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In the month of October, I asked for your help funding a project to train select educators/ tradesmen in Life Skills and launch youth clubs. And... you did it! Thanks to you, I was able to raise the full $5007 and, in the month of November, execute the trainings in Life Skills which constitute the first phase of the project! YOU ARE AWESOME. Thank you!!!

Also, the trainings went very well! Superintendents, high school principals, vice principals and select teachers from five school in and around Tsévié (my site) met for three days of training. We focused on techniques for teaching Life Skills and challenges for affecting behaviour change in youth; gender sensitivity and strategies for attending to the differing needs of boys and girls; men as partners and girl-friendly environments; actioning planning and project implementation/ evaluation.

Now each of the five high schools has launched Life Skills classes or clubs that will touch hundreds of students and affect the tenth grade curriculum for the rest of the school year...

One of my schools is out in the bush - it was founded just two years ago and to visit, I had to bike through somebody's cornfield on a path, at times, not much wider than a foot.

Another one of the high schools invited me to their weekly flag-raising ceremony. I got up soon after 5 am to be able get ready and bike there before 6:40 am. After the ceremony the principal asked me to say a few words before the entire student body. I asked how many students I was looking at - eleven hundred.

At one of the two schools in Tsévié, I went class to class to greet participating tenth grade students. When I asked how they liked their first lesson (which their teachers had given them earlier in the week) they whooped and hollered that it was EXCELLENTE! FANTASTIQUE! FORMIDABLE!

The second part of the project is at a local guild which unites various tradesmen and women - carpenters, electricians, photographers, tailors, hair dressers and blacksmiths, to name a few. Here, a group of five young adults who had already been trained in Life Skills at an annual Peace Corps summer camp, facilitated around 10 hours of training to a select group of tradesmen. Starting on January 11, these tradesmen will begin a rotation as teachers of a weekly class on Life Skills for their apprentices. At least 50 apprentices, if not more, should be present at any given weekly Life Skills session.

In Togo, youth who abandon their formal education can become apprentices and learn a trade. The education level of these apprentices, therefore, varies a lot. Some have almost completed high school, others never finished junior high or primary school. Since the French language level of many of these young people is very low, the lessons will be conducted in local language - Ewe.

I'll put up pictures of this stuff in my next post but for now let me say, again, THANK YOU.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!


P.S. Did you check out our TV special with Sandre Lee? :) Life is unfair - I still haven't been able to watch it but why should I deny you a link? click here to laugh at the Sobiloffs