Issue 1
March 2009
Here is the first newsletter from the desk of Clare Hanbury to summarise the key events of the last few months and to tell you what’s new! I am sending it to all those who have signed up on my blog or websites: www.lifeskillshandbooks.com www.youngsolutionsinternational.com and this blog www.clarehanbury.com
Summary
In this e-newsletter I describe:
1. Work completed
- The Life Skill Project, Sierra Leone
- Training on Youth Participation in HIV and AIDS
- Formatting and distribution of article, Children in War: the role of child-to-child activities in the therapy and care of displaced unaccompanied children by Dr P. Eunson Download Children in War
2. Work in progress
- The technical learning and progress to build my websites and blog
- Progress with my websites’ purpose
- Other projects
3. Sources of inspiration
- Transpersonal coach training with Sir John Whitmore and Hetty Einzig
- The Woodcraft Folk
- The SODIS project
- The symposium
- The TED website
- Reading
4. To conclude: ideas forming and my questions to you…
Your comments and ideas on any of this would be greatly appreciated.
Work completed
1. An evaluation of a Life Skills programme in Sierra Leone 2005-2009
Incredible results from an evaluation of a thee-year Life Skills programme aptly named, The Window of Hope. It targets disadvantaged children in three regions of Sierra Leone: Freetown, Bo and Kenema. The Window of Hope programme has transformed the lives of the children involved including their relationships with family, with school, friends and with the wider community. The programme focussed on teaching a range of key life skills on three key topics: sexual abuse and exploitation; violence and the prevention of HIV and AIDS.
Parents broke down in tears when describing the effect of the programme on their lives. Just some of the sucess includes: focusing children more positively on their academic work and progress; inspirig them to act as role models for each other; enabling them to show more openly their love and affection towards friends, family and elders. In the words of a father of one of the children…”My son used to never be at home at night but used to wander the streets with his friends. He was always disrespectful to his parents and never took his studies seriously. One day he completely changed and started staying at home in the evenings and was so respectful and helpful in the home. I didn’t understand why. Then I found out that he was doing this Windows of Hope Programme. It has completely changed my son. I am so grateful to all of you.”
Through the Windows of Hope programme, headteachers and class teachers have drawn closer to their work and to their students. They communicate more positively with their pupils (they have thrown away their sticks) and more powerfully to each other.
All this with a bit of high quality training, a good curriculum that the project managers had taken great care to develop and localise and a high degree or community involvement and interaction.
Here’s a great story from the project. Thanks to Sally Price.
Kadiatu Rogers is ten years old and is a pupil of the Blessed Tansi Model School, She is one of our life skills beneficiaries. She is the last child of a family comprising of six children. She became an orphan during the war in Liberia and now a maid to a foster parent. Before this time, Kadiatu was denied the opportunity to go to school, but after several interventions by some community members who admired her, she was allowed to go to school.
She is now in class six and she joined the Window of Hope club during the first year of implementation of the project – 2005/2006 academic year. She had two years of life skills and the project has had great impact on her. She was just from school when Rev Fr Brashay, one of our goodwill ambassadors visited her home to know how she was doing and also to ascertain how much impact the project is making on children.
This was what he got first from the next door neighbors of Kadiatu:
“Before she joined the club, Kadiatu had a very low self esteem for the simple fact that she was always shouted upon by her foster mother; she had little or no attention from her foster parents, her feelings were always ignored and she had no guide lines in the home. As a result of this, each time she did a mistake, she was punished harshly. She was always found sobbing in the corners of the house. There were times, she did not even understand her feelings. Kadiatu was used as a domestic slave and was denied the opportunity to go to school until after our intervention.” The neighborhood children in the same class with Kadiatu said, “At school, Kadiatu never spoke in class even when she knew the right answers for fear that she will be shouted upon. She felt inferior and always dissociate herself from us. Her class mates, mostly those who were not part of the window of hope made fun of her situation”.
My involvement with the Windows of Hope project was threefold:
- To provide resource material that gave fresh ideas to those adapting the windows of hope curriculum from the original (developed for Namibia)
- To mentor staff who were involved in the design of the project and
- To assist with the evaluation design and report.
It was great to be involved and thrilling to get such powerful results for so many children and their families. May it continue and flourish and help inspire others.
2. Training on Youth participation in HIV and AIDS
For the second year running I conducted a training on the HIV intensive workshop for 25 trainee deacons from 12 University of Cambridge Colleges, held at Westcott House. In this workshop we discussed the kind of HIV and AIDS-related issues that participants face in their work and how they would work in a dynamic way with children and young people to get them to identify issues, investigate the issues and come up with solutions to problems that affect them. I presented the Young Solutions international 8-step structure. Many participants commented that such an approach could be adapted for use way beyond the HIV and AIDS focus. We concluded the day by watching a moving film about several Child-to-Child HIV-related projects in Africa where children are taking responsibility for looking after their siblings and themselves after the death of their parents. It was an exciting, memorable and fulfiling experience.
Work in progress
1. About the technical end of my websites
Creating the two websites and the blog was a major project for me in 2008.
In 2007, I took an internet marketing course with Nicola Cairncross and she opened my eyes to how to use the internet for spreading a message in dynamic ways, for on-line training (she’s a great trainer), and yes to make money too! Here is the link to her Money Gym and then specifically for the Internet Marketing Home Study System. I love her book and give it to friends for Christmas and as part of a bundle of gifts to every one of my nephews, nieces and godchildren when they reach 18. (There are 19 of them!). The book has helped me get real about money in so many ways.
For me making money from something is the outcome of having a product or service that is well defined, of high quality and it solves an important problem. It was good for me, an educationalist and a child health consultant working in the international development sector to get my head around internet business speak and business tools. It also gave me the courage to put my flag in the ground and state – yep this is what I want to do now!
To develop my sites I worked very closely with a web development service linked to a shopping cart and this too helped me keep the business hat firmly on my head. It was a highly creative, frustrating and difficult exercise at the end of which, when the sites went live, I found myself at the top of one mountain and in the foothills of many more!
www.I.T.Pie.co.uk are working with me now to make progress up the next mountain and we are focused at the moment on search engine optimisation. I am reading widely and attending trainings to learn more about maximising the effectiveness of websites and of course am blogging and beginning to dabble in social networking tools and techniques. I have been learning about and using facebook, linked in and www.twitter.com. Twitter has quickly linked me up to some great people promoting youth participation in the UK and with people who are helping me learn how to use social networking to promote life saving health messages. Its great! Join, ‘follow me’ and they say in the tweetosphere and I’d love to follow you.
I heard yesterday that 6/10 people in the world have mobile phones WOW – maybe soon we’ll find great ways to communicate health and other crucial global messages using mobile technology – see the more ideas section at the end.
Judith Morgan has been working with me as a business coach for 18 months. Don’t be put off my the money focus – she’s about much, much more. She got me going on the blog. Furnished me with excellent contacts so I could build my team. We’ve averaged one, one-hour call every 1.5 months (sorry Judith I’m so slow!) and I never fail to leave each call re-energised and with a list of new, relevant and powerful contacts and actions to take. For those of you who have never used a coach, I feel it’s incredibly cost and time effective. Its the short cut to making the impact you or your organisation wants to make. Of course its got to be the right coach! Without her this month I would not know about www.ted.com. Go visit its an incredible project and an incredible site.
Writing and distributing this e-newsletter is a first for me so feedback is essential! (I know already that its too long! And shorter monthly ones would be best!)
2. Progress with my websites’ purpose
I have been asked – why two sites? Well, Young Solutions international is my ‘mission’ site if you like and Life Skills Handbooks more of a brochure site from which I am currently selling and making available for free, resources and activities for Life Skills learning. I think they do two distinctive things. What do you think?
Here’s more on the sites and the questions coming up for me
www.LifeskillsHandbooks.com
Since November 14th when the site went live, pretty much every day I get one or two ‘pings’ to tell me that one of you folk out there has found and is downloading the 61 life skills activities for free. I am loving this! 6 months ago I was spending many days revising and updating the manual and getting it ready for the web. It was all worth it!
I would love to hear how you are getting on with the book. Are the sessions have been what you expect. If they have been implemented well and if so why? Of if not why not? Some but not many visitors have bought the whole book and have got the sections on definitions, planning, design and evaluation. Let me know why you are not tempted to buy the whole book. Do mail me through the site. Do let me know.
A few of you involved in life skills work have asked for some bespoke mentoring and that’s great. We are working out how this can happen and if we can do it in groups. I will let you know what’s happening and if anyone else would like this let me know. Another option is to have a free open seminar when you can throw your questions at me and where we can get a network going. Again let me know what you think.
www.YoungSolutionsinternational.com
This site hasn’t been as busy yet but my technical team thinks its funny that anyone has found it at all given how deeply buried it is at the moment and how unfettered by any signposts to anyone interested in this work! Nevertheless, I have sold copies of the book, I have used it in training, in presentations and feedback I’ve been getting is already integrated with a new version of the book-already available. I’ve been contacted about the on-line training and courses begin in September.
I’m collecting case studies for the major revision of the YSi Handbook next November so let me know what you are up to. I’m happy to promote your work.
www.clarehanbury.com
I’ve love managing the blog. Sometimes I might be going a little off purpose when a new item gets me going but it’s a good on going focus for my writing and although comments are sparse, many readers e-mail me with questions and ideas. My stats tell me that some days 200+ people are visiting and it seems to be increasing every day as I get better at integrating other social media and commenting on others writing. If you have projects, stories or experiences that are relevant to the blog let me know and at the very least I can direct my visitors to you.
This week I have been finding out about setting up an RSS feed to the blog and the YSi website. The content of the ‘feed’ is to remind and inspire people of the health actions children and young people take that improves the health and well being of others. Please send examples. Text, video, audio and photos all welcome and I can include them.
3. Other projects
Two other projects on the go at the moment, One with the Danish Government's international development agency, DANIDA and the other one with Comic Relief and will tell you more in the next bulletin. The other thing I'm doing which I'm totally LOVING is getting out and meeting people based in or around Cambridge who are aligned to what I do. It feels a little like coming out of my cave! I have been doing so much writing in the last few years. Its great to now do some talking!
3. Sources of inspiration
There are so many sources but special thanks this quarter to Abigail K-R, Claire R, David B, David M, Geraint R-J, Hetty E, Judith M, Marion R, Michael B, Patrick L, Sally P, Sarah N and Tim D…who have offered in their various ways help, encouragement and support that has made a big impact.
Transpersonal coach training with Sir John Whitmore
Very pleased to secure bursaries from EEDA and Performance Consultants International for a two day advanced training on transpersonal training. Owing to the snow we were just 5 participants! It was intense and fascinating and added considerably to my coaching toolkit. It is so useful to take a couple of days out once in a while to reflect and develop professionally and its all to easy for self-employed people to forget to do this often enough.
The Woodcraft Folk
I spent a week last month working on a proposal to evaluate the Woodcraft Folk’s TREE project. I found there was tremendous synergy between my values and ideas in youth participation and the Woodcraft Folk and was deeply disappointed not to be shortlisted. I’m waiting for feedback! However learning about the organisation was truly inspiring and led me to find out more about the voluntary youth sector in the UK. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the progress of this project and enrolling my own children in a Woodcraft folk local group.
The SODIS project
I just love this technology, the Solar Disinfection of water. It is so simple and it is proven that children and young people can mange the project effectively. I am planning to work up a proposal with the wonderful Mike Meegan who collaborates with SODIS to do some action research with the youngsters linked to his ICROSS project and start getting these ideas more widely used and known. Much more on this on the blog under the category, health.
The Symposium
The Symposium is a one day event that explores the link between three of humanity's most critical concerns: environmental sustainability, social justice and spiritual fulfillment. Using video clips from some of the world's most respected thinkers, along with inspiring short films, leading edge information and dynamic group interactions, the Symposium allows participants to gain a new insight into the very nature of our time and the opportunity we have to shape and impact the direction of our world with our everyday choices and actions. Find details at www.awakeningthedream.org. I’m going to an event in April and hope to become a volunteer facilitator. Some inspiring people involved.
Technology Entertainment Design (TED)
TED is an invitation-only event where the world's leading thinkers and doers gather together to find inspiration. There are some wonderful videos available to view for free on their website and some great opportunities for change makers to join. I have to ration myself to seeing a maximum of one video a day – much better than any TV!
Reading
Really inspired at the moment by
- The Element by Ken Robinson – a leading thinker and writer on creativity in education; and
- Time to Think by Nancy Kline who’s sharing the whys and hows of setting up thinking environments…maybe this is what I’m aspiring to in the processes I’m promoting through young solutions international 8-step structure. Much to ponder on!
To conclude: ideas forming and my questions to you…
The ideas that are forming for me at the moment are a varied mix and include:
- How to use social networking more effectively to communicate the results of important programmes in children and youth participation in health and education and to get best practice ideas more widely known and used.
- How to improve and strengthen the YSi Handbook and to support those interested in children and youth participation more effectively.
- How to promote skills in coaching and mentoring to strengthen communication at all levels in international development programming
Two questions to you
• What solutions are you looking for that the internet can help to solve?
• What am I already doing that is helpful?
Do contact me with feedback and ideas.
