NIHEP supports the most
vulnerable children in Lwanhima ward. In 2018 NIHEP did home visits for
families and noticed that there were many children who don’t know how to read,
write and count, even though they are already at std. 3. NIHEP discussed about
the situation with the teachers and they told about the challenges during
previous years concerning the fact that the children are not allowed to recap a
class even if they haven’t acquired the necessary skills. They also said that
there can be over 200 students in one class which makes it very difficult to
follow each student individually. In addition families are poor and some
parents are illiterate so they can’t support their children. Some children
don’t attend to school regularly because they are not encouraged to do so at
home.
NIHEP started to plan
with the teachers what could be done to help these 68 identified illiterate children.
It was decided that three teachers will give extra lessons for the illiterate
children every day during six months. NIHEP promised to get fund for the
project if the teachers develop a plan on how to minimize the illiteracy
problem in the future. NIHEP collected the money with the help of their Finnish
interns Susanna Karasti, Elina Laine and Johanna Selin. The teachers came up
with a plan to provide extra teaching in reading, writing and counting for
those standard 1 and 2 students, who have not proceeded as expected. They also
decided to add two more teachers to standard 1, so now there are three instead
of one.
The goal of the project
is that all these illiterate children will learn the reading, writing and
counting skills by the end of six months. NIHEP will co-operate with the
teachers and the community during the project in order to improve the
sustainability of the results. To get the parents involved into the program
NIHEP organized an event called “Parents’ Saturday” for the families. By being
able to read, write and count the children will have a chance to educate
themselves and more possibilities in the future.
