Pre-school students

Beauty Kabwe is five-years old, with a lingering grin and almond-shaped eyes. She's polite, a natural leader and a clown, doing impressions and hamming it up to make the other kids laugh. She's a gifted dancer, and is always the first to tie a citenge around her hips when there's drumming and singing.

She's the last-born child of her family, being raised alone by her mother after her father's death. She helps her mother by drawing water, sweeping and harvesting in the fields.

(L to R: Muso, Beauty, and Mapalo)

Most kids are unable or unmotivated to continue school past grade 7, and end up as subsistence farmers like their parents. However, Beauty's older sister works in Kasama and an older brother attends grade 10 outside the village. Beauty, too, is smart. She started pre-school six months ago, after talking excitedly for several months about going to school. She's learned to count quickly and her mother proudly told me that she writes her numbers and letters very well. It's true. She even helps other children when they have trouble.

I persuaded Muso and Mapalo, or banabwinga and bashibwinga (husband and wife; I swear those kids are going to get married one day), to start attending the school a month ago. Muso and Mapalo are the two equally mischevious children that always find their ways into my blogs. Mapalo picks up really fast with writing too. Often children who are just learning have trouble reversing their letters or getting the shapes right, but I've watched Mapalo get them right on his first try.

Musonda, also five-years old, is Ba Allan's niece and another pre-school student. She also is not an OVC, but her aunt and uncle passed away from AIDS, a contributing factor to Ba Allan's HIV activism.

Musonda is a little shy but a natural model. This photo shoot was actually a riot. Chris got out his camera and Musonda immediately started posing with her hands on her chin. She changed her position and facial expression slightly with each shot. Chris in turn starts shooting her from all different angles. I'm afraid her brothers and cousins, behind her, got neglected.

Pre-school

The Mumana Lupando

Pre-school for Orphaned

and Vulnerable Children

Nicole Barren
The Condensed Version:

Our counterparts, Ba Allan and Ba Catherine, are volunteer teachers at this free pre-school. The students range in age from 2 1/2 to 6 years old, and are mostly orphans or from families with HIV or other chronic illnesses. I go often to help teach, have made some learning materials, and suggest new teaching methodologies. I've also arranged for the teachers to attend a workshop on early childhood education. It's important to note, however, that this pre-school functioned before I arrived and will continue after I leave.

The children have regular attendance, which is pretty rare in Zambian villages, are eager to learn, and come wearing their best church clothes. This is the only educational opportunity they have before age 7, when they can enter grade 1 at basic school. Most children seem to start school years later than that though. A lot of the first-graders look to be about ten or eleven years old. This is a shame because the early years are a formative part of a child's development, and studies have shown that children who attend pre-school and kidnergarden are better prepared and learn more effectively when they enter school, and even puts them at an advantage years later in life.

Since 2007, the pre-school has been using a cramped, abandoned general store as a classroom. The problems with this arrangement are many. The shack is located in the center of the village, where the men drink home-brewed beer, there’s always a radio powered by a car battery blaring, and older children duck in and out to satisfy their own curiosity. Adding to the distractions, there are no chairs or desks, and children crouch together on pieces of broken brick. The floor is dirt, and in the absence of a blackboard, functions as a slate upon which to practice writing letters and numbers. There’s no locking door, so the learning aids utilized by the teachers are restricted to what they can carry in and out each day. During harvest time, traders squat in the building, forcing the school to meet outside. Finally, the students are orphaned or from families dealing with HIV or other chronic illnesses, so they especially are prone to fall through the cracks. The pre-school functions to instill in them an early love for learning and prepare them for basic school, but it’s difficult to impress upon them the importance of education and their own self-worth when they’re learning in a dilapidated, ill-suited classroom.

Additionally, expansion of the programme is impossible without a larger facility. With a new building, the teachers could separate the students into classes by age, increase enrollment so that a fraction of the village's 300 other children could receive the same opportunity, and utilize new teaching methods and materials.

The community has agreed to donate local building materials, labor, and equipment to construct a new school building. However, as subsistence farmers, each family survives on only about $40 a year, so they can only contribute gifts-in-kind. The remaining money will come from US donors, through the Peace Corps Partnership Programme. We will need $4000.

This is my plea to you to help my village educate its children. Soon Peace Corps Washington will set up a website so that I can accept donations. Please help me by telling your friends, colleagues, church groups, clubs, and schools. I know times are difficult now in the US with the economy, but these children have it so much harder. Every little bit helps- especially because every little bit stretches a lot farther in Africa.

The Long Version: Copied from my proposal
Background InformationThe village of Mumana Lupando is located eighty-five kilometers west of Kasama, in the Munkonge chiefdom. Approximately 3,200 people reside in the village proper, an area of about 5 km². With the exception of four GRZ (public school) teachers, all adults in the village are subsistence farmers, with an average yearly income of ZMK 200,000 (USD$40).
Around 65% of all children aged seven and above attend grades one through seven at Mumana Lupando Basic School. 241 boys and 201 girls are currently enrolled. Attendance is often sporadic, dipping during planting and harvest time when children are needed to work in the fields. Teachers as well frequently take unauthorized leaves during the term, so illiteracy rates in even the upper grades are high.
In the villages surrounding Mumana Lupando, there is no existing formal education for children prior to grade one. Children often don’t begin school until around age seven to age ten, leaving a gap in preliminary education attained during their formative years, which puts them at a disadvantage. Since September 2007, the Mumana Youth Care and Supporting Group has partially filled the void for pre-school education in the village. Around 80 orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) aged two through six attend the weekly three-hour long class, taught by the group’s chairwoman and secretary. In Mumana Lupando, families in which parents are deceased or chronically ill, struggle with poverty to a greater extent than the rest of the village. OVCs are less likely to attend school due to a lack of funds, support and encouragement. The pre-school was established to rally around the village’s most disadvantaged children and foster in them an early love for learning, so they would be more likely to enter and excel at Mumana Lupando Basic School.
The Mumana Youth Care and Supporting Group (MYCSG) was established in 2000 with help from the Northern Health Education Programme, a local NGO located in Kasama. MYCSG’s goals are:
· To sensitize the youth and general public on HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention.
· To correct misconceptions about the transmission of HIV, including the overemphasis on superficial blood contact.
· To discourage the stigmatization of individuals living with HIV and AIDS.
· To support OVCs in education and enable them to develop an interest in learning before they reach grade one.
· To promote good nutrition for OVCs and HIV+ individuals.
MYCSG is registered with Kasama local council and is comprised of twelve members and an executive board of a chairwoman, secretary, and treasurer. The group meets weekly and has established itself as the most active philanthropic group in the community. It accomplishes its goals through organizing educational events for the observation of World AIDS and Voluntary Counseling and Testing Days, conducts mobile VCT, and has worked hand-in-hand with two generations of Peace Corps volunteers for HIV/AIDS sensitization. It provides home-based care for nineteen HIV+ individuals and their families and conducts monthly growth monitoring for over one hundred children under age five. It dabbles in environmental conservation, and especially conservation farming techniques like permaculture gardening which can improve nutrition for at-risk families. It also has established a piggery to provide vulnerable families with protein. Taking into account MYCSG’s previous activities, excellent organization, and commitment to the community, MYCSG is perfectly capable of managing the activities outlined in this proposal.
The Project
The aim of this project is to construct a 16 x 6 m classroom block so that the children can have a larger, stable, comfortable, and quiet learning environment. It will be furnished with a blackboard and stools, located in a quiet section of the village away from the main road, and will have a locking door so that learning materials can be stored safely. The community has pledged to donate everything they can short of money, which they don’t have to give. Instead, they are donating building equipment such as shovels, wheelbarrows, and trowels; local building materials like crushed stone, sand, bricks, and clay; and labor to prepare the local materials and construct the school. It also speaks about the motivation of the community that they began molding bricks for this project in early June, four months before the project is set to begin.

The $4,000 needed to buy building materials will hopefully be donated by friends and family in the US, through a Peace Corps Partnership Programme.







Community Need

This project is important because education is vital to development. A strong, early foundation obtained during the formative years of a child’s life will put him at an advantage later in life. A child who attends pre-school will be more likely to continue to basic school and excel. He may continue to upper basic school and university, or he may remain in the village and use his knowledge to improve his family’s health, nutrition, and quality of life. The community needs skilled, educated people to break the cycle of poverty and this foundation and early emphasis on education is the first step.
The more rural a community, the less likely it is they will have a pre-school. Mumana Lupando will be the first community in the region to properly address the issue of pre-school education. In this way, the village can serve as an inspiration to surrounding communities and ignite positive change. The community has proven its support of the pre-school since its inception in 2007. The current classroom, an unused tuck shop, was donated by a local businessman. The children’s attendance is regular and punctual and encouraged by their parents and caretakers. The teachers at the GRZ school have offered encouragement and suggestions, and the school’s founders strive to improve the quality of the school. The community definitely recognizes the value of pre-school education. If the project is not implemented, the pre-school program will continue to function at minimal effectiveness. Enrollment will not increase to the desired 120 students, and only OVCs will benefit from the program. The children will continue to learn in a cramped, unstable environment with many distractions, so that they won’t absorb all of the material they are taught. The teachers will be unable to utilize new learning aids and teaching methodologies, because the classroom is too small and they can’t store materials in the current classroom due to the risk of weather damage or theft.

Project Sustainability

Through this project’s implementation, MYCSG members will gain budgeting and money management skills, and managerial and planning skills. These new skills can help them plan their own household budgets or other group projects, including IGAs. The whole community will receive sensitization on the importance of pre-school education. Few people understand exactly why it is that early childhood education is so important, and I would like to use this project as a platform to promote learning at home, not just when children are in the classroom. Also, this project presents the opportunity for young adults to learn about construction under the supervision of older, skilled members of the community.
This project will increase the aptitude of the three teachers to teach. A more spacious and distraction-free classroom will leave students more attentive and receptive, while a locking door means they can use learning aids. This project will be carried out after a SPA-funded five-day training of the volunteer teachers by the Pre-school Teacher Training College, which will give them the knowledge to make the most of their new classroom.