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Mpika
Activities taking place in and round Mpika, Northern Province
Background
Based initially on the Institute of Christian Leadership at Mpika various activities have developed in the area based on a group of able and well-motivated teachers from schools in and around Mpika.
Three activities need to be reported:
1. Child-to Child health action schools
Mpika Schools were, from the 1980s, at the forefront of Child-to-Child activities when it was an official government programme. Action continues in many schools in the district. There are school committees and clubs. The project director identifies the main activities as:
‘Working with children as partners in planning health activities. Within this, we are interested in gender issues (girl-child and boy-child), inclusive education and the promotion of children's rights.’
The six-step methodology is used. The director of the project reports: ‘We use the Child-to-Child six-step approach when implementing activities. The earlier steps tend to work very well, though we do find that evaluation occurs earlier than step six when it is supposed to happen. In using the approach, we hope to develop skills in children such as practical, thinking, communicating and life skills.’
Organisation and management:
The director reports:
‘We have formed different committees at district level. Health workers and teachers are represented on the committees, which also include people from other government departments and organisations. Examples of committees are: 1. Immunisation; 2. Malnutrition/Diarrhoea; 3. Safe Motherhood. Both health and education workers are involved in implementing Child-to-Child activities through action plans made at committee meetings. Advantages of health and education collaborating together include health workers having knowledge which teachers might not have, and teachers having the practical knowledge to carry out activities. One disadvantage has been the emphasis sometimes on curative approaches versus prevention.’
Locally based training is organised and there is a considerable amount of inter-school visiting.
2. An inclusive education project
From 1999 an inclusive education project ran in seventeen local schools.
The project operated alongside the health action schools project but special twinning arrangements between disabled and other children were put in place and teachers specially trained to facilitate them. Monitoring and evaluation of both projects is regularly undertaken .In respect of the inclusive education project the director recorded in 2002. Monitoring and evaluation is carried out at three levels:
1. At the school level by teachers, children and the community;
2. At the zone level by the zone coordinators;
3. At the district level by the district team.
At each level there are measurement tools and indicators to assess the progress of activities. As a result of the activities, both children and teachers have become more aware of the issues surrounding disability and disabled children. Children are now more likely to see disabled children as children like any other, and cannot understand if adults do not. There are now more disabled children in the project area who attend mainstream schools and classes (in at least one of the project schools, all disabled children are now in mainstream classes). The children are on the whole self motivated and have taken the initiative in a number of areas and activities. A number of adult workers, e.g. some of the school inspectors, the District Education Officer, etc.. have also become enthusiastic about the project and this can only bode well for its future.
3. A project to develop lessons on local games
Since early 2002 with funding from the Morel Trust, a group of teachers led by Paul Mumba have explored play as a learning process at Kabale Basic School. The aim is to help primary school children develop ideas through play, which enables them to introduce and stimulate very young children into learning. Emphasis is on the use and development of local games. Through the initiation and practice of such games it is hoped that younger children will begin to develop specific cognitive skills such as memorisation, spelling and counting.
An illustrated report of this project is available in Child-to-Child Trust Early Years Children Promote Health, London, Child-to-Child 2004.
3. HIV and AIDS Activities
HIV and AIDS in schools are not introduced in isolation but as part of the child to child (CtC) base on children for health based on facts for life. HIV and AIDS are taken as an integral part of disease, malnutrition, accidents and violence can affect physical development and lead to reduced growth deformities and various forms of disabilities, especially in children. On the other hand good physical development is promoted by such things as safe environment and adequate diet. In other words in Africa AIDS manifests itself in many of the things we are dealing with in CtC based on children for health, HIV/AIDS activities and other health issues are now linked to social development where children and young people acquire abilities to form relationships, communicate and co-operate with one another and elders without discrimination. They organise their activities through class and school councils.
Class and Schools Councils
Health matters; especially HIV/AIDS is a human rights issue. We have formed in the schools we are working with, what we call class and school councils which are based on articles 12 of the convention on the rights of the child (CRC).
When children in a particular school meet as a class to discuss HIV and AIDS or any other topic of a human rights nature that concern them they convene as a class council. When representatives from all the classes bring their issues together they form a school council.
Objectives
- To increase child participation in decision making and participatory planning and evaluation in schools.
- To create awareness of CRC
Community
At a community level, we work with youth who have left school but are still part of the CtC and who are now part of the larger community work as members of the Home Based Care Programme. The Home Based Care Programme (HBC) is designed to take care of people who are already infected by the HIV virus in the community since hospitals can no longer cope with large numbers of people infected with the HIV virus. In addition to providing care for the sick the youth also work with school children to design prevention programmes that are designed to help stop people from becoming infected.
Child-to-Child and HBC Programmers
The HBC volunteers who are mostly elderly women with no former education need health knowledge to look after their clients. The clients on the HBC register suffer from such health problems as coughs and colds, malaria, diarrhoea etc. in cases of diarrhoea knowledge on ORS is important since communities here do not have ready made packs. The youth who are part of CtC in the community work as mentors to the elderly women using CtC ideas.
On the HBC registers we now have children who are HIV positive and the prime message is that the issue of exclusive breast feeding has become crucial because elderly women do not believe that a small child can live on breast milk alone for the first six months without some porridge and especially water.
Orphans
Being an Inclusive Education Organisation we take care of the disabled, we also look after the orphans who are left behind by parents from the HBC programme by making them part of CtC.
Other Activities
This year we are also dealing with:-
- Psycho-social life skills for youth and school children.
- Training of counsellors in child abuse.
- Conducting research on early marriage.
Contact
Child Participation Inclusive Education – Mpika (CPIEM)
P.O. Box 450151
Mpika
Zambia
Tel: 0966802325
Source: 2008
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