Category: Projects

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Rotary Club of Madras Boys Town: Phased return to school in Gummidipoondi, India

In  2021, the Government of Tamil Nadu announced the reopening of schools for children in the XIth and XIIth Stds. from the third week of January.  As a result, nineteen students were able to return to Boys Town in Gummidipoondi to attend their normal classes from the 20th January.  Subsequently, the Government also announced the reopening of schools for children in the  IXth and Xth Stds. from the 16th February and so a further group of sixteen students joined the others in Boys Town. 

All students were advised to get a COVID-19 test done before arrival and all of them arrived back at the school with certificates stating that their results were negative. Staff at Boys Town are also following the health and safety guidance set out by local government authorities.

The annual examination dates for the XIIth Std.  have been announced and will run from the 3rd May to the 21st May 2021. Teachers are helping students to be fully prepared for the final examinations by giving them extra tuition and tutorials after school hours. The examination schedules for the IXth, Xth and XIth Stds. have yet to be announced.

Classes for students in the VIIth and  VIIIth Stds. are still not functional, but teachers are in touch with the students and their families and providing them with appropriate guidance and support as needed.

To monitor the students’ return to Boys Town a few club members visited them on the 26th January to celebrate Republic Day. In addition, on the 26th February, the Governor of  Rotary District 3232, visited Boys Town and spent some time with the students.

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SARTHI: Community awareness on child’s education and development in Bihar, India

In Bihar, we continue to support the reintegration of twenty children into education. They are the sons and daughters of migrant workers in Maner, Patna. In February the team from SARTHI held a community awareness meeting to take stock of the situation regarding COVID-19 and to assess the parents’ readiness for their children to be admitted to school. All the families present agreed that they were fully prepared to apply for admission and wanted to send their children to school as soon as the situation allowed. 

The team also talked with the parents as a separate group, about the type of family issues that may impact on the future lives of the children if they neglect to send them to school. In addition, families shared their thoughts about the rights of children and the role of parents in a child’s development. It was reassuring to note that the parents are becoming more aware about the rights of their children and their role in supporting their education. Since March, schools have been able to reopen which allow for 50% attendance by children on alternate days. On the 9th March, twelve children out of twenty were admitted to the school and the admission of the other children is currently being processed.

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SERVE: School disruption continues in the western province, Sri Lanka

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a bigger impact on the western province and Colombo District where SERVE is operating. For example, when the Government announced that schools and preschools could reopen in February 2021 in all parts of the country except for this province, it meant that Saplings, the preschool in Ratmalana that we support, had to remain closed.

Despite this further setback, SERVE has managed to carry on educating children enrolled at Saplings via home visits by a teacher. Initially, each pupil was given a work-pack that included notebooks and workbooks, colour pencils, drawing books and crayons so that school work could be completed at home. The teacher continues to visit the children twice a month to check their work and to give additional guidance and materials as appropriate. Furthermore, she is in contact with both parents and children on a regular basis by phone.

This month we are pleased to report that seventeen children from Saplings have now obtained permission to progress to the Grade 1 primary school class at the Colombo Hindu College in Ratmalana.

There are currently fifteen students in the second year of Saplings but SERVE has yet to register new comers for 2021. Staff are eagerly awaiting  a return to school as soon as the Government grants permission.

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JUCONI Mexico: Reducing violence in the classroom in the city of Puebla

ICT has collaborated with JUCONI Mexico on a new project that has been designed to address the problem of bullying and anti-social behaviour in the classroom. Staff at JUCONI have been running workshops for teachers across three primary schools in the city of Puebla. The workshops, via Zoom, focus on helping teachers to build on their knowledge and skills in order to respond more appropriately to the emotional needs of their students and to develop safer classroom environments in order to minimise poor behaviour and improve the quality of teaching and learning. Three hundred and sixty children aged between 6-12 years old are expected to benefit from this project. To date, thirty-six teachers have attended and a new group of eighteen teachers is about to start. Each workshop consists of seven, two hour sessions. 

As a result of the workshops, JUCONI staff have also been called upon to provide immediate support to teachers who have encountered difficulties with their students during online classes.

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JUCONI Ecuador: Adapting community safe spaces for children to play and learn

After full lockdown in 2020, the community intervention work carried out by the team at JUCONI Ecuador, in both Socio Vivienda 2 and San Francisco, has resumed at different times of the day. Initially, groups of ten, then fifteen children, were able to attend meetings outside that gave them the opportunity to express the emotions that they had experienced during the months of confinement. This feedback also helped staff to identify protection strategies in cases where the children felt that they remained in danger due to COVID-19. 

The children were very happy when they returned to their community ‘safe space’ for these meetings, because until then, it was the only place where they had been allowed to go outside their homes. In total, one hundred and eighty-eight boys and girls attended meetings and activities with their peers, as well as thirty two parents at community level and fifty teachers.

In the past, there were no community safe spaces in Socio Vivienda 2 and San Francisco, so JUCONI staff have had to find and adapt available land. In Socio Vivienda 2 for example, a field has gradually been adapted that now includes a roof to protect the children from the sun and wash basins to promote hand washing hygiene. Post lockdown, parents were also committed to helping to clean up this space and to make small changes so that their children could attend the workshops again.

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Keoogo: Increasing the capacity of the ‘Beoogo Tienbo’ nursery school in Burkina Faso

The ‘Beoogo Tienbo’ nursery school in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso is growing as expected, and ICT and its partner Keoogo are extremely pleased to announce that the ‘Grande Section’ was officially opened on the 5th October 2020. This means that a fully-equipped classroom is now available for a group of twenty-four, five year old children. The classroom forms part of  the nursery that provides learning opportunities to seventy-two children living either in the village-shelter with their mothers or in the surrounding community. 

Thanks to the generosity and kindness of Bournemouth North Rotary Club, Keoogo has been able to acquire the necessary educational materials, equipment and furniture for the classroom and an instructor has been recruited to teach the children in Year 1. In addition, a roof has been added to an area of the playground so that all the children in the village can play safely in the shade. 

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Chiedza Child Care Centre: Success story from the out-of-school programme in Zimbabwe

Danai is currently studying for a degree in Peace and Governance at Bindura University of Science Education in Zimbabwe. In the future she hopes to attain a first-class degree because it will enable her to become a policy analyst for an international non-government organisation. This is her story.

In 2015, Danai had to drop out of school due to health issues and because her parents were  unable to support her financially. In 2016, a community volunteer approached her mother and told her about the non-formal education programme run by Chiedza, and she agreed that her daughter could enrol on it so that she could return to the education system again. 

Thanks to Chiedza, Danai’s  school fees were paid and this gave her access to computers for her coursework. She was also helped with hygiene products, clothes, stationery and even food. In 2017, she sat her ‘O’ level exams and passed in six subjects. This enabled her to progress to higher level courses and with the continued support of Chiedza, she sat her ‘A’ level exams in Mbare in 2019 and was successful. Danai also benefited from Chiedza’s special ‘English Access Micro-Scholarship Programme’ where she attended classes in ‘life skills’. The motivational speakers that came to Chiedza inspired her to think about a more positive future and today Danai concludes that “the Chiedza Child Care Centre transformed my life from being very hard to something special.”

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SARTHI: Education for poor households of migrant workers in Bihar, India

In Bihar, we support twenty families of migrant workers and are taking measures to help to get their school-age children back into education. 

In October 2020, we visited a village in Maner, Patna and met with teachers, families and members of the Panchayati Raj Institution, a rural local governing council, since schools were still closed. An orientation workshop was later delivered to the families of the children whose reintegration into education is sponsored by ICT. During the session, we talked to parents about children’s rights and the benefits of continued education to help break the intergenerational cycle of poverty. In rural areas, girls often finish their education early in order to do domestic work, care for their siblings or get married; and boys are more likely to become involved in child labour and encouraged to migrate from their villages for work. On this occasion, we distributed educational materials such as notebooks, pens, pencils, rubbers and pencil sharpeners to thirty-two children to motivate them to do some work at home and to prepare for their return to school. 

In mid-November we held a teacher training programme at the Bhawani Tola Middle School in Maner, one of our partner schools in this programme. This was led by two members of staff from our partner SARTHI, and attended by the headteacher and six teachers from the school. The theme of this programme was ‘Children’s Rights and the Education of Marginalised Children, Especially those of Migrant Workers During the Covid-19 Pandemic’.

We began with a discussion around different articles from the ‘UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’ and the ‘Right to Education Act in India’. Staff from the school agreed that the education of the children had been severely disrupted and were keen to identify ways in which we could work together to readmit and reintegrate the children to ensure their continuing education during the pandemic.

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SERVE: Disruption of education in Sri Lanka

‘Saplings’ pre-school was closed from mid-March to mid-August to keep in line with new rules and regulations set out by the Government of Sri Lanka due to the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. During this period, pupils were given workbooks and notebooks by their teachers so that under the guidance of their parents, they could get involved in some activities at home.  In addition, their teachers kept in touch with parents in order to monitor the children’s development and safety.

In mid-August, ‘Saplings’ was able to reopen as permitted by Government regulations. This meant that the body temperature of each pupil was checked before he or she could enter the school and rules around regular hand washing, wearing a mask and social distancing were adhered to. During this time pupils engaged in writing, drawing, painting, singing, dancing and playing indoor/outdoor games. The children truly enjoyed meeting their friends again and playing together. The school continued to function in this way until 2nd October, when once more, the Government decided to close all pre-schools and schools to reduce the effects of the second wave of Covid-19.

The school remains closed but a teacher makes visits to the home of each pupil and via one-to-one tuition guides them towards activities that they can complete at home. Story books, paper, colour pencils, clay and other school materials are also supplied. In addition, parents are briefed on the rights of children and the need to remain tolerant and kind during the lockdown period. 

Due to the situation in the country, the annual school concert may not happen this year, but a small graduation ceremony is expected to be held in 2021 for the pupils leaving ‘Saplings’ to start primary school. At the time of writing, the Government is yet to grant permission to reopen pre-schools in this area as they are situated in the high risk Colombo District of the Western Province of Sri Lanka.

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Chiedza Child Care Centre: National plans for reopening schools in Zimbabwe

Like many other educational organisations, Chiedza Out-of-School programme has been disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic and children have been unable to attend school for seven months. This has been particularly hard for the children as most primary learners, for example, live with caregivers who do not have phones so contact with them was impossible.

When some lockdown restrictions were lifted in July, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education gave permission for examination classes to run from the 28th July. Chiedza therefore reopened its doors to examination level students for two days per week to allow face-to-face interaction between students and teachers. Secondary learners were given a series of home-study packs to work on, which were later marked and returned to them for revision purposes. 

This timetable helped the children to stay in touch with their teachers and to focus on their studies. Twelve students will be sitting their ‘O’ level exams from the 1st of December and four students for their ‘A’ level exams from the 3rd of December.

During September, Chiedza developed its own standard operating procedure in order to remain compliant with the new regulations set out by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education. Training also took place for staff, learners and parents; and this was run by Medecins Sans Frontières and Harare City Health Department. In addition, the team acquired Personal Protective Equipment for use by everyone on the school premises. As a result of the Ministry’s school reopening plan, Chiedza has been able to readmit children in different phases for the last three months. The first group of learners allowed to return were the fourteen secondary level students sitting national exams in December. Level 3 students, Grades 6 and 7, returned on the 26th of October and the remainder returned on the 9th of November. The school day for primary aged children has been adjusted to ending at 1pm rather than 4pm in order to minimise contact during playtime and informal socialising at the school gates.