December 2, 2016
Providing youth with a life skills education is essential, and they should be exposed to this education at an early age. Unfortunately, in Tanzania life skills education is not included in our school curriculum. Most of the time, children do not learn these necessary skills at home or in school. These life skills include learning about proper hygiene, reproductive health rights, pregnancy, sexual abuse, male and female relationship, making right decisions, leadership, dream mapping and many more.
TFFT’s Full Circle Program aims to bridge this gap in education, by structuring activities that will expose our scholars and other students to these essential lessons and skills. In doing so for primary level students, we designed a new subject called Personality Development and Sports (PDS). We trained teachers on how to teach the class and we provide them with the resources needed to implement PDS.
For secondary level students, we implement life skills education through extra curriculum activities including clubs, community service projects, and debate. This year, our Full Circle Program started a new initiative for TFFT secondary school scholars to ensure they receive proper and correct information on essential life skills. We prepared a week-long camp for TFFT Scholars, which will be held from December 12-16, 2016. We aim to bring 53 scholars from forms 1-6 and TFFT Alumni to this one week camp. We have scheduled professional leaders for the different lessons that we have planned for each day of camp. The scholars will be split into two separate groups, according to their ages. Each day one topic will be covered, and at end of each day we will facilitate a daily assessment and reflection. In the evenings, scholars can participate in activities such as storytelling, talent show, a movie night, and an inspirational talk night. We will have almost 12 facilitators with expertise in various fields.
Forms 1-3 will cover the following topics:
- Day one: Goal setting and dream mapping
- Day two: Growing up (puberty), reproductive health, and pregnancy
- Day three: Healthy relationships, sexual relationships, and decision making
- Day Four: Leadership skills
- Day Five: Sexually transmitted infections, HIV & AIDs, and new generations
Forms 4-6 and alumni will cover the following topics:
- Day one: Dream mapping and reflection on personal goal setting
- Day two: Introduction to finance and budgeting
- Day three: Entrepreneurship skills
- Day Four: HIV & AIDs, controlling your body as an engine
- Day Five: Understanding personal rights and protecting oneself from sexual abuse & substance abuse
The facilitators for each topic shared with me their training content to review before the presentations take place during the camp week. The content is pertinent and teaches essential lessons and skills, and I hope our scholars will have many take aways from this workshop. Our scholars will also have the opportunity to meet with young Tanzanian entrepreneurs who will share the stories of how they started out, challenges and how they were able to overcome them, and successes. There will be thorough time for discussion with the facilitators to gain a complete understanding of each particular topic. I will follow up with camp stories from our scholars and what their reflections about this one week workshop.
I hope that this camp will prepare our scholars to be the best they can be and thrive in life while at school, home, and in the community.
Cheers.