Hello again

Last week I was back at school after my bout of sickness and looking for something constructive to do. My project, GCDC, has been running perfectly well with just me and Bethan teaching out there, but suddenly we had a huge influx of volunteers and there were now 7 of us.

Beth and I came up with the idea of an assessment for the kids with a view to splitting the younger class. It's very hard to teach 40 kids with such a wide range of abilities. Some would be finished quickly and asking for more work, whilst others were not getting the attention they needed to improve their knowledge and learn the basics. The whole situation was very frustrating and so with the 3rd classroom out there nearing completion it seemed like a good idea. It also means that when new kids start there is some sort of yardstick by which they can be assessed and put into the relevant class.

We devised a basic assessment based around numbers and letters and spent the better part of last week pulling the kids out of the class one by one. There is absolutely no correlation between age and ability and for most of the kids you need to add about 5 years onto how old you think they look!

On Wednesday we were asked by the volunteer co-ordinator if we would like to go out to the other projects and assess all the kids at these also. So on Friday we headed out to New Hope to see what it's like before starting there this week.

New Hope is a community centre in a very poor village. It has a school, medical room and also teaches basic skills like cooking, sewing and beauty with a view to helping people to get jobs. The village has lots of problems associated with low socio-economic standards, including prostitution and domestic violence. Whilst visiting on Friday I was handed a baby and asked for $4 for him, which seemed quite a good price so I decided not to haggle (Joking!). The lady who runs the project had to go running after the mother to get her to take her child back as she ran off. I was more concerned with the fact that there was no nappy (too expensive) and the child may wee or poo on me.

Assessing there should certainly be fun!!

Saturday night we all went out for a birthday celebration and Sunday I did more cooking.