Workshops and general update

Part of the responsibility of the 'counselling' students is to facilitate workshops for the peer leaders every other week. These are intended to further develop the skills of the peer leaders. We've had 4 sessions so far, 3 in the Lusaka office and one in Liteta, a rural community.

The first session we focused particularly on listening skills and trust. We did a role play of 'active listening' versus 'poor listening', and they got really into it! We have some future Zambian TV stars!

The second session we split into smaller groups and created mind maps of 'the role of a peer leader'. We are daily impressed with the professionalism and passion of the peer leaders, and understanding their perception of the role they play was very encouraging. They absolutely covered their paper with skills, qualities and activities that they need to possess and utilise in order to fulfil the mission of Sport in Action (Development through Sport). They then presented their maps to the other groups in order to ensure that no one missed anything, and it turned into a sort of motivational speech about keeping up the good work. It was great (videos to come)!

The next session we brainstormed all the songs, icebreakers, message games and fun and movement games we could think of and that peer leaders use to run sessions in the schools. We then sang and played them all so every peer leader knows every game and can use them. The majority of what Sport in Action does in the schools here in Lusaka is centred around the PE classes they run. These PE classes are not like a typical PE class in the UK (or US, or Canada!). Instead of focusing on fitness or specific sporting skills, the goal is to integrate important life skills and messages into fun and movement games. So it is important to have a large internal database of songs and games to pick and choose from depending on the age, length of time and topic for the day. The sorts of topics range from concentration, team work, and communication skills to more sensitive topics like peer pressure, drug abuse, alcohol and HIV.

The fourth session we've done was in Liteta, a rural community we took a day trip to. Some of the team will be returning there in two weeks time to stay in the village for a fortnight. We had a great day there. The counselling students took a workshop with a small group of peer leaders from the surrounding villages, in which they covered the role of the peer leader again, and how to effectively integrate messages into games. The sporting students also took a clinic on football and netball drills with students from the area. We will be visiting 2 more villages this week and will be facilitating more workshops and clinics with the peer leaders and students in those areas as well.

We are half-way through our time here in Zambia and although we feel like we've been here for ages because we are so settled, it has also flown by. We have two more full weeks in Lusaka at our placements before we split into smaller groups and go out into rural villages for a fortnight, before coming back to Lusaka for a week to wrap up and say goodbye. We haven't been a full team for a few weeks now, with graduation, Kieran in Tanzania with his U13 football team, a short trip to Livingstone and various sick days. But we're all back and healthy now and are enjoying catching up. Chris Lusk arrived this weekend, and we are enjoying her home cooking! More to come,

PZ team 2010