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Name of organisation: Pikin-To-Pikin Movement
Address: 13 Macdonald Street, Freetown, Sierra Leone Telephone: 232224615/ 23276646220/ 23276654303/ 23233505384
E-mail: pikintopikin@yahoo.com
Website: www.pikintopikin.org
Contact name: Abdulai Deadehwai Swaray – National coordinator
About the programme
We started implementing our Child-to-Child activities in 1994 when we established our organisation called Pikin-To-Pikin Movement. The staff of the organisation organises and implements all the Child-to-Child activities in our operational areas. We work closely with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, particularly the Health Education Division. The personnel of this division are involved in the areas of training, facilitation, technical input/advice, and they assist us with personnel etc. The Child-to-Child activities are implemented in all our operational schools in Moyamba, Port Loko, Bombali and Tonkolili districts and the Western area. We are working with a total of 450 primary schools with 50 children per health club in each school. We are getting support from the Government of Sierra Leone, NGOs, individuals, civil society groups etc. For funding, we are presently being funded by Plan Sierra Leone, Concern Worldwide and UNICEF.
Child-to-Child activities
We use the Child-to-Child Approach in all our programmes/activities. Presently, we are implementing the Child-to-Child Approach in the following projects:
• School Sanitation and Hygiene Education Project
• Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Project
• Maternal and Child Health Project
• School Led Total Sanitation
• Malaria Prevention and Control Project
• HIV/AIDS awareness Raising Project (Past).
Encouraging child participation
As the name Pikin-To-Pikin implies, we encourage child participation at all levels of our projects. In fact child participation is key to the success of our programmes. Our activities are implemented through our health clubs in schools. We encourage children in project design, implementation monitoring and supervision. Activities such as surveys, stories, radio discussion programs, drama, songs and skits are all spear headed by children and done by children themselves.
Involvement of schools and communities
We are presently working with 450 primary schools in our operational areas. The number is growing as more head teachers from other schools want to join us and are applying to us to extend the program to them.
Child-to-Child Approach is the bed rock of all our activities we implement in schools. Health clubs are established in each and every school we operate in and membership to the clubs is voluntary. We initiate all programs in the schools through these clubs. We also work with teachers in the operational schools and a teacher coordinator is appointed to coordinate the activities of the clubs in the schools. Most of our activities are also linked to the communities through the clubs in order to implement community based programs.
Parents and community members are involved in our Child-to-Child activities. Most of our activities implemented in schools are filtered down to the communities through the Child-to-Child methodology. At the community level we have other activities that involve community members with children taking the lead. Projects like the School Led Total Sanitation (SLTS), community sanitation and a host of others actively involve parents and community members in the child- to-child activities. We also involve the School Management Committees (SMCs) during teacher training programmes.
The numbers of parents and community members involved is growing both at school and community levels.
Evaluation
Monitoring and supervision is key to the success of implementing the Child-to-Child activities for without this, the project is bound to fail. We therefore put a premium on monitoring and supervision in all our Child-to-Child activities. We have trained and qualified social workers/health workers who monitor and supervise our entire Child-to-Child activities in schools and communities. We divide our operational areas into zones and supervisors are assigned to each zone to monitor and supervise our activities. These are paid staff of the organisation. They provide monthly field reports on agreed formats to the Project Management Committee. Periodically, joint monitoring is done by both the Project Management Committee and the Field Supervisors.
Review meetings are conducted by the organisation and its primary beneficiaries i.e. the children. We also conduct Knowledge, Attitude and Practices (KAP) surveys and also impact assessment surveys in our projects. These surveys include all stakeholders such as children, teachers and community persons.
We are making improvements in the lives of children in using the Child-to-Child Approach in the area of health improvements, improvements in communicating messages, building the potential of children, children’s participation, changing community perception that children are not to be heard, community/child relationship et al.
Delivery of Child-to-Child
We target children, teachers, community stakeholders, and staff of PTP in trainings. The content depends on the type of project we are implementing using the Child-to-Child Approach. We invite health personnel and other resource persons to facilitate our trainings
Child-to-Child Materials
We have not adapted any of them yet but we use most of the information from the educational materials.
We have developed a training manual for teachers which are now in use. We have also developed posters and flip charts with messages. These materials are available on request.
Date: February 2009
Source: Abdulai Deadehwai Swaray, Pikin-To-Pikin Movement
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