Planting seeds the Amos way

Henriette Lamprecht – Stuck between shacks with corrugated walls and makeshift roofs, all thrown together with no real sense of plot and plan, is one with more than one room filled with the voices of children – some diligently writing the letters of the alphabet, others eagerly raising their voices in song.At the entrance, in bright red letters, it reads “whatever you write in the heart of the child, no water can wash away”.Etuhole Pre-Primary School and Day Care is one of 30 schools that fall under the guidance and auspices of the Amos Meerkat Project, a curriculum for schools in Windhoek focusing on the early childhood development of the children of the capital’s informal settlements and shanty towns. Its mentor, Magda Shamalaza, has been part of Amos since its inception in 2012. The children are between the ages of five and six, and at Etuhole there are three classes with 20 children each. Magda makes weekly visits to the schools she is responsible for. Every three weeks the teachers of the various schools meet at the Life Change Centre in Windhoek to share their goals, experiences and hardships. She really loves children, says Magda who is a mom herself and has a preschool in Okahandja. As children are her passion, she is also studying towards a diploma in junior primary education.The parents of the children at Etuhole are needy, she explains, being from security guards to cashiers and domestic workers.“Some of the children stay the whole day without supervision and food when the parents go out to work. It’s almost like it’s normal,” she explains. “Everybody does it.”Other survive on a grant of N$250 per month, but “how much can you survive on that?” At Etuhole the children, mostly dressed in school uniforms, receive a daily meal. Hygiene and discipline are important, and after the meal each child finds his way to wash his hands at a mobile water can. Founded by Judy Wiese, the Amos Meerkat curriculum focuses on the important year before grade 1, preparing children for ‘big school’. Living on a farm, Judy realised there was no opportunity for the children of farm workers to prepare for school. Hence she decided to train the mothers to teach their children. Amos only operates in informal settlements and today boasts schools in Okahandja, Mariental, Grootfontein, Outjo and Opuwo. As a lot of the children come from less than ideal backgrounds and broken households, part of the teachers’ training include training by the Trauma Healing Network to identify these children, and learn how to address and help them. Magda admits some of the children stay over weekends, or will eat only eat when they are at the school. When they start grade 1, it often feels “as if we lose them”.“We don’t know anymore what the situation with them or at their homes are. We don’t know if they are happy.”The Christian faith plays a very important part in the children’s daily education and forms the basis of the Amos curriculum.“There are so many bad things out there,” says Magda. “We want them to know better, to be strong and say no to bad things.”Through the seven years since the Amos Meerkat Project has started, the project aims to try and meet the different needs of the children of Namibia. It creates an opportunity for approximately 4 000 five- to six-year-old children on a yearly basis. Without it, many children on farms and in villages would probably never be ready to enter the school system.The syllabus is easy enough for mothers on farms and in villages in rural areas to help children become school-ready. Through 26 monitors and a two-week training programme the project helps children who are not close to a school or who could not get accepted due to limited space in the schools.Since the Amos children are school-ready, and the Namibian curriculum is covered, the children are accepted in grade 1 classes in any government or private school in Namibia. Monitors are empowered through four monitor workshops per year to reach teachers on a regular basis to ensure that they are equipped and ready to work with the children. The monitors meet the teachers every three weeks to help prepare them for the next module to be covered for the next three weeks, also doing class visits once a month. Apart from the school readiness programme, a lot of emphasis is put on professional development of monitors who then pass it on to the teachers. Programmes for mentors include becoming part of the recycling programme in Namibia with the Amos Meerkat schools using recycling materials in preparing resources for use in the classes. These include from bottle caps, plastic bags, plastic milk bottles and cereal boxes. Due to the efficiency of the Amos Meerkat programme empowering the teachers and the children, the international community also became involved in building classrooms, especially in the Kavango and Kunene regions. Currently 11 teachers were blessed with classrooms. Old age homes and ladies from the various communities, like the Stadtmission, are continuously knitting the dolls that used for the theme “Myself”. About 5 000 dolls are needed every year to hand out to the children.The slogan of the Amos Meerkat syllabus is “Teaching God’s Way”. The vision is to provide every farmer or community in Namibia the opportunity to start a preschool on his farm or in his community, so that every preschool child in Namibia can have the opportunity to meet his/her Saviour through Christ-centred education and to be school-ready. The goal of the project is to also equip existing preschools that do not have any curriculum, or whose current curriculum is not appropriate for their circumstances, in order to ensure that the learners are educationally ready for grade 1. The curriculum and training programme are based on biblical principles and put together in such a way that it will be possible for a trained “teacher” to run a small preschool for the children on a farm or informal settlement. The project is rolled out by Namibia Life Change Centre Foundation (NLCCF). Amos Meerkat Syllabus (AMS) provides the curriculum and some of the materials to support the curriculum, including 12 modular workbooks for each learner. The aim is not to facilitate jobs for the jobless, but rather to equip people with valuable skills. Every teacher at an AMS school must attend two one-week training sessions, six months apart. Teachers are trained to use the curriculum. Skilled, local overseers or mentors in each town visit the schools approximately once a month to monitor the implementation of the curriculum. Currently the project has trained 55 teachers and 12 assistants in 2018/2019.Success is measured by the number of enrolments of six-year-olds at schools to start grade 1. No child who completed the Amos Meerkat syllabus has ever been denied starting their first school year, giving hope to many who want their children to excel in a tough world. *admin@amos.com.na, www.amos.com.na

Planting seeds the Amos way

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Planting seeds the Amos way

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