Schools working together, taking ownership

I am training some nursery teachers this weekend, but this training has been organised a little differently. Here, I have found that nursery schools are very competitive and don’t really work together. After doing a couple of afternoons at one nursery school I soon realised that it is going to take me a long time to visit them all (along with primary schools). So I asked one local nursery school director about the possibility of working together with nursery schools and doing some combined training. He was more than happy to help me out and visited 10 nursery schools inviting them for a meeting. At that meeting last week they decided they would like two days of training (not just one which I had suggested); and a long discussion took place on how many kilograms of rice, beans, meat etc would be needed for the teachers. The head teachers made up their own food budget and are splitting the costs themselves; they are also contributing a small amount of money for the ‘facilitation’ of the training which will go towards handouts, certificates and photocopying a manual for each school. There are two things that I am pretty excited about with this training: 1. It is not the NGO or white person buying the meat and soda for the training, these local nursery schools see the value and are investing in it themselves; and 2. these nursery schools are working together to make it happen. We are hoping for 10 nursery schools and about 50 teachers, but not exactly sure how many will come on the day. Also hoping the CCT (local co-ordinator centre tutor, sort of like a college tutor in charge of schools) will attend and support the training.

Please pray that the weekend is a success, that many of the teachers come, all the organisation finally comes together in the end, that teachers are receptive to what I have to say and we can improve local education 🙂