Support Primary Education for Vulnerable Children

Thanks to your generous contributions, our Primary Education after-school programme continues on. This year we added 100 learners to our programme - and there are more in the waiting line! 

To take a deeper look into the type of work we do in our curriculum, below are a couple of examples of how we use books to teach various themes.

The Gruffalo by Julia Donalson, is based on a traditional story. It teaches learners that cunning and smarts are more important than size. The story is especially important for us as the tale of a small  figure using cunning to escape a negative situation has deep African roots. Learners read the story, learn about different animal homes (both in the story and African animals), and make their own Gruffalo masks. 

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein is one of our top resources used across the board in our curriculum and training. We discuss imagery and look for meaning beyond the words. 

The staff discuss our relationship as humans as both givers and takers and how just because you are older, does not mean you have necessarily advanced. The boy may be a man, but is really still just a boy.

The tree thinks she is helping the boy and she isn’t. By giving him whatever he wants, she doesn’t treat him as a man and so does not truly respect him. This is a big topic for our staff training. We discuss having to grow up and take responsibility. If someone is giving you everything, do they respect you? We're saying to our staff, "we respect you enough to expect more of you."

This story is an especially good example of a story creating a space where the readers can be comfortable with paradox. Is the tree nice or mean? Both. Is the tree good to the boy? Yes and no. The story leaves the reader without a clear answer, which is hard to do any other way for a child. It is a shift away from the black and white reality, while laying the path for a grey scale and eventually full color picture.

The story books allow us to tackle large, scary, real world issues in an accessible, comfortable and more fun manner. 

Exposing our learners to these ideas and resources is essential in their developmental success, and something they are missing in their everyday school experience. 

Thank you for your continuing support to help us provide these much needed resources to this community.