Appraisal forms almost due

Hello mentors! As you know, Appraisal Forms are due this Friday. You can hand them in at any point from now until 5pm on Friday. Note that we have a Mini Seminar on the same date (3pm, Kinbu assembly hall); if you're coming you can hand them in then, or you could use the seminar as a last minute opportunity to speak with your mentees. I would recommend this especially for those who have been having a hard time getting a hold of your mentees.

We've been reading...

From student to UN chief
UN -- Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had an emotional reunion yesterday with the woman who hosted him in the United States nearly five decades ago when he was a young student on his first-ever trip outside his home country of the Republic of Korea. Libba Patterson, 93, beamed with pride as she hugged Mr. Ban, who spent 8 days at her home in Novato, a city outside of San Francisco, California, in 1962. “You are so wise for your age,” she recalled telling a solemn 18-year-old Mr. Ban...

Guinea headed for free election, analysts say
Africa: The Good News -- Former members of a government that took power after a 2008 coup will be allowed to run in next month's landmark election, underlining the difficulty of staging the first free polls in Guinea since independence more than 50 years ago.The military has long held near-absolute power in this West African nation. Still, analysts say the ex-junta candidates announced late Monday are only a minor setback and that they cannot stop the momentum for democracy after decades of dictatorship. "The mood is optimistic. People are putting their faith in the fact that a relatively clean election will take place," said Michael McGovern, an anthropologist at Yale University who studies Guinea and was recently in the country...

UN and UNICEF urge all countries to adopt measures protecting children
UNICEF -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake and other child-rights advocates came together at UNICEF headquarters in New York this morning, calling for all countries to take extra steps aimed at protecting children from violence and exploitation. Ten years ago, the UN General Assembly adopted two Optional Protocols supplementing the wide-ranging human rights protections of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, or CRC. The protocols offer additional protection for children who are vulnerable to armed conflict, or to being sold or exploited for purposes of prostitution or pornography.

In South Africa, an unlikely leader on AIDS
NY Times -- In a nation ravaged by AIDS, a disease still hidden in shadows of stigma and shame, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa has begun to engage in an extraordinarily open conversation about sex, AIDS and H.I.V. prevention, one ignited in part by his own recent admission that he had unprotected sex during an extramarital affair. Last month, as he announced a vast expansion of H.I.V. testing and AIDS services, he publicly took an H.I.V. test and disclosed that he had tested negative for the virus. Then in a frank interview on Thursday, Mr. Zuma said that he had been circumcised and had encouraged his sons to undergo the procedure, which can reduce a man’s risk of contracting H.I.V. by more than half...

Mini Seminar coming up

Another quick message for all mentors! We have another Mini Seminar coming up on the 4th of June (now confirmed). This is the same day the Appraisal Forms are due. If you need to use the seminar to talk to your mentes, you may do so at the end. I will have copies with me on the day, so you don't need to worry about printing them out. As usual the seminar will take place in the assembly hall at Kinbu at 3pm. Harry McNinson, a Databank employee and former Kinbu student will be talking to the mentees to encourage and motivate them.

See you all next Friday!

47 Years of African Leadership for Africa

Yesterday, 'Africa Day', marked the 47th anniversary of what is now the African Union (the AU was formed in 2002 to replace the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) which was established on May 25th, 1963). Forty seven years of united leadership from the 53 member states that make up the Assembly of the African Union have seen their fair share of ups and downs. The AU's initial handling of the crisis in Darfur, for example, was severely criticized. However, the 2008 invasion of Anjouan to oust separatist leader Colonel Mohamed Bacar and the 2003 peacekeeping intervention in Burundi are widely acknowledged as successes.

Click here for a detailed account of the AU's history - from the people behind the OAU to what it is today - and here for more information about their activity to date. Acknowledgment to allAfrica.com for the information.

Below, you can find an excerpt of Jean Ping (Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union)'s address to journalists earlier in the year, which has a brief run-through of the progress the AU is making on various countries. The full speech can be found here, and the full-text article can be downloaded from the AU website.

"Ladies and gentlemen,

"In 2009, conflicts and crises have again spilled a lot of ink. However, we hope 2010 will be the year for durable solutions and the culmination of processes begun to entrench peace, safety and well being for people in Africa. As I like to say, our ultimate aim is to preserve African citizens from fear, and poverty.

"As you are aware of, the crisis in Madagascar [sic] has given us a hard time. Neither the adoption of the Transitional Charter nor the agreements of Maputo and the Additional Act of Addis Ababa were enough to dissolve the Gordian knot of the distribution of ministerial portfolios. I just returned from Madagascar where my mission was to present compromise solutions to the Malagasy parties. The Commission's initiative was welcomed, but no positive conclusion can be announced as of now.

"In Somalia, President Ahmed Sharif has opened dialogue with the armed opposition and the hard-line insurgents. Notwithstanding this, Al Shabaab and Hisbul Islam continue to undermine the national reconciliation process by repeated attacks. This further deteriorates the humanitarian and security situation in the country. AMISOM whose mandate was renewed for a period of 12 months has still not attained the authorized effective of 8,000 men. I hope that the promised troops will be on the ground in 2010. In the meantime, it is clear that Somalia is still a major concern throughout Africa and the world.

"In Sudan, considerable progress has been made. In January 2010, the process of implementing the global peace agreement has celebrated its 5th anniversary. However, many challenges remain. National elections will be held in April 2010. They will be followed by the referendum for southern Sudan and the Abyei region in January 2011. Regarding Darfur, I hope that the implementation of the Mbeki Report will be a lasting solution.

AfricanAgenda2010 Survey

African Monitor has been working on getting the voices of Africans heard at various summits held at organisations such as the African Union and United Nations. They have recently launched an the AfricanAgenda2010 Survey to widen the scope of people they are able to reach. If you have a little spare time, please take the survey and make your opinions count! Don't let the first page scare you off (as it almost did me!); it only takes about 10 minutes to complete. Here's some information about the survey from their website:

"2010 is a critical year in Africa’s development, and as we head towards the United Nations Summit on the MDGs in September 2010 in New York, it is important that African stakeholders develop a set of priorities for engagement and advocacy in Africa, and towards building a redefined relationship between African countries and the international community.

African Monitor and a number of partners, including ONE and the Southern Africa Trust, are facilitating citizen consultations around the continent to develop a citizen-driven agenda for Africa in the second decade of the 21st century. The aims of these consultations are to:

1. Develop an African agenda wholly owned and promoted by governments, civil society, business and academia;
2. Identify high impact priorities for implementation between 2010 and 2015;
3. Identify key evidence that demonstrates the effectiveness of partnerships (among Africans and between them and the international community) in programme implementation;
4. Galvanise shared expectations and excitement about prospects for Africa;
5. Generate commitment and renewed energy to drive local and international support for democracy and development in Africa.

Recognising that there are ongoing continental processes to review progress towards the MDGs, as well as identify priorities for international community engagement, these consultations will also review the existing continental processes and submit recommendations to them. Realising how limited physical consultations are, it is critical that an e-consultation is undertaken to poll a broad cross section of African citizens, particularly young people, on these issues."

Conselling based education

One of the tools that we aim to promote through the YLMP is Counselling Based Education (CBE). Below is a brief description of what CBE entails and hopes to achieve. It was written by Seth Tandoh, who works with Media Youth Project:

"CBE is a style of sharing information that utilises the trainee's own curiosity and life experiences. Unlike a typical Ghanaian classroom set-up where students are "lectured at" from rigid, inflexible notes, the trainee is required to give something of himself.

Here are some of the unique aspects of CBE as practiced by Media Youth Project. The first four relate to training methods:

1. We throw away conventional 'chew and pour' teaching.
At Media Youth Project the trainee himself becomes part of the learning process.

2. We keep learning groups small so we can give everyone individual attention.
By keeping the numbers small (between 3-10), the leader can give each individual attention and, in love, help him or her to chart a consistent course of self-development.

3. We place great emphasis on practicals.
Emphasis on putting what one has learnt into immediate use.

A little housekeeping

Afternoon all! It's been a while since I personally addressed you, and I'd like to take a minute or two to do that. To all of you who have followed the blog since we started, thanks for sticking with us. And to those of you who have recently joined, welcome!

The blog has gone through a number of changes since it was first created. The first - and probably the most significant - was the removal of the privacy settings to read the blog, which made it more accessible to everyone. More recently, I removed the settings that required you to be a member of the blog in order to leave a comment. These changes should (hopefully) make it easier to get around and should improve the exchange of ideas.

The content of the blog itself has been evolving since it's conception and will continue to do so. The tag cloud, 'We've been reading...' pages, and the Facebook group widget are all products of this. What I'd like to do now is to involve you in this process. Is there anything you would like so see that is not on here? This can include anything from applications to the contents of the posts themselves.

While it's impossible to guarantee that every suggestion will be implemented, I'd love to hear from you. Now the restrictions of commenting have been lifted, no excuses :)

Developing a culture of reading (Part 2)

Last night, various junior and senior mentors met to decide on which programme we are going to implement at Kinbu. As mentioned earlier, we wanted to pick the most effective and sustainable idea that would benefit the largest number of students.

To start with, everyone present shared their ideas on which idea they thought was the best to implement and why. From this, we came down to about five ideas. In the end, we decided that it made most sense to go with the Library Club idea. A point was raised that it would be unrealistic to target the whole school to begin with. If we're able to implement the club successfully and make it attractive enough, eventually a large number of students would benefit. Better start small with high levels of success than to start too ambitiously and end up with little progress.

Another point was that providing incentives to the students would work well, and this could work quite well with a Library Club. One of the most attractive features of the Library Club is that it is flexible. Several ideas can be integrated together for the Library Club to organise. Out of the ideas we came up last week, these include:

• Termly quizzes/competitions based on set books. Internal (within Kinbu) and external (involving other schools) reading competitions
• Members get exclusive benefits, i.e. watch movies (e.g. The Book Club, The Debaters), go on trips etc based on attendance to meetings
• Have speakers periodically come and talk to students about the importance of reading (e.g. Ama Ata Aidoo).
• Arrange books in order of difficulty. A ‘reading marathon’ could then be introduced. Students must finish one book before advancing to the next. Can create positive competitiveness
• The club could organise writing and debating events
• The library could be emphasised at orientation – new students could be given a tour of library and encouraged to join the library club

Instead of completely scrapping the idea of having students make drama productions from books, we decided that if there was an 'outside' production happening, students could read the book and then go see the play as one of the Library Club trips. This would be at the discretion of staff at Kinbu.

The issue of students only joining the library Club for benefits (i.e. to hear speakers, to go on trips, etc) was brought up. We decided that events such as speakers talking about the importance of reading should be open to both members and non-members of the club as withholding this would be counter-productive. However, there will be a 'discounts' based system for events such as trips. The more club meetings students attend, the cheaper the trip will be for them.

Feel free to drop a comment if you've got any additional suggestions.

We've been reading...

Where is Obama's foreign policy heading?
BBC -- Mr Karzai was seen in Washington as very much part of the problem in Afghanistan. This week, in contrast, he has had the red carpet rolled out for him in the US capital. Indeed, the apparent flip-flop in approach to the Afghan president seems to be a theme running through much of the Obama administration's foreign policy. Think how tough the Obama team were on Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over settlement building, only to back away from an all-out confrontation without any really convincing evidence that settlement construction had been halted. So what is going on? ...

The wavering war on AIDS
NY Times -- The global war on AIDS has racked up enormous successes over the past decade, most notably by providing drugs for millions of infected people in developing countries who would be doomed without this life-prolonging treatment. Now the campaign is faltering. Donations from the United States and other wealthy countries have leveled off while the number of people infected with H.I.V., the AIDS virus, grows by a million a year. By one informed estimate, only $14 billion will be available of some $27 billion needed this year to fight the disease in the developing world. Fewer than 4 million of the 14 million people infected with the AIDS virus are getting drug treatment — far short of the goal of universal access set by the United States and others...

African leaders unite to fight malaria
The East African -- For decades, malaria was the disease of sad contradiction. With a sense of fatalism, Africans accepted it as the leading single killer of pregnant women and children under 5, even though those one million deaths a year were fully preventable and treatable. In the last five years, the international community has awakened to combat this needless killer, pumping billions of dollars in foreign aid for bed nets, miracle drugs, and other interventions to save lives...

Developing countries stepping up action against climate change
World Bank -- Despite the global financial crisis and the resulting economic downturn, the past year has witnessed unprecedented demand from developing countries for World Bank Group support in their efforts to address development and climate change as interlinked challenges, according to a new report. Released today, the Progress Report on the Strategic Framework for Development and Climate Change documents the Bank Group’s growing response to these demands.