Open Day

For the last few weeks we have been working towards an open day to consolidate links with the local community in Chilomoni. The Children's Centre will open in two stages; with any luck and a following wind the day care building will open on 1 September. We shall not open all the rooms at the same time, but we hope to open one room for each age group and gradually to grow until we reach full capacity with 250 children aged between 6 months and 6 years. The second, multi-agency building will take a few months longer, but we hope that it will begin its outreach work by the beginning of January 2012. The theme for this week's training includes 'Working with other professionals', and the students have done some research into the neighbourhood, finding out about the organisations that work with children. We invited the local chiefs, people from Social Services and the local Health Clinic, a representative of Chilomoni Police, people from local churches and the mosque, the head teachers of the local primary schools. While I have been in UK, David and the students have been busy working on displays and presentations designed to inform the visitors about the children's centre and its aspirations to provide high quality education for the children of Chilomoni. We had colourful display boards showing the four domains of the Malawian Curriculum, Physical, Social and Emotional, Mental and Cognitive and Moral and Spiritual Development. We had a pair of boards entitled 'Celebrating Differences' and 'Celebrating Similarities' that looked at the things that all residents of Chilomoni share and the richness of diversity that is found here. There was a display of pictures and crafts made by the students. We constructed a 'cosy corner' similar to the book corners we plan for each room in the centre where children will be able to choose books displayed at child height and sit comfortably to read them together. The student's poems were spread out for the visitors to read and there were many photographs of students taking part in sessions of the course. My favourite display was a closely packed board of the student's reflections on the course, what they have learned, their feelings about it and their hopes and aspirations for the future of the Children's Centre.

Beehive is good at such occasions and we benefitted from the experience of Mary Kamwendo and her team of caterers who provided sausage rolls, samosas, cake and soft drinks. The formal part of the proceedings consisted of a series of talks; first Vince Owen spoke about the origins of Krizevac and Beehive and the vision for the Children's Centre. He spoke eloquently of the studies which show the huge benefits which high quality early years education can bring in later life. He talked about the development of Children's Centres in England and how they grew out of concern for abused children who slipped through the net of the caring services and died because professionals each knew only their own small part of the child's story. He told the audience of Krizevac's vision of a centre where all local services for children could work together to give children the best chances of good care and good early education. Then David and I introduced ourselves and explained how we had gone about developing a course to train care givers for the new Centre that drew on our experience of child care and child development at home, but that was appropriate for the local culture here in Chilomoni. We thanked all those who had helped us by giving their time, local knowledge and expertise. We did our usual double-act and managed to raise a few laughs and a few rounds of applause, which was reassuring. Then Annie Banda, who is a Vice Principal of the IT College in whose splendid library we held the event, spoke about her role in community liaison for the college. The students then entertained the assembled company with a poem about the future of the new Mother Theresa Children's Centre; a lively drama about the value of developing creativity in young children; an original couple of songs in Chichewa and English about Beehive, the Children's Centre and the Child Care Training; and a comedy duo who raised a lot of laughs, but I am afraid I cannot tell you much about what they actually said as my Chichewa is not up to the job, I heard my name though, followed by a bellow of laughter, should I be afraid! Lindy led a choir of all our students from both courses in three songs we have learned to sing with children. The performance was magnificent! In rehearsal I was a bit worried about some of it, not so much the content of each item, but the links between items and the level of professionalism, but it was 'alright on the night' and I was proud of them all. I kept glancing at the assembled guests, particularly the chiefs and I saw smiles and laughs and interested faces, so I was able to relax and thoroughly enjoy the show. The star of the day was Moses who translated the speeches into Chichewa so that everyone would understand. He did a magnificent job and by the time he reached the end I am surprised he had any voice left at all.

The programme closed with a few remarks from the Traditional Authority chiefs. I understand that the gist of these was that they approve of the project as they can see that it is a step forward in terms of development for the local children and ultimately for Malawi. They undertook to ensure that the building will be respected by local people and not vandalised or abused, which is really significant support. David led the group of chiefs on a tour around the exhibits and many of our students stepped forward to explain the significance of the different displays. The occasion finished with Mary's excellent refreshments.

My feelings at the end of the day were of pride for the students and for what they have achieved. Eight months ago when we began all this, we had no idea that in such a short time we would be seeing our students explaining their training to local dignitaries in such articulate and creative style. It has all been an extremely steep learning curve, not only for the students, but also for David and for me. The students and other members of the local community here have taught us a lot that has helped us to understand Malawian culture and we are constantly having to re-evaluate and moderate our approach to match what we have learned. There have been days upon which I have seriously thought that I had bitten off much more than I could comfortably chew, but today was a good day and a day on which I could believe that we have got more right than we have got wrong!

There was one presentation, a dance, that we were forced to abandon because it had not been sufficiently well-rehearsed for us to be confident that it would meet the standard we were striving for. That was a shame, and I worried that the students involved would be disappointed, but upon reflection I am sure that we acted in the right way. It is very important that the students learn to take responsibility for preparing their work well and on time. Of course some struggle with this more than others, but when they are working in the children's centre they will need to be accountable for the quality of their work and get their preparation done on time!

What would I do differently next time? Not much I think. Perhaps begin to prepare a little earlier, perhaps choose a venue that is a little quieter as the sounds of the building site and the hum of the generator sometimes made it a little difficult to hear the presentations. On the other hand it was good to hold the meeting in such a lovely room with views over the township and right next door to the Children's Centre so that visitors could see the progress of the building. It was good to welcome several other Krizevac volunteers. Jan, Principal of JPIILITA who kindly allowed us to use his lovely library; Lindy of course, whose contribution to the music and singing makes such a welcome difference; Melvin, the engineer currently supervising the building of the Children's Centre; Giacomo, the architect who provided such clear images of what the finished day care building will look like and took such trouble to present them beautifully; and Ged who acted as driver, odd job man and photographer, and who was so very helpful throughout the day. Thanks are due to them all for their participation and support. While I am on thankyous I cannot leave David out! We are so different, at such different phases of life and very different temperament, but we work well together and can certainly be proud of our joint achievements. When she recruited us George said to me that Vince is 'Head of ideas' in Krizevac and she is 'Head of worry' and because they are so different they work in a complementary way. She felt that David and I would similarly complement each other. I do not think that we can be categorised in quite the same way, but certainly we each have skills , knowledge and attributes that the other has not, and neither of us could have done this job in quite the same way without the other!