Blogs

OR:  How an Austrian with a slight Nicaraguan accent spent 2 weeks at the Dr. Stephen Youngberg Technical Vocational School

After having lived in the wonderful Nicaraguan mountains for 10 months and working on our La Bastilla Technical Agricultural High School, I have had the chance to visit our Honduras project, set in an equally breathtaking surrounding: The Stephen Youngberg Technical Vocational School, as faithful followers of the Honduras blog already know, is a technical school that has been running their programme for about 15 years.

On the 15th of May, La Bastilla School celebrated Agronomy Day.  Despite the fact that in the UK we have cards for every occasion, I had never heard of Agronomy Day until I arrived here in Nicaragua.  In fact, until I came to Latin America for the first time, I had never even heard of Agronomy.  However, in Nicaragua, where almost a third of the economically active population is employed in Agriculture, the subject of Agronomy is held in high esteem. 

This month Teach A Man To Fish is excited to be facilitating the UNESCO-UNEVOC e-forum’s virtual conference on the ICT revolution for Technical and Vocational Education & Training (or TVET).

The conference is running from the 14^th to the 28^th of May and already over 200 members have signed up and are participating online.

Teach A Man To Fish are now continuing their partnership with People In Need (PIN) in Afghanistan to support the implementation of 3 businesses at 3 schools in Baghlan, Nanagarhar and Samangen provinces through distance support. We initially supported PIN to develop detailed business plans and budgets for these 3 businesses, through workshop materials, templates and intensive mentoring. The business plans are in the final stages of completion, and now Afghanistan is at the end of winter, the implementation is about to begin.

£10, 2 people, 5 days - last Sunday my husband and I headed to Asda with £1 to spend on our food & drink each day for the week. Yes, it was the Live Below The Line challenge this week organised by the Global Poverty Project (www.livebelowtheline.com/uk) and I have learnt far more from it than I expected to.

Hello, my name is Leena and I’ll be the new Field Officer at La Bastilla for the next few months.

Having lived in London for most of my life I’m one of those oblivious city-folk that has very little idea of where my food comes from.

We are very happy to announce the results of the 2012 Pan-African Awards for Entrepreneurship in Education.

This year we are awarding organisations from 33 different countries with a total of $50,000 in prizes. The competition rewards organisations in Africa that are taking an innovative, entrepreneurial and sustainable approach to Education. Over 350 different organisations from across the continent, from Sudan to South Africa, Nigeria to Namibia and Botswana to Burundi, took part in the competition.

In March, Teach A Man To Fish had the pleasure of working with over 110 inspirational teachers at the British Council’s ‘Enriching Education’ workshop in Trivandrum, Kerala in the South of India. Teachers came from all over the sub-continent to learn about a variety of teaching techniques that would enable them to enhance the curriculum at their school.

As part of our technical assistance work in Nicaragua in July 2011 Teach A Man To Fish developed a business plan for the Esther del Río Las Marías school. The school was set up by Dianova Foundation in 1998, an international foundation specialising in education, youth, addiction prevention and treatment work, and the school is classed as a social protection centre, catering to many students with difficult backgrounds such as families affected by drugs, alcoholism and domestic violence.

Following the success of last year’s competition, Teach A Man To Fish are pleased to announce our partnership with the Royal Commonwealth Society and Ashoka to launch the Commonwealth School Enterprise Challenge 2013