Kwaheri Seet Kobor

Hello everyone,

I think I'm echoing a few previous posts when I say that I can't believe how quickly time is going by! We have already been on project for 3 weeks and have completed training at 2 schools. This last school (Seet Kobor) was really amazing, the students participated and were very willing to answer questions in class. There level of participation also served to show that they were really absorbing the material that we were teaching. For those of you who don't know exactly how our training program works I will give you a run-down.

The goal of our training is that we teach our 5 day curriculum to the students with the hopes that they will then go into the community and teach others what they have learned. Through this method we can reach a much larger group of people. I really saw the value of this method of training this week, when the students in my form 3 class all handed back their blitz forms, which contain a list of the 5 people they plan to share their newfound knowledge with.

Furthermore, we are planning to arrange a VCT (Voluntary Counselling and Testing) day for Seet Kobor and Lake Solai next Saturday. Because these two schools are so rural they don't have as much access to VCT's (where you can get tested for STI's and HIV/AIDS) as some of the other schools that we will be training at. When we brought up this idea with the students yesterday they were all very excited that they would have an opportunity to get tested if they like. They also expressed interest in brining other members of their communities to get tested. Again this really drove home the effectiveness of the method of teaching and empowerment that we are using.

Reuben, Ibra and I will be taking the logistic role with helping to organize the VCT. What this entails is arranging for a location to hold the testing, arranging for the counselors to come out with testing kits and arranging transportation for everyone to and from the schools. We are targetting mostly students and we will be holding one VCT at Seet Kobor and one at Lake Solai. I am really excited to see this get underway and I will have much more details next time I post on the blog. I'm also excited to see how many students actually come out and get tested, because this will help us gauge how effective our teaching is in promoting students to get tested.

Anyways that is all for this week. I hope everyone is doing well!

David