Hello and greetings from a beautiful sunny day in Mzuzu. Its been a great week at the workshop. We had 16 participants representing 14 Presbyteries and they were all giving presentations about the work happening in the field.
On the first morning we had the Education Secretary to open the workshop (unfortunately I didn't take a photo), but on the second morning we had the Acting Deputy Education Secretary Mrs Miriam Gausi who led our devotion.
The workshop was very practical and participatory - the participants were making materials and discussing problems in the field. Here you can see our trainer in Mzalangwe Presbytery with Matthew her 11 month old son who gave us great amusement all through the workshop.
In our school in Mzuzu, we are privileged to have a teacher with a gift for reading and telling stories, so I asked her to come along and share with the trainers how to tell a story - I think she was named appropriately, as her first name is Gift!You can see Fiona in among the trainers - she is learning what Early Childhood Development in Malawi is all about - I think she enjoyed the workshop and learned much about our work.
Kamoza gave us some examples from Bandawe Presbytery where he is the trainer.
and Forster, who has the big responsibilty of looking after 2 Presbyteries - Misuku and Chitipa in the very northern part of the country, shares his experiences with the rest of the group.
Enala, who you have seen many times and is based here in Mzuzu Prebytery, was sharing some thoughts with the others.
One afternoon we were doing practical activies that are useful in nursery school and so we went to the church ground and did some games (one of which is on the top picture). Here, you can see the audience - the kids were wondering why these adults were playing children's games!!
And of course, the Early Childhood Co-ordinator had lots to talk about...........
The workshop ended on Wednesday afternoon and as you can see everyone was very happy, taking lots of materials and thoughts back to the Presbyteries. All of these trainers are volunteers and they do such an amazing job only because they love children and want to see things improve in the lives of those children. I wonder how many of us would do the same for our children??
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that we had a workshop for directors in Mzuzu who know nothing about ECD. One of those present came and asked if we could help her and her caregivers to learn something more about ECD. So, on Saturday morning, I went with Nicolas and Enala to our school and we had some lessons which proved really interesting and informative for all. Here you can see Enala discussing child centred approach with the caregivers.
and Nicolas explaining what Early Childhood Development is.
On another note completely, the last few weeks in the garden I have noticed these lovely orb spiders building amazing webs (they are so strong that many insects are often caught in them). On the roof just outside my door is this lovely specimen.
The garden is full of lovely trees like this one.
If you look closely you can see an enormous web (not really visible here)
and if you look more closely this is what you see!! Apparently they have poisonous venom but its not too harmful to humans. I am not going to go too close to find out.
Wishing you a good week.
Blessings
Diane x
Hi Sis, sounds like you have had a good week. Great to see Fiona in the pictures. It looks like there was a lot of fun in the learning - good to touch base with your inner child!
ReplyDeleteHave a good week.
Mox