Land and bricks….

Hello from South Africa! Things with the Uta Community Center are picking up speed. The Community Development Forum and the Induna (local representative of the chief) have held a meeting on Monday to approve the location that our committee had recommended for the center. On Saturday, 5 September, the CDF and the Induna will introduce the official site to the community. Next, our committee will work with the CDF to apply for land rights from the Tribal Authority. This has been a learning process for us in terms of South African and community politics and legal matters.

Our committee has been working hard to compare local builders in order to decide what is the best route to take for the construction of the center. Right now, the group is in the process of comparing estimates from two local builders and gathering information about the cost versus quality of a variety of building materials. The next step will be to organize a plan for local labor.

While attending a local government meeting we were told that November’s community meeting is planned to be held inside of the community hall, so this is further inspiration for us to keep moving and further proof that the community is eagerly awaiting completion of this project. We are looking forward to beginning construction by the end of the month and continue working on programs that will be held inside of the community center.

Shangaan phrase of the day: U nga vileli, u tsaka – Don’t worry, be happy.

Peer teaching for Grade 8 begins

Peer teaching for Grade 8 begins

We have been working with several outstanding Grade 10 and 11 students: Tumelo, Ethel, Samson, and Thulani to create a curriculum based on the Resource booklet for the Grade 8 and 9 learners.  After looking through the booklet, they decided that it was essential to work with some of the younger students to advise them on topics such as choosing subjects and careers.  For example, if a student chooses the wrong subjects to study in Grades 10-12, he or she may not be able to be accepted to some universities or study what they want.  Other information such as writing CVs and application letters along with FET Colleges (essentially trade schools that one can attend starting in Grade 9) was worked into the curriculum for Grade 8.

Implementing the train-the-trainers model, we worked for several weeks teaching Tumelo, Ethel, Samson, and Thulani all the information necessary from the Resource booklet.  Each of them is in charge of teaching a section, and worked to practice teaching it back to us.  The improvements in their teaching were amazing as they tended to simply read off the paper at the beginning and then become more comfortable teaching the material, involving the class, etc.

The four of them were in charge of organizing it with the teachers at Manyangana and decided to teach during the period of study time at the end of the say.  They organized the schedule and set everything up to teach Grades 8A, 8B, and 8C so each of them had one class per day and then rotated.  It was amazing to watch them take charge of the class – how nervous they were at first and how comfortable and confident they became.   The Grade 8 learners surprisingly respected them and for the most part listened and took notes or did activities when instructed to. Grade 8A even asked them to come back and do another review or teach more material. They are planning to repeat the structure with the Grade 9 learners.  It’s really exciting to see the students taking charge to help motivate their peers and teach them information that could be crucial to their future success.

Posted by David Lamb and Julie Walz, Fellows

We have been working with several outstanding Grade 10 and 11 students: Tumelo, Ethel, Samson, and Thulani to create a curriculum based on the Resource booklet for the Grade 8 and 9 learners.  After looking through the booklet, they decided that it was essential to work with some of the younger students to advise them on topics such as choosing subjects and careers.  For example, if a student chooses the wrong subjects to study in Grades 10-12, he or she may not be able to be accepted to some universities or study what they want.  Other information such as writing CVs and application letters along with FET Colleges (essentially trade schools that one can attend starting in Grade 9) was worked into the curriculum for Grade 8.

Implementing the train-the-trainers model, we worked for several weeks teaching Tumelo, Ethel, Samson, and Thulani all the information necessary from the Resource booklet.  Each of them is in charge of teaching a section, and worked to practice teaching it back to us.  The improvements in their teaching were amazing as they tended to simply read off the paper at the beginning and then become more comfortable teaching the material, involving the class, etc.

The four of them were in charge of organizing it with the teachers at Manyangana and decided to teach during the period of study time at the end of the say.  They organized the schedule and set everything up to teach Grades 8A, 8B, and 8C so each of them had one class per day and then rotated.  It was amazing to watch them take charge of the class – how nervous they were at first and how comfortable and confident they became.   The Grade 8 learners surprisingly respected them and for the most part listened and took notes or did activities when instructed to. Grade 8A even asked them to come back and do another review or teach more material. They are planning to repeat the structure with the Grade 9 learners.  It’s really exciting to see the students taking charge to help motivate their peers and teach them information that could be crucial to their future success.

Grade 10 Scholarship Candidates Nominated by Selection Committee

By David Lamb and Julie Walz, Fellows

The prospect of creating a community based selection committee for a scholarship is to be honest, a bit scary. We’re placing a lot of money and a life changing decision in the hands of a community dominated by family ties and hidden politics. Is it possible to create a group who will objectively come together to select a student to receive a scholarship?

The women’s selection committee in Uta has proven that it is.

One of the goals of the Mundzuku Foundation has always been to make the selection of scholarship recipient community-based. It’s a novel idea, to be sure, but we never wanted to be the ones to choose the student and were convinced that we could find some way to bring the community together. We decided to focus on working with the women in Uta, hoping to empower them and help them come together to make a tangible difference in the lives of youth in their community. We also knew that there was a better chance that women would hold the kids’ interests in mind and would stay in the community year after year to make this a sustainable process.

Then we met Angie. Having started the ladies’ soccer team, Angie is a spunky woman, passionate about empowering women and willing to take charge to get what she wants done. She was a natural leader for the selection committee. She began talking to women, gauging interest, and finding those that should be included on the committee – looking to balance education, family background, and social ties to create the most diverse committee possible. A committee of five women was selected and they began the meetings to determine how they were going to select the top Grade 10 students, one of whom will get to go to a private high school in Nelspruit for two years and then on to University, fully funded.

These women have blown us away. They are running the selection process more smoothly and more objectively than we could have ever done. A meeting was scheduled on Monday where the women checked the marks of all Grade 10 students, selecting the top ten based on overall performance in every subject. They decided to go next for teacher evaluations; asking five different teachers to rank each of the top ten students on a scale from 1 to 10, based on class participation, leadership, and overall character. Adding up the scores from each of the five teachers, the women were able to get a total for each student and able to choose the top six candidates from there. The top six were all girls, and although we were surprised, the women on the committee were not as they told us that girls are consistently at the top of the class at Manyangana. How did they decide to choose the top three from there? They had the girls write application letters to the bursary explaining why they should be chosen, what they want to do in the future, etc. The application letters were read blindly with numbers instead of names so as to keep the process completely objective. The women had Grade 11 and 12 teachers read the applications and using an objective criterion, they were able to select the top three from there. These three candidates are now working on filling out the MAD application and we will soon move forward with the selection of a final recipient.

The most amazing part of this whole selection process is that is has been completely driven by them. The two of us have essentially played no part; sitting as observers at meetings and watching as the women debated what type of Grade 10 student they were looking for and the best way to interview teachers. It’s exciting to watch as these women take charge; fairly and objectively selecting the student whose life they are going to change.

Condoms for all in Manyeleti

Posted by Saul Garlick, Executive Director

In 2007, SMRC hosted its first Global Development Internship. After the life changing and deeply rewarding summer of working with youth in Manyeleti, South Africa, the US students that had joined us had made close friendships across the globe. Among the biggest issues that the GDIs (then known as American Participating Students or “AMPS”) were exposed to and discussed at length was the rapidly spreading HIV/AIDS issues.

When we returned from South Africa that August, we saw a headline for a condom recall in the region where we had been working and continue to work. The recall stated that “Choice Brand” condoms were faulty. The idea of faulty condoms in a high-risk HIV/AIDS region looked like a human rights violation – and we were all devastated. As a response, SMRC sent around a petition for condoms to be donated from quality companies to the community.

This year the condom issue has taken a different, much more promising direction. This summer GDI Trae Watson and the Buffelshoek Trust organized for 60,000 condoms to be donated per month to the community in the effort to combat HIV/AIDS. We are grateful to him and Jasper Watson for their hard work. What an achievement for health!!!

Kayafungo Diaries…

Posted by Saul Garlick, Executive Director

We are in the midst of the second phase of our Global Development Program in Kayafungo, Kenya. As we speak, the students are working hard to complete monitoring work on our past development projects. They are meeting with community members and leaders, teachers, students and partners to understand the impact that the Secondary School we built is having on students lives, to learn how youth are benefiting from the latrines we constructed at 14 schools, to see how behavior has changed in a community that received our Community Health Training workshop programs and finally, to see how families are benefiting from the new water dam built at Katsangani.

The group remains motivated and hard working, and we are excited to
see how their efforts lead to new projects and initiatives that will
continue to create opportunities for others in such a poor, rural
area. Life in the homestays has proven very rewarding and informative, and students have actually been requesting to spend more time in the local homesteads than at our small motel that is 15 km away. The cultural immersion is intense and exciting, and the group has really enjoyed it. Yesterday we spent the school day with the Youth Polytechnic, a wonderful community run school where children learn practical skills (construction, carpentry, metal work, auto repair) so that they may get jobs in the future. This was so inspiring, and we joined them for sports in the afternoon.

Updates from Dixie

The past few weeks have flown by with community members welcoming us with open arms and eagerly teaching us anything they can about life here. For two weeks we spent our mornings putting on a camp for the students while they were on a break from school. We passed the hours teaching lessons in English, math, and computers, and playing games like soccer, tag, and—the biggest hit—kickball. Camp was just as fun for us as it was for the kids who came, and it helped us get to know more of the kids in the village. Camp helped the kids get to know us better, as well. Now, it is almost impossible to walk down the street without hearing my name shouted from all directions. Camp wasn’t the only thing keeping us busy these past few weeks. It was, after all, over at 11:30 every day. Our afternoons were spent completing monitoring and evaluation reports of past SMRC projects in Dixie. To do this, we observed, surveyed, and interviewed community members involved in the projects. Though we found, as expected, that further improvements can be made, it was uplifting to learn that the projects thus far have had positive impacts on the community. In our downtime, we have continued to immerse ourselves in the local way of life and do things we would not normally do at home, like getting barrels of water and wheeling them home, doing laundry outside in buckets, and collecting firewood. A personal highlight from the past few weeks was the day we hosted a braai (similar to a barbeque in the U.S., only instead of using a grill, you cook over a fire) to celebrate Dena’s (one of the interns) birthday. This day was especially noteworthy for me because I had the opportunity to prepare a fresh chicken from kill to cook—something I had never imagined I would do. I am not sure how the experiences to come in the next few weeks will be able to top those I have already had here, though I do have a lot to look forward to. We are all busy planning a soccer tournament/health day event for all of the nearby villages and working to provide after-school tutoring to the students at Manyangana High School in Utha. Additionally, we are all beginning to work on side-projects for our villages. I will be working with Steffi to set up a girls group in Dixie, where preteen and teenage girls can form a circle of trust and discuss common goals. We all plan to be continuously busy, but are excited to get as much done as we can in the next few weeks.

 

–Alissa Schulman, intern

A month in…

Posted by Sarah Whitney and Claire Bristow (Global Development Fellows)

We have been working on the community center in Uta. We have been here in South Africa for a month now and have been spending our time, so far, reintegrating into the community and talking about community ideas for the center. We have been working closely with our local youth partner, Forget Sithole, and many other young people to evaluate local opinion and mobilize the community around their ideas. This is being done through formal interviews in both Shangaan and English and casual conversations among neighbors and friends. These are just the very beginning stages of this development project and we are really looking forward to getting even deeper into it.

We will attend a community meeting this week during which a planning committee will be formed for the community center.  This committee will then be in charge of developing more ideas for the center as well as outlining construction plans.  The committee will be made up of both men and women of all ages and backgrounds in order to be representative of the people of Uta.

In order to reinegrate into Uta life, Sarah and I have both joined the local women’s soccer team. This team has only recently started up through the leadership of a few strong females. Its really nice to see the women out getting exercise and enjoying their time together. We practice each weekday and run on Saturdays. Its so fun to play with our host moms with their little daughters on the sidelines cheering us on! We were imagining how funny it would be to watch our own mothers run around a soccer field, aggressively pushing other women out of their way to score goals! (Hi Mom!)  We think its nice for the women who don’t work to have something to commit to in the evenings, and those who do work, its something nice to change up their routine. This is definitely a good way to get to know more people in Uta and reach out to those who will be an asset to the community center and also a good way for us to make even more friends in Uta.

Shangaan word for the day: Nhlampfi – Fish

Mundzuku Scholarship Project Update

One of the two goals of the Mundzuku Scholarship Project was to create a sustainable peer-to-peer mentoring structure at the local high school led by our youth partner Tumelo. The structure, as developed by Tumelo, is that a core group of students is formed and comes together to gather information and learn everything they can about the university application process, the bursary (scholarships) application process, and how to write quality applications. The idea is that then this core group of students will actually do workshops with their classmates in the various grades.
This was the goal and the structure that we developed in coordination with Tumelo in the last 9 months prior to arriving in South Africa. But if you’ve ever done development work you know that you can prepare for years but until you get on the ground and do your reassessments with your local partners you never know how the project is going to go. We had no way of knowing if Tumelo would find enough interest to form that core group of students.
Fortunately, Tumelo is an amazingly motivated individual and by the time we had our first meeting with him he brought along two other students, Ethel and Samson, who he wanted to form the leadership of the peer-mentoring structure. In this meeting all three students were passionate about helping their fellow students and themselves achieve some type of higher education. With the leadership formed, the project has an amazing start and our full peer-mentoring structure is starting to take form.

- David Lamb and Julie Walz

Makrepeni GDI-Halfway Point!

We are halfway done with the internship and time has really just flown by! We have all been finishing up our “Monitoring and Evaluating” reports about the past SMRC projects in Makrepeni. For these reports we have looked at the Communtity Center/Creche, Samson Primary School Library, and Samson Primary School Computer Lab and through observation and interviews we have determined whether they have met their original goals. Unfortunately, progress has been slow and many of the improvements from last year have fallen apart. We are spending the next three weeks on our own small projects to once again improve these places. Camps are over now; the kids had a blast at field day and hopefully learned a lot during our education classes. Another main focus of the next few weeks is the planning of the Soccer for Real Change Soccer Tournament 2009. We have been organizing the soccer tournament/health day for August 1st at in Utha. We are trying to get some big name sponsors for food and water and money to buy other resources like soccer balls and jerseys. It should be a very fun and exciting day filled with sports and education, raising awareness about HIV/AIDS and getting tested. We have done a few things for fun in the past weeks. A group of twelve went to the Djuma Game Reserve last Tuesday for one night and the remaining people go this Tuesday. The first group had a great time on safari, taking showers, and eating great food! Our retreat to Hazyview has been rescheduled for next week and we are all looking forward to that as well. On Saturday we threw a big braai (barbeque) for all the interns and stuffed ourselves with beef and Boer worst…mmm! It is hard to believe there is less than a month left, but we are having a great time and learning a lot!

Groups focus on goals for final weeks

Interns have now decided on fellow and non-fellow tracks within the GDI program.  Non-fellow projects within Makrepeni range from tidying up the library at Samson, adding new mice to the computers in Samson, minor fixes to rainwater project at Makrepeni community center, clean-up of office area in community center, trash pick up and creating a check out system in the library at Samson to encourage more use.