Metta Centre, Nepal

Our princesses enjoy a day out after a long period of examinations. Their expectedly high results are due in a week's time.

Nigeria, Pam's visit.

Report of trip to Nigeria

[13th March – 5th April 2007]

By Pamela McLean

 

A very big thank you to British Airways for making this possible.

 

The trip lasted just over three weeks.  It was an opportunity to advance some existing voluntary work (relating to ICT training for teachers and trainer) to observe and support some long term projects, to learn more about some recent collaborations, and to renew and strengthen other contacts.

 

This report could easily become a long list of names, dates and places – so I will simply focus on three main locations – and mention a few events in some detail.  At the centre of the trip was the Teachers Talking (TT) course hosted by Fantsuam Foundation at Kafanchan.  Previous TT courses have been attended by local participants only, but the project is getting better known. This course attracted participants from various other states as well.  The ones I know by name were Oyo, Plateau, and Cross River. 

 

One of the participants (from Oyo State) was Pastor David Adesokan, manager of the OCDN (Oke-Ogun Community Development Network) project in Oyo State.  The week before the course I spent time with him visiting various locations and people connected with OCDN.  We renewed our contacts with Ibadan University Distance Learning Department and discovered excellent overlap between their future plans for teachers and work we have started.  We look forward to closer future collaboration.

 

During our programme of visits and meetings I was also able to act as an intermediary between teachers in Oyo State and a couple of schools that I have started linking with in the UK.  I have given feedback to one of the UK teachers since returning and we have already agreed our next step in building links and understanding.  At Iseyin I presented the Information Centre Committee with a gift of £60, from “A Ray of Hope”, towards a new printer, which was much appreciated.  We also met with teachers in Ago-Are and Okeho.  One of the teachers I met in Ago-Are is now teaching infants in Igbeti. She uses songs to start teaching English to the children – English is the language they will be taught in – not Yoruba which is their mother tongue.  I want to visit her in school some time with a video camera.  Her songs give both English and Yoruba vocabulary.  They could be good to share with pupils over here when I do my visits, as pupils are often interested in other languages.

 

After Oyo State, and Kafanchan, I was the guest of Caroline Ifeka of REIWA (Rural Empowerment Initiative with West Africa) and travelled with her to River State to see first hand the work REIWA is doing in nomadic schools with marginalised pastoralist communities.  (The field officer for the programme was a TT participant at Kafanchan the previous week.)  the various projects have overlapping interests and I am the link between them, and also the link from them to others (enabling collaboration and the sharing of ideas and expertise)

 

A small incident particularly stands in my mind as something to share with UK pupils.  Early one morning two schoolgirls called at the house where I was staying.  They were clearly distressed.  It was the start of school exams and any pupils who have outstanding debts to their school (fees etc) are not allowed to sit exams.  One of the girls had been taking in 500 Naira.  (This sum is only a little over £2 – but is more than some petty traders can earn for a full days work).  The girl had lost the money, and had come to see the house holder to ask if she could labour on his farm later, in return for a loan of 500 Niara.  When she discovered he had already left the house she was distraught.  Fortunately I was able to ask my companion to tell me what was happening and so I was able to give her the money she needed.

 

The trip was useful on many levels both for progressing the various projects in practical ways and for generally increasing understanding between my contacts in Nigeria and those in the UK.

 

Due to unforeseen circumstances the trip agenda had to be modified but nevertheless so much was achieved.

 

 

Mozyr, Belarus

Report of visit to Mozyr, Belarus, including photographs of art competition, diagnostics school, ecological centre, school 7 and much more.

http://www.unesco.8m.com/Mozyrapril2007/index.htm

Company Support

Thank you to Roch Valley, Pictorial Charts, Heaton's Lurgan and British Airways.

Nepal Metta Centre

 

Nepal Metta Centre

 

Hi Don,

 

Your lovely daughters just finished their final term exam yesterday.  And they became very wild today as the pressure of exam over. So today is fun day ...saturday ......remembering you. 

During exam monsters were busy with their studies for pass few weeks so I did not disturb them ...only provide them what they need ........Your gift of Light is the most valuable things for their studies...as light was the most important for their studies during the night.

 

Meanwhile, other big monster...Binita is going to sit the O/L exam from this Monday........   while Renu next week at her college.  So what we can do for both of them? Educational support or any?

 

Love from monsters

Piya

Uganda - Cambridge School Seguya

 

Uganda Cambridge School Seguya

 

Dear Vickie and Don,

 

I hope you continue to do fine.

 

I delivered the trophies to Cambridge College yesterday and they were grateful as you will see in the letter below from the Headmaster. I took a few photos of the school team recieving the trophies and with the trophies and goats they won in the tournaments recently held. Unfortunately, there is trouble with the camera I used and I can't read the photos off.

 

I was unable to send the T.Shirts given to you by the school as I got to know that Vickie sent visitors after they had already left.

 

The 85 pounds sent to buy the piglets and ducks also arrived and is in the hands of the librarians. If you'll agree, I would like all this money to purchase piglets as when I made my survey, I got just one person interested in ducks. This made me feel that piglets would be more meaningful to the people than ducks. In a short period of time, these should be bought and supplied to the reciepients. 

 

As I mentioned in one of my communications to you, we are to make agreements with the reciepients that they passon a piglet to us to be given to another person once the one they recieved has given birth and weaned off its first young ones. The librarians have agreed to this and will identify serious pontential people within their learners to recieve the piglets. I will also identify around three pontetial people outside the library users.    

 

See below the letter from Zziwa Vicent.

 

Dear Mr. Ambassador,

 

Thanks very much for the nice trophies you sent to us. The students and staff of the college were really very happy for the gesture.

 

You patronage, prayers, and love towards our college have made us to reach high levels of success in both academics and sports. The college perfomed well in last year's national examinations at both "O" and "A" levels.

 

In sports, we emerged 1st ou of the 20 schools in the competition we held in our zone. We won 2 trophies from the Cocacola National Post Primary Cup, and we hope to carry on with the victory until we win the National Cup for this year.

 

The student community wishes to have your flag and proudly walk with it during the matches. May you please send it to us.

 

We also wish to kindly request you to contact us to other schools and where possible to get us used football and netball jerseys.

 

Wishing you a happy Easter.

Zziwa Vicent

 

Beautiful times and best wishes,

Seguya 

Hungary

Melanie delivers baby clothes and miscellaneous items to Hungary

Nigeria

Presentation for Positive Citizenship Module

 

 

The trophy and certificate were presented to Mr. Chuikpai Okwara, the best participant from Umuahia at the first module of Values for positive citizenship in Lagos,  at Enugu state by a member of NiPRO (Mr. Ayodele Aiyegbusi).