Thanks............ Azara!!!!

An other good story about one of my NGVs only this blog was written in July 2011.
After 3 months of doing not much, at least that is how it felt for me, I’m now visiting GSS Azara for a whole week. It’s a busy week of observing lessons of my National Volunteer and arranging workshops for teachers in the school. I like it like this, finally the feeling of being tired after doing a lot of work.

Monday I left the Ministry of Education around 10 am after some discussions about the vehicle. The Permanent Secretary was a little hesitant to let me go without a spare tire. The driver thought it would be okay and I had to tell if I was okay with that. It took us 2 hours to decide I was allowed to go. In a prior blog I already described the road to Azara, one of the remote villages I have to visit during this project, is a real challenge. This Monday it was not as bad as I remembered from last November but still the Governor did not finish as he promised. Also the electricity was still not connected; doesn’t make a difference for the hospitality in Azara.

The chairman of the PTA (Parent Teacher Association) put his second house to my disposal and Chris (my national volunteer working here) took really good care of me. He even arranged a generator for the night before the workshop so I could do some work after 7 pm.

The Tuesday morning I observed one of Chris’ lessons to see if he learned something during the previous workshops. And yes he did. He really was trying to involve the pupils, surely when he arranged group work. Although the groups of 9 where slightly to big, he let them select some sentences in groups of phrases. Nice idea!!!

 

That afternoon we travelled to Lafia, I wanted to go to Teddy and Sreela’s send forth party at NACWYCA and Chris wanted to say goodbye to Sreela. The principal took us halfway. We had a nice chat about schools and education in Nassarawa state. About the new hope now El Makura will be the governor. I also got to know that principals can just without a good reason can be transferred. It is what happened to him and the former principal of GSS Nasarawa, they swooped places. This principal didn’t like it at allllll. He told me he would refuse to work in this school, it was too small for his ability. 

After seeing Sreela and Teddy dance the Indian and Nigerian way, listening to some speeches, giving my farewell wishes we left for Azara again on Wednesday morning. Azara by public is a whole new experience on its own, but Azara by public transport after a heavy rain is quite adventurous. Imagine a road with more holes than pavement, an overloaded car and other traffic. You will go from one side of the road to the other to avoid the holes. After this you enter a road without any pavement, because the governor didn’t finish it. At this point I was a sleep, think as some kind of automatic self-protection from stress, till one of the passengers shouted: ”Careful will you, didn’t you see that other car spinning?”

Getting closer to Azara the road got worse and worse. We even had to get out of the car to cross a bridge. Normally the car will drive through the water on that spot but water level was too high. Finally we made it without any weird things happening.

That afternoon was a good one. I had to prepare the workshop sessions for the next day. I already had some materials but had to write everything out as there are no printers in Azara and I have to set the right example off course. Making posters, group work and small assignments till 7.30 pm. Chris did arrange a gen for that day so I could work a little after dark. Not to much didn’t want mosquitoes to enter the house.

On Thursday it was D-day. The workshop day. The day that I would meet teachers from GSS Azara, JSS Azara and all the corpers in the local government. We expected around 50 participants at 10 am at the school. As it is Nigeria We started with half the number of participants around 11 am. But nonetheless The participants that were there were involved and enthusiastic. They just played along in the activities, even better then I hoped they would. It Was a really good day! Have the feeling I shown the teachers that a little change in approach can already make a big difference in the classroom. The proof I saw this morning. Just a few pupils came to school as it was Childrens day to day, and only 3 teachers. One of them taught maths’ and he used some little adjustments in his lesson that made it more involving. Really nice to see and really good to know that I probably made sense during the workshop!!!! 

So incredibly proud

My Nigerian Graduate Volunteers (NGVs) in Nassarawa make me feel proud over and over again. It is such a nice feeling. It is great to see my lovely students grow the way they did. Starting out as un(der)trained teachers and now becoming basic trainers ….. I can find no other word than ‘WAUW’ to express myself.

Last week I was again invited to be a resource person during 2 workshops, one in GSS Kokona and one in Technical school Nassarawa Eggon. The first one involved all my NGVs in Nassarawa, except for one as he was in a road traffic accident a month ago and broke his hip. Three from this group need to be mentioned separately as they work their asses of for all these workshops in all the schools within their local governments, they are Fatima, Clements and Steve. Thumbs up for them. What they established in their area is enormous. Together they provide workshops every week in different schools. The workshop is always about learning and the influence a teacher has on the learning of a child. It is amazing to see how much they picked up from my own workshops for them and how they translate it in their own way. Standard sessions are:

the learning tree – to get the participants to realize that learning is a natural fact and to let them experience that people learn easily from peers and from groups though imitation, trail-and-error and so on. 

Small theory on learning – to make people aware of the process of learning and the definition we give it. During this session participants are encouraged to think about their role as facilitator of learning.

Learning styles – people learn in different ways. How does a teacher participate on this knowledge in the classroom?

Practical examples of games – During the workshop in February, Vonny and I, introduced some games for in the classroom. The NGVs use these as examples for their own participants. Some puzzles, games, or introduction activities. 

In the workshops where I am asked to come I always do the bit on ‘theory of learning’, and have discussions about ‘what is learning?’, ‘what happens in our heads?’, ‘when are children ready to learn?’. For this I use the theory on how the brain works, a simplified model of the brain divided in 3 major pieces, the ‘reptilian brain’, the ‘limbric brain’ and the ‘neo-cortex’, but also I connect this with ‘Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs’ to show when children are ready to develop. Almost always these sessions come down to the question ‘how to direct children without corporal punishment?’. This is considered a scary question as corporal punishment here is so imbedded in the culture. It took me at least 5 months to feel self-assured enough to start this discussion and provide teachers with alternatives. I don’t advise my NGVs to have this discussion yet, as also they still have to learn to be assertive enough in the classroom so they don’t need punishment like that anymore.

The whole think is so well organized that there is a market for follow up on this first workshop. I promised Fatima, Clements and Steve I would help them think about the possibilities and different sessions, but that is not that easy as the power of this on is that they felt the impact of the workshop for themselves as participants last February. Maybe we should pick some sessions from that one again as follow up. Time is short though, Holidays are almost there.

Empower the women, don’t forget the men.

Now a days you find a lot of talk about ‘gender’; ‘Gender equality or Equity?’ is an often stated question. Lots of NGOs or CSOs us it to get in the picture or to get funds for projects. But what exactly do they mean by ‘Gender’? Is it ‘girl power’ of a new word for ‘empowered feminism’?

If we look on the internet on what ‘Gender’ is we come to the conclusion that there is not one definite definition but it is always described like; the relationship or ideas that people have about standard roles for women and men in a certain cultural situation. In most cases this is translated to inequality to woman as part of a society. The simple explanation for this inequality of women is that most societies in the world are patriarchy, this means that they are based on the man as most important and there for powerful in social structures. There are not many matriarchies in the world; at least we can say that there is no country with a matriarchy as national structure. Although within countries we have cultures that are organized through a matriarchic structure.

As most cultures are patriarch we concentrate on women empowerment as we talk about ‘Gender’; that is clear and rightfully true as they are the group of people that are most likely to be suppressed or left out. The way we concentrate on this fact is a bit of my concern. In discussions about ‘Gender inequality’ or ‘Gender issues’ I always feel I have to protect the man. It is always about the women having to become strong and independed and for me that sounds like eighties feminism. I belief we have to work on womens right but we also should be careful about impacting too much on cultural balances. If we only concentrate on female empowerment, we might lose the guys and make the inequality only bigger. I am afraid that most programmes designed to let women know about their basic human right forget about informing the men about that same issue. In this way situations of domestic violence can even get worse by doing female empowerment.

This weekend I have had the most interesting discussion with one of my fellow volunteers here in Nigeria on this issue. She works for GPI, a NGO specialized in girl empowerment, in Calabar. They have a training center for girls to train them every Sunday on human rights, self-esteem, HIV/Aids, personal presentation and all sorts of good things that girls in the Nigeria context do not learn ‘just like that’. When I heard about it I got really interested in the lessons and group of girls. So in the afternoon I was invited to come to a pick-nick and most of the women at the pick-nick were graduated from GPI. You could feel that, even as a group of women together they were more self-conscious then I have ever experienced in Nigeria. Most of the time women, especially in the north but also in the south, are working hard to please their surroundings. These women were just enjoying and saying whatever they felt like. I think it was the atmosphere that struck me the most. It struck me in positive way and with a lot of question marks. Most question marks were about how do the boys ‘handle’ these girls? How do teachers coop with pupils like this? Because they are not prepared to work with girls like this. Is GPI not enlarging the risk for the girl to be beaten by men and teachers.

I think that with these lessons also boys and teachers and other key-persons is societies should be trained to learn to coop with the change. I am afraid that now the gap will only increase and the situation for the girl will get worse and they will choose not to be bothered by equality.

I put this on the table during the discussion with my colleague volunteer and she agreed and she told me GPI is recognizing this problem, but is unable to do anything about it because funders don’t want to fund programmes for boys. It seems to be really hard to get money for sensitization of boys on gender issues.

So are we really letting these girls go through what the first feminists went through are do we acknowledge that gender is about both, men and women?

Mary Slessor Foundation in Akpap Okoyong

The good thing about being a volunteer is that you have time to jump into small projects when you like. At least that is what I do ones and a while. It is interesting because you will be able to see and experience some new cultures and placements. Like last week I went to Akpap Okoyong in Cross River State, a small town just northwest of Callabar. I helped Christine out as she asked help from a teacher trainer to support her in developing a curriculum for the vocational training center of the Mary Slessor Foundation (MSF). Her placement is at MSF since she got replaced from Kaduna due to the violence and insecurity in the area. She just started figuring out what to do and wants to concentrate on developing the training center and support the other departments in management.

So after some time and some observations and chats she discovered that the trainers would like to get a bit more professional and Christine also thinks it is good if they could get more recognition if they get an accreditation on their vocational training. So for that they have to show they are serious.

Serious means the school needs to start working according to a plan, a curriculum. So that is where I come in. With small preparations in the last month Christine and I organized 4 small workshops for the trainers. Every afternoon they had to stay a bit longer to structure their current lessons into a big plan. It was hard work. Most of the trainers are no teachers and therefore not familiar with lesson planning, lets stand curriculum planning. They are good craft men and positive mentors to the students, but when it comes to strategic thinking and planning …..

So the first thing I did was getting them familiar with the term ‘curriculum’ and why it is important to have something like it. I also introduced a model that would suite MSF best considering all the information I got beforehand. I advised them to work with Modules because most of them work in small projects, these projects can be the basis for each module. As most of the trainers were students during the time VSO placed carpenters and welders in the training center to teach the trades, they have some background on rather structured lessons. They still use the notes given to them during that time. As I could see the logic in those notes, it was hard to let the trainers realize the same logic.

Most of the other days was about trying to get the trainers to structure the modules. Give names and topics for the modules so we could start building. Also a big part of the time was letting them realize they are already having a curriculum in their own way only not written down and that they are the experts that had to feed me with information. I remember asking some questions over and over again to make them realize all this. Questions like: Who do you decide that a student is allowed to start practical’s? Or what do you do when a student starts the first time? How do you teach a student to use a welding machine? And what does a student have to learn before he/she can sew a man’s shirt?

It was hard to get them think like that and it took a longtime to get a bit of an idea of the topics for the modules, but we got them! It also was hard to work on the performance criteria. Getting them to realize they have their criteria in their heads all the time I used the example of Christine learning to drive her bike. Afian, one of the trainers is teaching her how to drive, is really strict on the fact that is is not yet good enough to drive on her own. So I asked ‘what does Christine need to show so you allow her to drive on her own?’. An unexpected question. The answer ‘she need to be able to drive’ was not satisfying for me. When is she able to drive? So I let the group break that down into little bits. I think I had them in the right direction at that point.  So now Christine has to finish the discussions and I will support her from a distance. Even when I am in the Netherlands I will be able to help them out.

involvement of youth in global change

After a long process of writing, rewriting, adjusting and readjusting the country strategy plan one thing stayed the same. One focus area never changed: Nigerian Youth. This is not strange and surprising as in ‘People First’ VSO internationals new strategy youth also gets a big role to play in development.

The youth position paper ‘VSO and Youth’ is written in addition to the strategy to explain the important role youth fulfills in global development. According to the UN Population Division young people form the largest demographic group globally. Some figures to give an impression; in 2010 29% of the population in more developed was younger than 25 and this was 60% in least developed countries in the world. With these figures in the back of our minds VSO International recognises three core principles governing their work with young people. The first is applying an integrated approach to youth work. VSO recognises young people as actors, leaders and collaborators in development as well as targets or recipients of development programmes. Also participation of young people is essential, moving young people from targets to actors.  Involving and taking on greater responsibilities and agency in the designing, planning and implementation of development work. Final core principles of youth work, such as: learning by doing, supporting young people to be able to make the contributions they want and develop in ways they see as critical.

When you look around you in Nigeria, or maybe a bit broader West Africa, you see a huge group of young people; most of them un(der)employed or even unemployable. No wonder more and more funders are starting to focus on the youth as a tool to development. VSO Nigeria has now several programmes, in past and present, especially designed to involve Nigerian youth in community development. We have Nigerian Graduate Volunteering Programme (NGVP), to enable personal growth for young graduates by supporting rural communities as teachers in schools. We also have had experience with Global Xchange and Youth Action as programmes with the British Council. For these programmes young people (18 – 25) from the UK and Nigeria worked together in communities for 3 months in a row. As the name Global Xchange is already suggesting, the young Nigerians also went to the UK. The focus in all these programmes is on personal development and understanding of under-development of rural communities in all contexts.

Now VSO Nigeria renamed the Youth Action into VSO International Citizen Service (VSO ICS), this was in collaboration with the Department for International Development (DFID). Young Nigerians from all backgrounds will be recruited to work together in rural communities with similar UK youth. They will work in communities in Oyo, Kwara, Osun, Kaduna and Cross River State. The outcomes VSO Nigeria aims for with this programme are clear. First of all it aims for personal and social development for participating youth. Youth from all backgrounds are encouraged to take part in ICS, with this VSO Nigeria hopes to anticipate on interaction between different levels in society. As well as building confidence based on positive experience.  Secondly there is focus on community development. The groups will work closely together on projects within one community. This way VSO wants to make bigger impact in that community. The last, but not least, aim is to build a global network in which the youth will be acting as advocates for international development and agents for social change in their own communities and beyond.

As VSO ICS will start in July 2012, most partners came to Abuja for a participatory workshop on how to shape and build the programme for the different states we will be working with. Hope World Wide in Osun and Kwara state will kick off the programme. They did get a lot of support from all the other partners that will step in at a later date during 2012.

NYSC Reforms

Ever since the election violence there is the question should NYSC stay of should they stop the programme? Most votes now go for keep it but change it. Make it less military and more social and use it as a proper preparation for future work or business. So now there are reforms in the NYSC, The minister of Youth Development who is responsible for NYSC, as it is a parastatal of his Ministry, says it has to become more responsive to the national needs. He mentioned that all staff of NYSC needs to get on board of ‘the transformation train’ as it is now starting to move.

The reason why it was set up after the Biafran war was to create unity and understanding of all cultures in Nigeria and prevent any such thing as the Biafran war from happening again. The Corpers, the young graduates that are serving for the mandatory year, had to come to training camps where they got a introduction training, after the three weeks they are based at different organisations, their primary assignment, where they have to do some kind of internship. Most of these interships are not well organized and leave the corpers to do nothing, which results in corpers not showing up and wasting one year. Next to this primary assignment they have to do community development work and with this they can win awards, some of the awards give them employment, or a better chance to employment, straight after the NYSC-year. Some corpers belief in working hard for these awards others leave it like it is as they expect it to be a corruptive election anyway.

Now with the reforms the NYSC should become more dynamic, responsive and relevant to the nation and the future of the corpers. How they are going to arrange this is a big question mark. They did expand their administrative structure, they got more directors, but do they know what they have to do? Do they have a new strategic plan? How is this massive organization going to change? I think NYSC is one of the biggest employers in Nigeria. So many people are working in the headquarters and all state and local government offices. It is incredible. 

One thing I know and that is that VSO is now writing a plan to at least make a small difference on education and agriculture. The NGVP that I am working on will be different in the future, we are planning to implement it in the traditional service year. During the introduction the new Corpers are encouraged to attend one of the special schemes, one of those will be the NGVP scheme from October. We will recruit the best motivated and best skilled for our NGVP to support schools and communities in education and farming. As Bola and I are working on the proposal now it starts to look like a realistic scheme for which we should be able to get funds.

Only if not for the full harted ‘NO, we cannot work with VSO on NGVP’ from the Director General(DG) I would have full confident. The NO was to be clear for the NGVP post-NYSC as it is now. So for the current programme we have to find good funders quickly. However for the new NGVP as een in-service scheme in the mandatory NYSC year I still have hope. An not only I have hope also Mrs Awakasien, my counterpart within NYSC. After the meeting she got appointed as new assistant director for national volunteering, which give a bit of hope that the DG is willing to look into that. I guess he didn’t hear this part of Kenna’s story when she was introducing the reason for the meeting.

As it comes now to the end of my placement I hope it will all be okay next year, at least for the new NGVP. How it will all work out for the old one I don’t know as I have the idea that multitasking is not the best in this place.

getting started

Lots of things are going on lately. Finally my work is getting started now I get to the end of my placement. It is a strange feeling though getting to the end of my placement. I have mixed feelings about Naija, about my work, about the sustainability of the programme and about a lot more. 
Lately I have had some discussions with Yakiem about the NGVP and my role and responsibilities. I don't understand it anymore, at least if I have to describe my feelings about those discussions. I have to hand the NGVP over to partners but there are no partners and I also am not allowed to identify them and start the path to partnership with them, at the same time Yakiem provided me with all the information how to start a partnership. Then you have Yakiem, who is starting up new partnerships just on a hunch and in Kano (a city where we as international VSO’s are not allowed to go). We have had a meeting with Ladidi who came for this occasion to Abuja, she asked for help in teacher training for current teachers as only 25% of their teachers was qualified as teachers, but Yakiem is so focused on NGVP that he didn’t really listened to this and just started talking about how to implement the NGVP in the Kano State Senior Secondary School Management Board (KSSSSMB). Ladidi was a bit struck back because they have enough teachers, even a lot on a list to be employed.  
As second frustration, out of experience, I know that no Governmental organisation is willing to take responsibility as long as they sign something official. So I really try to get them involved, but Yakiem is questioning it all too much. I don't know if it is trust or anything but it is annoying as I see NGVP die if we don't start signing contracts of one sort or the other. 
But I just told him I will not take any decisions anymore, I will let him decide what is needed, I am almost leaving and shouldn't stress myself too much. With this in the back of your head the next part of this blog will sound strange and dubious, because I still try to get organisations on board to carry on this NGVP. Last week for example I have had a wonderful first meeting with the Ministry of Science and Technology in Lafia. It was a advocacy visit for NGVP and VSO, to see if we can become partners in improving science education. They looked like a quite well organized small Ministry with a lot of good ideas. They have a resource development department in which they develop teaching aids for science and vocational training. They showed me around after we have had a small chat about their wishes and our opportunities. They also took me to one of the four vocational training centers they have in Nassarawa. Really nice! They are really trying to give school drop-outs and unemployable youth a change to start their own business. After each course a participant is entitled to get some materials to really start of a business. No money but materials, which I think is good. There are two different programmes one for children that don’t have their WAEC or NECO or any other exam-certificate, and one for young adults and women who need to generate their own income and want to do this through a trade. At the surface it all look quite well organized, but to get a real impression VSO needs to do a OrgScan or Organsation assessment. Together with the first impressions I gave this advice to Yakiem as a conclusion of my visit.
Somehow I sometimes think I am doing the right thing although it isn’t always what Yakiem wants or expects. At least I know I am appreciated by the people I work with and the organisations I start talking to. Appreciation that is shown in different ways, like getting a big heap of yams and a ride home by a private driver ;-)