Work is getting busy. That’s a nice change in daily activities, to be honest. Ever since I’m back in Nigeria, after my 7 weeks of unfortunate break, I am travelling a lot and busy managing the project in Nassarawa State. The week that I visited the schools for the first time accompanied by Habu, the desk officer of NGVP in Nassarawa, was lots of fun and good contacts. After that we had the first Quarterly meeting in Nassarawa State with all national volunteers on ground. Unfortunately only one principal was there and a representative of a principal. None of the principals managed to send community members. It will be a big challenge to get the SBMC up and running. I hope one or two schools will manage to get the community more involved in the school.
During the meeting we talked about motivation. How to get pupils motivated in your classroom and even to come to school? I answered, as I almost always do, with a question: What do you need to feel motivated? For me teaching is still the simple idea of giving somebody something that you want to give yourself. If you are motivated by getting positive feedback why would a pupil not feel the same? So we wrote down things that motivated ourselves and then translated them back into classroom/school situations. This is quite a different approach than usual in Nigeria, but the National volunteers responded well. Even the senior staff and principal agreed. Now hope they apply it in their schools.
The national volunteers also had to line out their planned activities for this year. Activities that came up were: initiating sensitization on STDs, realizing a library, improving the computer facilities, arranging speed bumps nearby the school, realizing a borehole and of course organizing sports activities in the school. I always get to positive fibes when I hear all these good intentions. And honestly most things will happen, that’s what I learned from my first year in Nigeria. It will maybe no go as planned but things will happen.
After this meeting I had to pack stuff to travel to Abuja for a workshop for all education volunteers. A nice opportunity to see everybody again and to ventilate all issues we see on ground. And there were some issues! It was good to talk and to feel we were listened to. In the end we had to form an interim committee for volunteers. This committee has to prepare a meeting for all volunteers to come together and workout a better way to communicate with the program office. We voted for 4 interim members: Kasia, Bola, Paul and I are now in the committee. We will manage this till February when the permanent committee will be chosen.
On the Saturday after the education meeting a group of us went to Dutse to celebrate Sallah, a beautiful colorful Islamic celebration. Sadly al was spoiled by bombings and shootings in Yobe and Borno State.
The Monday after Sallah I had a meeting in Kaduna at the Demonstration School for Deaf Children (DSDC), this school is just since this year part of the national volunteering scheme. I had to do a monitoring visit and had to figure out what went wrong in communication between VSO, DSDC and the volunteers. In the end it came down to a conflict resolution meeting and making a clear understanding of terms of references for volunteers and school. I think it was a good meeting and hope things will go forward.
Then last week when I was back in Lafia we had the annual JCCE meeting in Nassarawa State. A really big meeting which involved all ministries of education of the whole nation and all other institutions involved with education. About 830 educationist together in Lafia! I wish I had known what I know now than I would have been more active in networking. As I know now that I will be the manager of the exit strategy of NGVP. This only means that I have to find partners that are willing to take over this volunteering scheme as it is too big for VSO to carry. I have 6 months to arrange a new plan and find partners. I hope I’ll manage!
No comments:
Post a Comment