REPORT OF THE WSWM PARENTS’ SEMINAR FOR ST. THOMAS AQUINAS SS, KASHAKI Held on Friday 4th March 2011 Submitted to SchoolNet Uganda By Tumwesigye Patrick Boss WSWM TSS (Teacher Support Specialist) Mobile: +256772858109 [email protected] Fig. 1: Some of the participants of the WSWM parents' Seminar 1 Table of Contents Page About the school 3 Rationale 3 WSWM parents’ seminar programme 3 Participants’ Introductions 5 Seminar objectives 5 Head teacher’s opening remarks 6 Remarks by respectable parent 7 Group Brainstorming 7 WSWM students’ mini exhibition 9 Group Presentations 10 Facilitators’ Harmonization 18 Introduction to WSWM curriculum 18 Youth Friendly Services 20 Closing remarks 21 Appendix 1 23 2 About St. Thomas Aquinas SS, Kashaki St. Thomas Aquinas SS, Kashaki is a mixed O’ level school. It is situated 7km from Kabale town on Bishop Bahram University road after Kigezi High School and Hornby Girls’ High School. The school has only a day schooling program. It is government aided and under the Universal Secondary Education (USE) housed in only two blocks. The school boosts of a student population of 185, 117 girls and 68 boys. The school also has a population of 15 teachers. Some students have to cover a distance of 4-10km to get to the school from the Kigezi hills. The school joined the WSWM program in 2009 and its two teachers were trained to implement the program. 1) Nuwomugizi Consolete 2) Arthur Balongo. Rationale In its eight years of implementation, WSWM program concentrated on the students and the teachers. The curriculum entirely benefited the two. This implies that sexuality education which largely aimed at behavioral change did not totally achieve its goal because the parents were not sensitized about the curriculum and how to handle sexuality education at their level as parents. This posed challenges to the students because the knowledge, attitude and skills learnt in the program could not be applied at home because; a) They collided with the cultural and religious beliefs of the community. b) The generation gap caused communication barriers (nobody starts the talk). c) The socio-economic set up could not allow easy implementation of some skills, knowledge and attitude. To improve the quality of implementation of the WSWM program and advocate for total participation of all stakeholders in the success of the program‚ SchoolNet has deemed it fit to sensitize all parents in our participating schools about WSWM and its core aim of sexuality education. PROGRAMME FOR THE WSWM PARENTS’ SEMINAR TIME ACTIVITY BY WHOM 11:00- Participant Introductions: Names of parent, Participants 11:30 AM child’s names and class 11:30 AM- Official opening of the seminar: 12:00 PM (i) Welcome & Seminar objectives by Balongo Arthur WSWM teacher 3 (ii) Welcoming Remarks by host teacher Besigye Godfrey (iii) Welcoming Remarks by Respectable Canon Buregyeya Parent (co-facilitator) 12:00- Small group Brainstorming: Participants 1:00 PM were divided into four groups. Each group Facilitators selected a chairperson and secretary who wrote down the group discussions for later presentation. All groups brainstormed the four questions below: Q1: What are those non-academic issues or challenges that are faced by our children? Q2. How do these non-academic issues or challenges affect the academic performance of our children? Q3: As parents, what can we do to help our children to overcome the non-academic/SRHR issues/ challenges they face? Participants Q4: As parents, what challenges do we face in trying to help our children overcome the non- academic/SRHR issues? 1:00-2:00 Lunch break & Mini exhibition by WSWM PM students 2:00- Small group presentations: Each group was Participants 3:20PM given 20 minutes to present, 5 minutes for each question. Presentation was done by the member agreed upon by the rest of the group. 3:20- Harmonization by facilitators. Tumwesigye 3:40PM Patrick Boss 3:40- Plenary Presentation: Introduction to the Balongo Arthur 4:10PM WSWM Curriculum 4:10- Presentation: Dr. Rukundo Alex 4:45PM (i) Common SRHR challenges faced by the youth in the area (ii) SRHR services provided by the Health Centre or Youth Friendly Centre ( iii) How youth can access the SRHR services 4 4:45- Testimonies by WSWM students WSWM students 4:55PM Official Closing: 4:55- Closing remarks from SchoolNet Tumwesigye 5:20PM Uganda Patrick Boss Closing remarks by host Head teacher Besigye Godfrey Closing remarks and official closure of Canon Buregyeya seminar by Guest of Honour Parents’ Group photograph END OF PARENTS’ SEMINAR (11:00-11:30AM) Participants’ introductions The seminar started at 11:00 AM with introductions by all the members present. The parents introduced themselves by mentioning their names, child’s names and class. Almost all participants were present at the start of the seminar as they had come early enough to attend a parents’ general meeting which worked as a good strategy for having large numbers in attendance. The general meeting had started early in the morning at 9:00AM. The list of participants and their contact information is given in Appendix 1 (11:30-11:50) Presentation: WSWM parents’ seminar objectives and welcome (Session facilitated by the WSWM teacher, Balongo Arthur) WSWM teacher Arthur Balongo welcomed parents and thanked them for saving their time to come. He highlighted that the program WSWM is in only two schools in Kabale district and thanked the facilitators for coming. He further thanked SchoolNet for their contribution to the seminar and the head teacher for his moral support. He then stated the objectives of the seminar which captivated the attention of the audience as he explained them in vernacular (Rukiga). They included; To provide the parents with an opportunity to share and learn from each other what non-academic issues/ challenges are faced by their children and how these SRHR challenges affect the academic performance of their children. 5 To brainstorm what parents can do to help their children to overcome the SRHR challenges the children face and what challenges the parents face in trying to help their children address these SRHR issues. To educate the parents about the WSWM program the contents of the WSWM program and how WSWM provides a social vaccine to the non- academic challenges of their children. To sensitize the parents about the need to send their children to the Youth Friendly SRHR centers and the healthy centers when need arises. (11:50-11:55) Head teacher’s welcome remarks The head teacher of the school, Mr. Besigye Godfrey started by extending his sincere thanks to SchoolNet Uganda for training him in Mukono. He noted that since the introduction of the program, there was a significant positive behavior change among the students. He thanked SchoolNet for their generous contribution towards lunch. He thanked parents for turning up for the brief PTA meeting and requested them to now listen to the package from SchoolNet. He urged parents to be vigilant and learn as much as they could for themselves and their children. Fig. 3: Head teacher, Mr. Besigye Godfrey making his opening remarks 6 (11:55-12:00PM) Opening remarks by Respectable parent The Headmaster then called upon Canon Buregyeya, a parent representative and head teacher of the neighboring Rugarama Primary School. In his opening remarks, the parent’s representative thanked the parents for coming. He also admitted that in his life, it was going to be a special because he had got the privilege to get knowledge from experienced especially from WSWM. He told the parents that as a person, he believed “Knowledge is power” and thus called upon everybody to make sure they attained some knowledge from the seminar so that they could be empowered. Lastly, he requested SchoolNet through its representative that in future, the seminar should be for at least three days since the questions to discuss seemed very important to the parents. (12:00-1:00PM) Group Discussions The parents were divided into four groups of at least 25 people each. They were given the following questions to discuss and come up with findings which would be presented to the all members after the discussions. Q1: What are those non-academic issues or challenges that are faced by our children? Q2. How do these non-academic issues or challenges affect the academic performance of our children? Q3: As parents, what can we do to help our children to overcome the non- academic/SRHR issues/ challenges they face? Q4: As parents, what challenges do we face in trying to help our children overcome the non-academic/SRHR issues? Each group selected a chairperson and a secretary to note down the group discussions. 7 Fig.4: Brainstorming session Fig.5: Brainstorming session 8 Fig.6: Brainstorming session (1:00-2:00PM) Lunch break and Mini exhibition by WSWM students Fig.7: Parents having lunch 9 WSWM students held a mini exhibition where they showed some of the charts and shared their testimonies (verbal and written) to be delivered to SNU offices. Fig.8 Shows students’ mini exhibition (2:00-3:20PM) Group presentations Group one: Presenter- Mr. Rutakirwa Johnson (Chairman LCII, Nyamiyaga). Group two: Presenter- Ms. Kyarikunda Phoebe Group three: Presenter- Canon Buregyeya Peter (H/M Rugarama P/S). Group four: Presenter- Ms. Abomuhangi Meldeo Below are the responses to each of the questions by each group. Q1. What are those non-academic issues or challenges that are faced by our children? Some of the non-academic challenges or issues faced by the children brainstormed by; Group Presentation Sickness: Parents identified that some children get a challenge when they constantly get ill. Poor family backgrounds: They pointed out that some families that are characterized by domestic violence, alcoholism and drug abuse are a challenge to the children.