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Mali

Save the Children USA: School based programme, Sikasso region

Organisation: Save the Children USA – Mali
Address: PO Box 3105, Bamako Mali
Tel: +223 22 61 34/23 48 99/23 48 98
Fax: +223 22 08 08
E-mail: savesahel@afribone.net.ml
Website: www.savechildren.org
Contact: Fadima Maiga

Organisation of Child-to-Child Activities

Our Child-to-Child activities began in February 2000. They are implemented through community schools (small rural village schools run by the community). Save the Children provides the funds for the activities. Some funds from private sources have also been forthcoming. In our activities we collaborate with Save the Children Canada (see separate entry in this Directory) and UNICEF. Save the Children Canada provided technical assistance for our first two training of teachers. At present we are planning to develop a Child-to-Child manual to teach child rights. This is being undertaken in collaboration with UNICEF and Save the Children Canada.

The children involved in our programme live in rural areas. About 15 teachers and 240 children participate in the activities. The children are of primary school age. All school children are included, but the most marginalised/disadvantaged children are excluded for the reason that they do not attend school. The adult workers are primary community school teachers.

Main Purpose of the Child-to-Child Activities

The long-term aim is improved health and educational quality in villages where the Child-to-Child activities are taking place. More specifically, we aim:

1. That children take responsibility for their own health and that of their family and community, by learning essential life skills (problem-solving, decision-making, communication), attitude and knowledge needed;

2. That teachers teach using more child-centred, active teaching methods that link what they learn at school with what is happening to the children and the community. We are also concerned with health and education quality. And, our Democratic Governance sector (with UNICEF and Save the Children Canada) is planning to use the Child-to-Child approach through schools to teach issues relating to democratic governance (child rights, equal opportunity, transparency and good governance).

How Child-to-Child Activities are Introduced, and Children's Participation

Child-to-Child activities are introduced through classroom teaching. Children are encouraged to think for themselves and to make their own decisions. The teachers use the six-step approach. Through doing this, they learn that their role is just one of facilitator and that everything must come from the child. After learning about a particular health problem, the teacher asks the children whether this disease is a problem in their village. If they don't know, how will they find out? The teacher helps them to organise a small survey and present the results. After presenting their findings, the teacher asks the children what they think the main cause of the problem is in their village and then what they can do to solve this problem. After taking action, the teachers ask the children if it worked, did people understand the message, and how did they know it had worked and that the message had been understood? The main successes and positive outcomes of using the Child-to-Child six-step approach have been:

1. It has increased adult-child communication: children said they previously never dared address adults (but they had to for the survey, when taking action and during the evaluation). This has been a new experience for the adults too, e.g., that children have asked them questions. However, most of the teachers have enjoyed this aspect of the process;

2. Messages were easily passed to non-school children even before the action in the community, because school children would tell their non-school friends what they had learned after school. Additionally, non-school children would see the school children practising their songs and plays;

3. As children left the school to find out more and pass messages in the community, for the first time villagers (most of whom have never been to school), could see what children were learning from school and its value. This is important for community schools, which rely totally on community support. We find that if the school is interested in the community, the community will be interested in the school;

4. Children were more 'alive' after they had been through the six-step process and they themselves said they felt less shy;

5. Everyone (children, teachers and trainers) loves the approach. As well as the above gains which have taken place as a result of using the Child-to-Child six-step approach, there have also been some challenges:

1. For the first training we mostly followed the methodology contained in the Child-to-Child training pack, e.g., beginning with background and theory and then moving on to the six steps themselves, but found that teachers did not really understand the approach until they had done it themselves. Consequently, for the second training (March 2001), we decided to use the six steps directly with the teachers, as if they were the children. At the end of each day, we would highlight the role of the teacher (as facilitator) and children (as actors) at the end of the six steps. The teachers then did the six steps with the children. This method allowed the teachers to experience the six steps as children first;

2. There was some argument about whether step 2 should be step 1 and vice versa, e.g., that the children decide in class what they want to learn about a particular topic, then go out into the village to find the answers (through a survey), then come back and the teacher completes the missing information. What happened was that children came back with mostly 'false' information, e.g., that malaria is transmitted through sugary and oily food, etc. Only 1 person (of 12 interviewed) said that mosquitoes transmit malaria. The teacher then had the difficult task of differentiating between 'scientific' and 'traditional' knowledge. Also the aim of the survey had changed from understanding the cause or situation of malaria in the community, to learning about malaria itself. Eventually, it was agreed that children must first learn the 'scientific' knowledge and that the survey is to help them understand the situation in the community (e.g., whether the community know the 'scientific knowledge');

3. Another concern initially was that it would take too much time to do all six steps, but when we did it, we found it did not actually take that long (a maximum of two days worth of classroom time to do all six steps) and the teachers said they could teach one health topic a month using this approach, which is fine. Despite the challenges we have faced using the Child-to-Child approach, we nevertheless aim to generate in children all of the skills that they need to become good citizens and development agents in their villages. The main skills that we have seen come out of the six steps have been: communication skills (particularly with adults), analytical skills (to analyse the situation in their villages), presentation skills (presenting survey information and taking action in front of the community), problem-solving skills, planning skills, and proactive self-criticism in order to evaluate performance and improve upon it.

School-based Child-to-Child Activities

Eight schools are involved in our programme in 2001, but we expect this to expand to 120 in 2002. For the programme, the plan is to train all Save the Children education staff in the Child-to-Child approach, so that they can train all of the 4th to 6th grade community school teachers (approximately 12) in their zone on a decentralized basis. Eventually we want this approach to be extended to all 800 community schools run by partner NGOs in the Sikasso region. We would have preferred that health could be taught across the curriculum, but we realised that this was too ambitious. However, in the teachers' worksheets, there are suggestions about other lessons Child-to-Child can be introduced into.

Community and Parental Involvement in Child-to-Child Activities

Parents and communities manage the schools, so the Child-to-Child activities are contained within their school management role. For example, when the children wanted to show their play and sing their songs to the village, the School Management Committee got the musicians to come and attract the people, so that more would see what the children were doing.

Health and Education Working Together

The SCF school health and nutrition coordinator works with the SCF education coordinator. All Child-to-Child activities are jointly planned by the health and education coordinators. The education staff (SCF staff who supervise the community schools) then train the teachers and monitor the activities throughout the year. The education staff are very happy to be involved in the programme as they see it as a way of improving the quality of education, for example, through use of better teaching methods.

Monitoring and Evaluation of Child-to-Child Activities

We plan to put in place a good monitoring and evaluation system in October 2001, with a first evaluation at the end of the school year (May 2002) and a second evaluation three years later, when the children have left school. We plan for our monitoring and evaluation system to be in place by the time that the Child-to-Child approach has been extended from the eight schools currently involved in the programme, to the 120 which will be involved in 2002.

Training

Teachers, school management committee members, as well as Save the Children education staff, all receive training. The trainers are SCF education staff who have themselves already been trained. SCF education staff train small groups of teachers on a decentralised basis (grouped villages based close to one another). The trained teachers then provide training for the children (five days of training in total), repeated once or twice throughout the year.

Use, Adaptation, Translation and Production of Child-to-Child Materials

We mostly use the Child-to-Child resource book part two, but also Children for Health. We have translated most of the activity sheets into French, but they need to be adapted. They will then be translated into the local language, Bambara. We also plan to develop a manual on child rights in collaboration with UNICEF and Save the Children Canada.

Date: 2001. Updated information awaited.
Source: CtC Website Directory 2000