Kids 4 Kids Publishing Continues!

Armed with stories from Malawi, we will now publish the stories to share with the children back in the U.S.  We will also have the kids back in the U.S. continue writing stories to make into new books to bring back to Malawi during the summer of 2009!

If you would like to join us in publishing books for Malawi or any other place - let us know! 

The Children from Children with Hope and Destiny

I spent much of my time with the  children from CHAD (Children with Hope and Destiny).  They loved the Kids 4 Kids books I brought.  They wrote stories to send back to the US, and they developed their love of telling stories.

Coming from difficult backgrounds, they didn't the luxury of having stories told to them. 

The CHAD kids also enjoyed spending time drawing pictures.  We weren't able to connect the pictures to their stories, but this always gives us a something to work toward next year!

Chisomo Nursery School In Action!

Chisomo Nursery School

I also spent time at Chisomo Nursery School.  It is a school that just started to give children in a village just outside of the city of Lilongwe a better chance in primary school.  

The children were darlings.  I TRIED to read them one of the Kids 4 Kids books that had the cutest pictures, but they crowded around and pushed so much that I had to end the story.  I left the rest of the teaching to the local professionals!

I left books with them, and I will keep close contact with the school. 

Prizes!

The prizes for the writing contest were exercise books, pens, and candy. Special books written by a fifth grade class at Brandon were going to be given as prizes to the winners, but the headmaster and teachers wanted to keep them for the school library.  More children could enjoy them if they became part of the library. 

As far as I knew, the books were brought were the beginnings of a school library. I saw no other evidence of a library. 

On July 4th the headmaster gathered with a group of teachers to judge the stories the children had written!  

I was excited to see the stories even though only 30 kids out of 1,000 wrote something. The students had to write the stories outside of class because there wasn't time in the school day to write them. 

I spent time as a "Visiting Teacher" to help build relationships with the teachers and administration at Mphungu.  I spent time in as many classrooms as possible, but I tried not to take too many photos.  I felt that taking photos interrupted the flow of conversations and interactions. 

Teaching a Class!

This is a picture of a standard 3 class. There were 123 students in this class. My camera couldn't get all of the students in the picture at the same time.  As far as I could tell, there were no textbooks to use. 

After observing in standard 3 for the day, the teacher invited me to try my hand at teaching a lesson. I was really nervous about it, but I was certainly not going to turn down the chance to learn something new!  

What an experience!  Although the children had lots of fun singing along with my lesson, I am not sure they learned very much.  

The Writing Contest

My time with Mphungu School was limited.  I knew that I needed to develop a relationship with the teachers and administration before the stories from Kids 4 Kids could be appreciated.  This took time.  My time was limited because I had other projects I was working on in Lilongwe, Malawi.  

I thought that perhaps a writing contest might be the best way to get the children from Mphungu (standard 4 - 8) involved in building a writing relationship with Brandon.  The stories they would share could really be valuable pieces for children back in Georgia to understand what some kids in Malawi think about.  

I had to work hard to get the teachers and administrators interested in conducting a writing contest.  It was an added burden, and they already had a near impossible job. Although the students in standard 4 - 8 have their lessons in English, the headmaster was worried that the students might not be able to write stories in English. I assured him that it didn't matter if the stories were in Chichewa or English. It was important to get the students writing. I would accept either.  The teachers could do the judging of the stories, and I would just be sure to publish them as they were written.  I knew the students would love seeing their own stories in print. We ended the conversation with the agreement that I could come on July 4th to collect the stories and give out the prizes.