Books, Books, Books (and other stuff)

Hello All,
As a follow up to the teacher training report, I thought we'd give you a taste of a couple of reports that Nancy wrote concerning the follow-up trips. First, one teacher from each centre went to Johannesburg to a big warehouse with free (yes, free!) books. This is a service offered by the Rotary Club (Rotary Books for the World) to NGOs in Southern Africa. This was a fantastic visit. We had a great time and left with close to 150 books. The teachers chose very wisely. Most of the books were in the area of Maths and Sciences (books that would be VERY expensive), but they also chose books of poetry, dictionaries, books to help them teach English, and much more.

No - this is not Bert's study (although he wouldn't mind if it was filled with this many books). There are many books for the teachers to choose from. It was tough for them to decide.






You can tell from the big smile on Portia's face that she is having a good time. Portia is the OVC manager at the Thembalethu Centre.






Shopping Trip
The next trip to report on is the shopping trip for the teachers. You'll recall from the previous posting that each center that accumulated enough points during the teacher training received R500 each to purchase books and supplies for their center. The center with the most points received an extra R300. Vezubuhle was the winning center. The money for this shopping trip came from part of a donation from Renee Coppes, a recent MCDC volunteer.

We spent most of the day shopping, visiting 4 different stores in Pretoria. The teachers came well prepared with lists of things their centres needed. The teachers made excellent choices, ranging from stationery supplies (rulers, chalk, pencil sharpeners, etc) to books (dictionaries, atlases, English Handbooks, etc.). I was especially impressed that many of their choices for materials reflected the things they learned during the Teacher Training Workshops and are now putting into practice.

The teachers are very clever! There were several things that they wanted to get, but could not afford with their spending money. They put forth excellent arguments and convinced me to purchase these things for MERC so they could all use them!

God showered us with many blessings! There was a particular book that I had used during Teacher Training that all of the teachers wanted to buy. We found only 2 copies of it as we were shopping. The price of the book was R50, but when the two teachers who got the books first went to pay for it, they found it was on sale for only R5! I promised the other teachers I would look for it later since Bert and I are often in bookstores, and they each gave me R50, in case I found it and it was not on sale. I did find 2 copies of the book at another store the next day, and after telling the story to the manager of the store, she gave them to me for free!

Another blessing was that in one store several of the teachers found an excellent phonics program for teaching English. It has many components and is quite expensive, but I was pleased that they were so interested in it. I told them that I had seen it for the first time the previous day and I thought it looked great too, but could not be sure about the quality of the program without listening to the CDs first. The manager heard us talking and offered to play portions of the CDs for us! The teachers feel it will be very helpful at the centres. The manager offered to organize a workshop for us put on by a representative of the company. Talking it over, we decided that I would attend the workshop with Portia (Themb) and Victoria (SC). After completing the workshop, if we decide that the program is useful, I will use additional money that has been donated by Renee to buy the program for MERC. Portia and Victoria would then teach the material to the other teachers at all of the centres. As time goes on, as additional money is donated, perhaps we could buy the program for each centre.

In order to have enough strength to finish the shopping day, we made a stop at KFC for lunch.









Here is the group of teachers at the end of the long day. It's hard to see the big smiles.






We are so grateful to the Rotary Clubs, the donor for the money for the supplies, and to God who allows us to work with such a fine bunch of teachers.