Hungry to Learn
The one thing that I was constantly amazed by was the willingness of the women who came daily to the care points. It was all done on a volunteer basis and they wanted to be there. The days were filled with 25-35 children coming from 8am-12pm for food and instruction. None of the women are certified to teach or have an education but they all have willing and serving hearts.
One of the days I substituted at a care point almost brought me to exhaustion! And that is defiantly hard to do. The children were without discipline, ran around the room, hitting, and weren’t instructed to listen and learn. The poor teacher just looked at me for help. And I didn’t blame her one bit! How overwhelmed I would have been! Fortunately I was able to pull out all the tricks of the trade and it ended up being an ok morning.
Seeing the need for help was a way that got all of us thinking of how to equip them to survive the day with the children. The need I saw was giving them structure of time frames, showing them what a typical 8-12 day would look like with the children, and equipping them with lessons and songs… It was so cool to see how God unfolded the whole process. My team was amazing and worked so many hours helping with putting together kits for all six of the teachers. There was a lot of tracing and cutting. But it was filled with fun, laughter, and sodas for everyone.
So on a Thurs we had a workshop titled “A day in the Life of a Child”. It started at 9-2:00 with about ten women who participated. The idea was that everyone became the child and I took them through what a typical day would look like: morning circle, breaks, English and Math times and quick lessons on age appropriate lessons and discipline techniques. There was an hour and a half where they took materials needed for calendar and weather and they were able to create their own. It was great to equip them and show them how to create their own teaching materials.
My care point hadn’t been incorporating teaching in the mornings with the children but we still invited the care point leader and asked her to bring another woman with her to the training. I didn’t know how much they actually wanted to be there and how much they would actual do at the care point so it was truly exciting to see them the very next day finishing up the materials and taking ownership over it! And in the next few days I had a chance to visit another care point and it was great to see the materials out and the teacher ready to go.
It was my first workshop to orchestrate and I was so ecstatic that all the details came together. It was great to equip people who really wanted to learn, even though they had never been educated in any of it. The next week we did another workshop (a bit shorter) and it was to provide the women the vision to start there own business’s by making products that could be sold in a market place. Seth did a great job presenting and Molly gave a blessing and scripture over them. I was able to brainstorm with them products that they could make and sell and individually pray over them. The ideas were great and it was inspiring to hear their excitement of the vision ahead.
The workshop started off with worship and prayer
This was an icebreaker game. A balloon race between teams. What fun!
Seth and Pastor gift teaching and sharing the vision of starting a business.
My time in Nsoko was a great experience. The women there especially were inspiring with their hard work and dedication. And these workshops were a perfect ending to helping these women succeed!
