Internship Unisport Youth Sports Academy

Name: Unisport
Location: Kabwe - area Makululu
Capacity: about 150 children
Education: every morning from 08.00 until 12.00
Sports: every afternoon from 14.00 until 16.00
Volunteers: +/- 5
Mentor: Mr. Msiska
My groups: the  two groups with the oldest children, because they speak and understand English

What is Unisport

Unisport is a local organisation which provides education and sport for street children.

The organisation wants the children to have a fair start in life, and helps by offering education to them who can't afford it. The subjects that are taught in the educational part in the morning are English, mathematics and general studies, which include religious education, history, civics, ...
In the afternoon the children come to a playing field and do sports.
The organisation completely relies on volunteers.
The space where the lessons are is for free and the teachers are doing everything on a voluntary base. This makes Unisport a flexible project, sometimes a teacher isn't there, and the planning has to be adjusted.

Structure Unisport

This is an example of how a day at Unisport can be :

08.00 : 09.00 - English

09.00 : 09.45 - English

09.45 : 10.00 - break

10.00 : 11.00 - Mathematics

11.00 : 12.00 - Mathematics

12.00 : 14.00 - break

14.00 : 16.00 - sport at Sabels

At the moment the education project is located in a tent at Don Bosco Youth Centre, the

fathers there were so kind to offer us the space for free.
It's not ideal because every morning the chairs have to be put into the tent, and at the end of the morning they have to be put back into the container, it's quite a lot of work, and the children are not able to do it on their own. There are only two parts of blackboard available and there are four classes. Not all of the children have a good notebook and a pen, so it takes a lot of time for them to copy something from the blackboard.
The youngest groups are with so many children that it's very hard for the teacher to give each and every one of them the attention they need to understand what's being said.
In the afternoon the oldest children can come to Sabels (an orphanage and school for street children) and do sports against a team from Sabels.
The girls mostly do a sort of handball, and the boys play football.

My first experiences at Unisport

There are a lot of children and they really want to learn.

But it's so hard to learn them new things when you don't speak their language (Bemba).
There are huge skill differences and also huge age differences. There are children who are 14 who can't read or write, and next to them sits a boy of 8 who does know how to do all of those things.
The most of them are doing the best they can, but with some it's like you just can't get to them. They listen to your question but don't answer it. They look at the sums on the blackboard but will copy the answer from their neighbour, without thinking for themselves. And those are often the ones from who you want to know if they understood it or not.
It is really nice to see how they enjoy learning and how proud are if they know the correct answer.

             Mr.Msiska             

                   

 the tent at Don Bosco

one of the classes