| Home > CtC worldwide > Europe & Middle East > United Kingdom > Development Direct
____________________________________________________________________
Name of organisation: Development Direct
Tel: 01661 886298
Fax: 01661 886298
E-mail: info@developmentdirect.org.uk
Website: www.developmentdirect.org.uk
Contact name: Gill Blissett
About the programme
Our Child-to-Child activities began in April 2002. They take place in schools in Northumberland and Durham local education authority areas. We work with the Healthy Schools Initiative in Northumberland and Durham, Northumberland LA Consultant for Cultural Diversity, Northumbria Healthcare Trust and with the Moshi – Tanzania health link. Personnel from Development Direct help to find schools in Africa that schools in the North East of England can link up with. The Child-to-Child activities form part of the initial linking process as they provide suitable topics for study by pupils in both countries.
Our children are based in urban and rural communities in the UK, as well as in Gambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. The children's ages range from 4 – 11 years. The children include disadvantaged and marginalised children, and children with special needs, e.g. disabled children, street children, working children and children in institutions. The adult workers are primary school teachers.
The numbers involved are approximately 2,500 pupils here from the outset and about 4,000 in the linked schools in Africa. These numbers are approximate as circumstances within schools vary year on year.
We receive no funding other than that which we raise ourselves. Some schools are able to contribute a nominal amount but much of the work is carried out voluntarily.
Child-to-Child activities
Our aim is to empower children to take action about their health and the health of the community locally. We also aim to raise awareness about global health issues by linking children in the North East to a school in the developing world. We are also interested in gender issues, inclusive education and issues around the promotion of children's rights. We use the ‘Partners in Rights’ resource as a talking point to start the project. ‘Just Like You’ is about promoting similarities and rights across the globe.
Activities are introduced in classroom teaching and through peer counsellors in school. We use the Child-to-Child six-step approach. There are a number of skills we would like to encourage in children, including numeracy, literacy, skills in relation to global responsibility, thinking skills, as well as practical skills to prevent health problems.
Child-to-Child in Northumberland is part of the PSHE and Citizenship strands of the Healthy School Award.
Encouraging child participation
The children write letters to their counterparts in their link school as well as seek information from their local doctors, hospitals, indeed whoever they think might provide them with some information on the health problem they are looking at. Healthy Lifestyles workshops have also been used in two UK schools and reciprocal work carried out by one of the partner schools in Tanzania. We would like to roll this out to more schools in the future.
Involvement of schools and communities
We have a database of about 60 schools but some schools do drop out of the linking process in this country and in Africa for a variety of reasons and so numbers change year on year. In one area, the local Medical group have linked with their counterparts in the same area as the local linked school.
For many schools, the global dimension is inherent in their school development plan. The linking activities are therefore brought into all aspects of the curriculum in many schools, and in key areas such as PHSE, Citizenship, Geography, and English.
Evaluation
Evaluation of the Child-to-Child approach to Health education and school linking is on-going. At present we are conducting a small scale evaluation considering the impact school linking has on learning and attainment. It is not solely evaluating the Child-to-Child approach.
Child-to-Child Materials
We use all of the Child-to-Child materials, but particularly the Child-to-Child readers Uncle George, Accidents, Dirty Water, I Can Do It Too, Not Just a Cold, and The Market Dentist.
Accidents has been translated into Kiswahili for use in Tanzania and sections have been adapted for Kenya pupils. This book also forms part of a Numeracy Project in the unit on ‘Data Collection’ and analysis. At present we are developing materials for use in Mathematics, some of which are based on the above books. This has been funded by Oxfam and therefore distribution/access will be determined by Oxfam at the end of the project.
Date: March 2009
Source: Development Direct
|
