Camilla in Rwanda: Wonderful work

This past week has been interesting for work. I’ve been trying to show Julius some of our child centred learning so he has been in observing our lessons. He made a couple of videos of our singing which I will put on here one day when I have good internet access. Also, we had a visit from a local group scholaire school. A group of about 8 teachers and their principal came to see the resource centre and make some resources. My, I have never seen such a hardworking bunch! They worked for about 2 hours in teams to make more than 10 rice sack pictures. It was lovely to see such motivation and it reminded me that people here do actually want this stuff. They were all very proud of their rice sacks at the end.

Finally, we had a meeting in Kigali with principals, tutors and volunteers from all of the teacher training colleges to discuss the sustainability of our project. Unfortunately it looks like the funding may well run out in the near future, so we discussed how Rwandans themselves can take our work forward. It was a really good meeting and I at least have the feeling that the will is there for it to continue. Our Rwandan colleagues were keen to speak up in the meeting and had some brilliant ideas of how we could make our work sustainable for when the money runs out. Because our course is now part of the official TTC curriculum it is examinable in the national exams, which means that motivation is high to find a way to continue this work.

It was so good to have all of this positive momentum towards the end of my placement because after putting so much time and energy into getting something started at the TTC I feel glad that it will be safe for the immediate future at least. We also had a get together with just the TTC vols after the meeting because it will be our last chance before me, Lindsey and Joan go back to our respective homes. It was all a bit sad because we are all very close as a team.

Me and Andrew, a colleague of mine, expalin our resources in the resource centre