Life is a Journey

We had fun in our Life Skills group (for the children in Grade 6 and older) this week! We are starting a chapter about choices and decision-making, so we took some ‘time-out’ to play a game called ‘The Journey’.

Three teams competed to see who could complete their ‘journey’ first, with choices having to be made at five strategic points along the way. The message of the game is that your choices determine how successful your life journey is – so choose wisely!

The children had a lot of fun…and hopefully learnt something too.

What is Literacy?

After School Program (ASP) started for the third (and last) term on 8 September. This week we had a visit from Philippa, a teacher from Australia who is visiting friends here. Philippa talked to the volunteers about her experience in the Accelerated Literacy system used in Australia to help children struggling at school because English is not their first language.

Of course, that is a challenge that many of the children at ASP have to contend with. So we were very interested to learn about the different components of literacy, and how to help the children grasp them.

Philippa explained how to use the system when reading books to the children, and how to tailor it to different ages and/or ability levels. It certainly held OUR attention – and we all rather enjoyed the book she chose (“The Bear’s Lunch”)!

Philippa then demonstrated with different groups of children at the ASP so the volunteers could see how it works in practice.
We’re very thankful she took her holiday time to teach us some new skills!

Botswana, here we come!

At the end of October, members of EBCAIDS will travel to Gaborone, to network with Flying Mission Botswana.

Flying Mission, as its name implies, is involved in flying (airplanes that is)! It works closely with the Ministry of Health and is also involved in HIV-AIDS programs and activities. We’ve met some of the Flying Mission personnel at different SIM workshops and, as we shared experiences, have seen that the context of HIV and AIDS in our two countries is quite similar. So as we visit the various projects that Flying Mission contributes to, we hope to discuss ideas and see how we can learn from each other.