Written by Zanzibar intern, Lauren Lennon
Education and Empowerment (June)
As the end of Ramadan is approaching we are busy getting ready for a new year of Conservation Club in Kizimkazi. Conservation Club is an activity-based lesson for teenagers aged 13-16. We bring the excited students out of class and into their amazing environment where we teach them about the world around them through games and experiments. Each student has to apply to join the club with a short paragraph about their local hero. Our lessons are on every Thursday for two hours and topics range from biodiversity to pollution. Conservation Club has grown in popularity immensely since it started two years ago! We now have an eager 35-40 student attending our lessons every Thursday. Student even complete homework assignments in their own time for the following week. This week I am creating a folder of all activities, games and learning materials previously used in Conservation Club. This will be a valuable source of reference for future lesson plans and will shorten the time spent planning each lesson
Education and Empowerment (July)
A whopping 41 students showed up for our second Conservation Club since Ramadan. Following on from last weeks lesson on animals of Zanzibar, this week we taught them all about invertebrates. We split them into groups and asked them to explore the environment around their school grounds for invertebrates. We then discussed the importance of some invertebrates and how they fit into the food chain. This should lay the foundations for next weeks lesson on the food chain.
Nutrition, Nursery and Health (Aug)
This week we spoke to teachers in all three nursery schools about our porridge program. Currently we give $160 to each school to provide porridge for school children for the entire month. This money allows teachers to buy the ingredients flour, oats, coconut, and sugar from local people and cook them fresh every morning. We want to monitor how well our porridge program is running so we have asked the teachers help us throughout the coming month. It is very important to us to give the children a healthy breakfast so we are always looking for ways to improve.
Nutrition, Nursery and Health (Aug)
As August drew its close, it was time to collect the porridge monitoring sheets from the teachers of our nursery schools. We provide money each month to three local nursery schools so they can make porridge for the school children. We are doing everything we can to ensure the children are getting a nutritious and delicious breakfast every morning. We are always looking for ways to improve and this month the nursery school teachers helped us by noting how often porridge was given to children. This way we can guarantee the porridge will last the entire month. One of the highlights of this week was when I spoke to the nursery school teachers about ingredients, cost and the improvements they would like to see going forward. This is excellent information that will certainly help us refine our nutrition program.