Children's voices

Yesterday was filled with children’s voices. In the morning a VERY long church service was dedicated to Sunday School and many children recited or sang. The sermon was long, unfocused and repetitive, but we really enjoyed the young people. There are 450 children in Sunday School and most of them were there with their families. We had a set of RE books in the container, so I presented them to the teachers.

In the afternoon we went to Shisele. This is a small village where we put in a well at the primary school but had to leave last February before we could formally hand over to the community. We told them to go ahead and use the water. When they heard we were back they contacted us for celebration. The well has been working well and they say they are experiencing many benefits (mainly saving time and reducing sickness) The children sang and danced for us. I took a box of books also from the container as well as some art supplies. I wish I could upload one of the short videos, but we have to be satisfied with stills.









This morning I had an interview with the Provincial Education Officer. He is the one mandating the teaching of the Virtues in all schools in Western Province. He was happy to tell us that during the year Western suffered very few school problems such as strikes and riots compared with the rest of the country (only 8 incidents compared to 200 elsewhere) and he affirms it is because of the Virtues training. Of course, everyone is looking for more money to implement further but I explained that all over the world the Virtues is supported by government money directly or indirectly. The type of training we are doing in Positive Discipline is responding to a very deep need and has been missing in the educational setting.

At the beginning of December there will be a big training session for about 200 teachers in the Kakamega area. After that we will go to Kampala for an information and training session. In mid-Dec we will be visiting the UN and others in Nairobi to talk about the project and hopefully engender some interest in funding. After Christmas we will go back to Nairobi for a week of information sessions. In February there will be an intensive follow up seminar for Western Province Educators.