Once upon a time, I was a little 9-year-old girl. We had just moved to Kansas from Arizona and I was excited about the new “Wizard of Oz” chapter in my life. In order to fully live the Kansas life, we went to a 4-H Club meeting. It was a fateful day that led to a decade of involvement in 4-H and many other youth organizations.
As the Full Circle program grows, we try new and different approaches to expanding life skills education. After-school clubs are a fabulous way to work within the education system in Tanzania and teach life skills. Because of this, Uswege and I held a 2-day training on Club Establishment and Management for area teachers and school administrators. The objectives of the training were to equip the participants with the knowledge and tools they need to facilitate successful, student led clubs.
With participants from 5 different schools, we kicked off the training with discussions about life skills, their importance, and the role schools play in developing life skills. Then we moved to a discussion about school clubs and how they can be utilized to facilitate the learning of life skills. Why use school clubs to educate young people? We used the following to describe just WHY we think school clubs can be SO valuable…if used well.
The club at its best creates a society of personalities with a community sense, which is the essence of good citizenship… We are not concerned with the making of ‘good club members’ or ‘well-organized youth groups’, but with a much wider issue, the making of good citizens. This can only be done in a society where each member is important, where each one is given a chance to contribute something to the life of the group – the leader no more and no less than the member. It is for this reason that self-government is so important in club work.
—Josephine Brew
Clubs are so vital because they are the ultimate in experiential learning for young people, giving them the leadership and power to make their own decisions and watch how those decisions effect their life and the lives of others! After we had established the importance of life skills and clubs, we moved to discussing HOW we achieve the results that we want and what elements are essential to creating effective school clubs.
The training ended with guest speakers who could introduce their organizations to the teachers to ensure all schools have the resources they need to start a club at their school. We had a great response from teachers about the whole training. One teacher recommended that the TEACHERS form a club to practice what they have learned and share their learning with others!
The last great success of the training was having it covered by the media in an article in a major Tanzanian newspaper. The day after the article ran, an editorial was written complimenting the necessity and timeliness of the training topic! Besides getting TFFT’s name out there, this is a big win because it creates a discussion on life skills education and education in general. The more discussion there is, be more improvement there will be!