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Lebanon

Ahlia School
Down Town- Beirut-Lebanon
Tel: 961-1-372960
Fax: 961-1-372579
Email: ahliah@cyberia.com.lb
Contact name: Manal Adada / Social worker

ORGANISATION OF CHILD-TO-CHILD ACTIVITIES

Child to child activities began on October 2004. The social worker implemented the activities; the level of involvement of the health and education personnel was related to the quality of tackled topics. Implementation was done during Advisory Sessions and, hence, advisors were involved. The activities were spread only on one school campus, but CtC students shared their pioneer experience with students from public schools. The number of students involved in the CtC program is 33. The Arab Resource Collective (ARC) provided the necessary training, follow up and necessary references.

CHILD-TO-CHILD ACTIVITIES

Our academic year is divided among two semesters. In the first semester topics were chosen by students and subjects were mostly related to environment and hygiene, such as promoting RECYCLING at school and raising awareness on HANDS WASHING. However, during the second semester the topic was chosen by the facilitator in order to tackle an urgent situation at school, i.e. violent behaviour among students. Consequently, the selected topic was “fighting against BULLYING”.

Activities were introduced through an independent session held weekly under the title of CtC. The concept of HOLISTIC HEALTH was introduced. Then, students were invited to observe the environment around them and were asked to designate a problem that they believed they could discuss together in order to solve it.

We are following the modified steps from 6 to 4:

1- Know more
2- Plan
3- Implement
4- Evaluate

HEALTH IN AND OUT OF SCHOOL

As a program coordinator in an action site school, I have presented our experience through a workshop prepared by ARC to all schools participating in the UNESCO network. It was exactly a co-curricular activity, even though it was not a club, being clubs optional at our school. CtC class was obligatory for g5 and g6 students and activities were related to the school health community, a topic selected by the students. Every time we reach the 3 rd step of implementation, students chose to address the school community and to raise the level of awareness relating to physical, environmental and psycho-social health. Advisory sessions were useful for CtC students during which they transmitted their main messages related to health and addressed to the community from G1 through 12.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF CHILD-TO-CHILD ACTIVITIES

CtC had a great impact on the general school atmosphere. You can notice this through the enthusiasm that students showed along the 4 steps and the creativity of their projects. Evaluation was running on two levels:

1. Through students completing a questionnaire which tests their health information related to the topics which were covered in CtC program.

2. A questionnaire that allows CtC students to express their opinion about the program, the steps and its impact on their personality.

The main changes brought by the Child-to-Child activities are:

• Increasing the sense of responsibility and critical thinking
• Students are more aware of their right in participation
• Change IS possible
• Collective activities across the cycles.

TRAINING ACTIVITIES

Professional training will be assigned to English teachers, who will teach social studies program based on child to child approach, during the month of September 2006. The trainers are from ARC and the content of the training will focus on:

• Holistic health concept.
• Levels of participation.
• Child protection policy.
• Child to Child approach and program (steps, lesson plan and evaluation)  

USE OF CHILD-TO-CHILD MATERIALS

What is really useful from these materials (English and Arabic) is the way the lesson plan is designed, whilst topics were not adequately relevant to our community (instead, they were more suitable for communities with lower socio-economic circumstances).