TROMP-I: Teen Reading Outreach and Mentoring Program, Ibadan

(written the week of March 9, but the internet has been down for over a week)

Well, I have officially completed two months of Nigerian living. I pat myself of the back for having made it this far. I’ve definitely thought on more than one occasion about how to get out of here quick, fast, and in a hurry, but I came to the realization that I can overcome the frustrating things of my work and my day to day hustle by accepting that my life is good. My life here in Nigeria could be so much worse than it really is…“you’ll be ok, it looks much worse than it really is.”

I realized that I never wrote a post about the work I do with CEDAR, so I guess that’s what the focus of this post. One of my passions in life is community service, particularly in terms of teaching young people from a young age what it means to give back to their communities through service. Given the education system of Nigeria and the poor performance of the nation’s students, particularly in public schools, I thought a program that integrated both community service and addressing a societal need would make the most impact while I’m here. So, I developed a literacy tutoring program, Teen Reading Outreach and Mentoring Program, Ibadan (TROMP-I), where senior secondary school students (high school-ers) tutor primary students (elementary school) in developing stronger literacy skills.

The program works in two basic steps:
· Senior secondary students (SSS) receive a 6 hour training on how to work with students in developing literacy skills
· Once a week, SSS travel to a central facility to tutor primary school students, for 1.5 hours

I worked with a similar after school program in STL last semester with the public school system there, but this is different in many respects:

· Private school students are tutoring public school students (addressing the differences of schooling and developing more awareness of the national status of education and SSS privilege of receiving private education)
· It’s a Saturday program, which means that it takes extra work to organize people (both kids and program coordinators, including myself) for transportation to the tutoring facility
· Lack of resources to run a VERY basic program (lack of reliable phones/internet to communicate, writing utensils and journals, and quality books to read from)
· Language barriers between myself and SSS, as well as between tutors and their students
· Significantly low literacy levels of many students, which comes from poor education and parents not speaking enough to their children within the home (either tribal language or appropriate English)

I’m running three versions of this program in the Ibadan community. It’s apparent that educators and change-makers are quite interested in such a concept of teaching youth how to do formalized community service and, at the same time, helping young students with performing better in school. It’s inspirational for me, and what really keeps me going, to see kids working in such a way. I think our leaders around the world need to think about the change they keep SAYING they want to see, but haven’t fully evaluated the values they’re instilling in our children, especially as such values relate to education attainment.

The teacher strike continues here in the nation. It’s saddening to know that kids want to be in school, but can’t do anything about their predicament. I heard that school is set to resume next week.

Okay, I think that’s it…