one way of responding to peer pressure is by saying “no” and at the same time you told us that for one to have a good communication, one should not be aggressive. I think if someone asked me to have sex with him, I would say “no”, that means that I will have been aggressive, since I’ll have stood up for my own interests without considering his. How should I respond, I am confused?”

this question demonstrated that the student really understood the material and internalized it to the point that he/she even questioned it. the anonymous questions asked at the end of each day are one of my favourite aspects of teaching. we encourage students, both at the beginning and end of our training, to always ask questions. and to keep asking questions even when they graduate from form four, because by asking questions they gain information. with this information, they are able to make informed, responsible decisions in their lives. as well, by asking questions, they gain knowledge. and knowledge is power.

John Paul II School in Kibera

Last week, we taught at John Paul II Mixed Secondary School in Kibera. Kibera is the second largest slum in Africa after Soweto in Johannesburg, with over 700 000 people crammed into an area of 2.5 sq km. I have definitely never been anywhere like Kibera, and don't think I can articulate the intricacies of teaching at a school there properly quite yet. It was a really good experience for us teaching at the school John Paul II - our students were amazing, very bright and really challenged us a lot. This is unsurprising, because the administration told us that the standards for admission at JP II are extremely rigorous, whereby students must be from Kibera, must pass an academic exam, and must maintain good grades or they will be asked to leave.

Teaching in the Form 3 Class

One of our big initiatives this year is to start YESS clubs at each of our schools that we will provide with resources to keep talking about the topics we teach on throughout the year. A big part of our outreach work has been devoted to planning what form we see these clubs taking, as well as developing the information manual for students. We had our first meeting with the JP II students today and it was really promising. We had an outstanding turnout, with more students present than we could have hoped for. They seemed really interested in helping us gear our outreach activities towards what they identify as useful, and even agreed to put together a drama group to prepare educational skits for their community. We are going to go back once for another meeting with the club before our outreach day in Kibera on June 23. Plans for that day are still being formed, but we have made a promising start and it looks like it will involve a mobile VCT, games, and mass education through skits created by the students.

Form 3 Class Photo

I have a few more interesting stories from Kibera. Gaddiel and I, as part of our logistics work, checked out many of the VCTs and medical clinics in the area. While one of them (run by a large NGO) was quite disappointing in its approach to dealing with young people, another was extremely inspiring. We took a tour of the facility, and I was really impressed by how sanitary and well-equipped it was for a building that blended in so completely to the surrounding slum. Part of the tour included meeting a HIV+ mother who had given birth that morning and watching the nursing staff administer ARV treatment as a prophylactic measure to her infant. It was a really incredible glimpse into a different side of life at Kibera. In addition, we made an excellent connection with the women who runs the facility and with the local MSF that operates in the community.

The other thing that I cannot leave out of any post about Kibera is seeing the children. The term for white person in Kiswahili is “mzungu”, and everywhere we went we were trailed by hordes of little children asking us “Howareoo, mzungu?!?”. Pretty adorable. One of the last days, a little guy asked me “Howareoo??”, and when I answered “I’m fine, how are you?” he proceeded to take my hand and walk with me several hundred metres down the lane. A very cute moment on an otherwise rainy, muddy day in Kibera.

I know that we all really valued our experiences last week, and gained a lot from working with the students at John Paul II. We are back to Kibera for our 5^th week of teaching at Kibera Glory Secondary School starting on June 14th.