This week started a bit slowly with work in my office at UB, but the pace picked up on Wednesday when I observed the first Youth Achievers meeting of the new term at Naledi Senior Secondary School. Youth Achievers is an after school leadership development program run by the 2017 cohort of Mandela Washington Fellows. 30 Form 4 (equivalent to grade 11 in the U.S. system) learners were chosen through an essay application process. They will spend an hour on Wednesdays through November being mentored on a variety of topics including communication, community development, health and nutrition, environmental issues and business and money. The culminating activity is to make a business pitch to the group. As this was the first session, there were intros and an ice breaker. Learners were tasked with lining up, without talking, in order of birthdays. The Fellows leading this first session (Koketso, Ditiro and Peo Neo) generated a lot of excitement in the group about what is to come. On Thursday I spent the day at Livingstone Kolobeng College (actually a Senior Secondary School), observing Geography and Development Studies classes. The Geography class was having an interactive lecture on Coastal Processes and the Development Studies class was discussing the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (precursor to the Sustainable Development Goals). The principal at Livingstone Kolobeng chatted me up for an hour plus on personal educational and cultural observations she has made here in Botswana. She is from India, but has lived here for more than 40 years. Thursday I also interviewed Dorothy from Young 1ove. Young 1ove is an NGO working hand-in-hand with several Botswana government ministries to deliver two evidence-based programs using trained peer educators. Zones focuses on HIV/AIDS and teen pregnancy prevention while Teaching at the Right Level focuses on closing the gap between educational access and educational quality. Dorothy herself has a compelling story. She first came to Botswana at age 4 with her family as a political refugee from Uganda and spent several years living in a refugee camp. While attending university in Namibia, basketball became her physical and psychological outlet. Today, she's not only an international basketball referee, but an international activist holding a Master's Degree in Social Work. Read more about Dorothy in this NPR article. I spent time on Saturday with Lesogo from the Gogontlejang Phaladi Pillar of Hope Project. Lesogo explained her volunteer work with two GPPH projects, one focused on educating young women about the age of consent and the other, SIMI Movement, on the mentoring of young girls. Their age of consent work has similarities to the work of Young 1ove, but with a particular emphasis on self-esteem. The "sugar daddy" phenomenon is alive and well in Botswana. Younger girls, especially girls with low income or low self-esteem, date older men in exchange for money and gifts. Those "gifts" may include HIV/AIDS and/or pregnancy. Friday was the World ICT Day event at Nare Sereto Junior Secondary School in Gabane, with a special theme of Girls in ICT. Gloria, the ICT teacher Tebatso and I have been collaborating with, picked me up before 6 a.m. We dropped her husband Ernest off at his communications job with the Botswana Defense Force (BDF) and headed to school. The school was already abuzz with activity with the sun barely up. Teachers bossed learners around, per usual. Sweep the tent, carry chairs out of the classrooms and line them up and so on. I kept trying to help and being told no, the learners do the work! I was finally allowed to help the teachers cut small pieces of colorful fabric to make special VIP pins.
Soon the VIPs began to arrive and waited patiently in the computer lab while the DJ's catchy tunes blasted from the tent area. Finally (more than an hour late), the VIPs were escorted to their seats in the tent, looking out at learners, staff and parents assembled in front of them in chairs. This event, like all I have attended in Botswana, had a long, formal program with lots of speeches and began and ended with a prayer. The overall purpose was to excite the learners, especially girls, about career opportunities in the ICT field. We heard from the School Head, Gloria as the chief organizer, officials from the Ministry of Education, representatives of two of the companies exhibiting at the event (including one that recently donated the first SMART Board to the school), and a female Computer Science professor from the University of Botswana, with an intermission provided by a student musical group (video below). After the formal program, the new SMART Board was demonstrated in the computer lab, all were free to visit a handful of technology related exhibits in the school hall, and a traditional lunch buffet was served to the VIPs, school staff and select learners. Most of the learners received the normal school lunch before undertaking all of the clean-up duties. The "feeding" was one aspect of the program that Gloria has been worried about for weeks. The school had no budget for the event, so everything needed to be donated. She finally found a donor for the food just this past week. If Batswana come to an event like this, they expect to be fed! When Tebatso and I first started coming to Nare Sereto, it was because he and his NGO, Banabakgwale Association have "adopted" the school and assist with the ICT Club on Thursdays after school. He believed that the school would be a good location not only for me to conduct a survey, but also to engage learners in a global dialogue with Stillwater students, all related to my Fulbright Inquiry Project. Our hope was that the Nare Sereto ICT Club learners would record their contribution to the global dialogue (we are using Flipgrid) at this World ICT Day event. Well ... as you can imagine with the long formal program, and it starting late and the general hub bub of the day and Gloria being overwhelmed with preparations, this didn't happen. So ... I hope to return to Nare Sereto this coming week to seal the deal, but my time is getting short.
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About MeA 9th grade AP Human Geography and Global Studies teacher at Stillwater Area High School in Stillwater, Minnesota, USA, living and learning in Gaborone, Botswana from January to June 2019 as a Fulbright Teacher. Archives
June 2019
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