anew

I wasn't sure what this time in Manjacaze would lead to as far was work with children. But it has led me to exactly where I always want to be--to helping a community start a preschool program. The church here has had a children's ministry for years and they've expressed interest in having a more structure, more preschool focused program.

I can't deny that a big pull of their desire is the hope of funding, but of course. Finances turns into the bane of a so-called grassroots developers work, but life is life and people need money, whether for food or drink (often strong drink) or clothes or other material happiness. It makes me sigh, I've thought over this several times in the past weeks--do we pour money into teacher salaries if it means better quality classrooms, into a lunch for the children, if it means they'll learn better, into materials and resources, if it creates a stimulating environment? Or does it mean that the community will just fill with expectations of more, more and not contribute anything themselves?

But how do we convince them that early childhood education is really valuable without first having a good quality program. Studies show that there's something like a $7 return for every $1 invested in early childhood education--not a bad investment. It's definitely something that we should deem worth the while.

These are the questions that I've been mulling around over and over. And whatever the correct answers are, I think we're going to go ahead and try to support this community. So I'll spend my remaining time here--not sure how long exactly that will be, probably about a month--training some teachers and working at building the church's capacity to plan, make a budget, and write a proposal to submit to Mozaic (a South African mission).

The training will be the fun part, the organizational management part the more tedious and difficult--but I think both are equally important for a successful community preschool.

This week my master's cohort discussed the concept of creating a community of practice--a group of people with similar interests and passions who reflect on the practice of a program and together bring about a better work. It sounds great to me...but hard to attain. Nonetheless, it's a challenge as I start a new work here in Manjacaze.