Amy and baby

Did that get your attention?!? We met this lovely little lady yesterday. Her name is Taisha and she is Mikala's great neice. Jean also had trouble putting her down. Early in the evening Amy, Mikala, and myself walked to the bus stop down the road to meet Kwanda, a special ed teacher who came in from Kwite. Ok I'm probably spelling that wrong. Kwanda was one of the visitors from Zambia we hosted at ICI last May. What was funnier was Amy and I carrying this cute little baby down a major Zambia highway. It was probably an interesting site.

I also included a picture of the actual "work", yes work we are doing here. We met with Kwanda and Mikala after dinner to talk about the assessment tools we brought. While they are not appropriate to bring and use in the villages at this time, we hope they will be helpful in the near future.

And speaking of visiting the village, we just got back after 3 hours total in the back of a pick up truck with a home made topper on the back to keep it extra toasty. It was an amazing experience, but we have to rest our bottoms for now and we'll share more soon.

All the best, Kelly

photos

Here we are! Holding our IPADS, we were desperate for an Internet connection and were standing in the front yard.

Day1

We arrived in Zambia late last night and our colleague Mikala was at the airport to greet us. Three hours of sleep later and we were up and ready fir a meeting at the Ministry of Education. It was great to see Grace Banda (who was a member of the first team trained at U of MN) but even greater to hear the new administrator talking about her leadership and the progressiveness of Mikela's program. Our conversation was focused mostly on encouraging transition with more formal focus and purpose, testing accommodation for special education children and the need for early intervention. We also discussed the need to better prepare teachers to provide support to special education students in inclusive classrooms. Joel Kamoko, District Board Secretary, at the Ministry of Education emphasized the need to teach life skills and he seemed very committed to supporting children with special needs. Mikala and Grace seem very positive about Joel's ideas.

We had lunch with Sandy and Father Patrick. It was fun to catch up and hear about their new project in Milawi.

Tonight is a quiet night at Beulini. We'll have dinner and singing with Mikala and her family then call it an early night. Tomorrow we are spending the day in Chitwema village and will meet with a few families who have children with autism then work with Mikala on autism assessment. Lookingnforward to it.

More later

Zambia 2011

Greetings,
We are excited to share that at team from the University's Institute on Community Integration will be traveling to Zambia on March 30th. This trip promises to be an exciting one with some new faces included. Joining us on this journey will be myself, Jean Ness, Matt Schulelka, and Amy Hewitt. Our visit will focusing around providing training around Autism Spectrum Disorders in Lusaka and beyond. We look forward to sharing our journey with you. Stay tuned for more details! -Kelly

Radio time

On the eve of our departure from Zambia, we completed our work with an interview on disability issues on one of the local radio stations, Radio Mosi O Tunya (dubbed "Radio that Thunders", which reaches about 30,000 listeners during the time that we were on air. The interview was great, and we were able to cover many of the topics that we usually include in our trainings. There is no way to know, of course, how this will resonate with listeners, but being able to get ideas out to so many people at once is certainly a good thing. Audio won't upload now, but we will try again when we get home. We'll post again with some last impressions of our work here in Zambia once we get back to Minnesota.

Thank you to everyone in Zambia who has made this experience a great one for us, and for your work to improve the lives of people with disabilities. We hope to be back soon!

-Matt, Derek, and Kristin

Livingstone

Greetings from Livingstone! We completed our final training of the trip on Saturday. A group of 21 special and basic school teachers (and the provincial inspector of special schools) from the Livingstone area schools gathered, on a Saturday on their holiday no less. We spent a few hours training and discussing issues related to inclusion, employment preparation, and advancing changes in schools. Since the training was in one of the school's three computer labs with legitatimate high-speed internet (the fastest in Zambia I think--they even had a SmartBoard) we couldnt pass on the opportunity to introduce the group to the College of Direct Support training program. After a brief crash course and discussion about how to overcome the internet/computer accessibility challenges we let people check it out on their own. Some people obviously hadn't used a computer/mouse before, let alone the internet. Those that had were able to practice and demonstrate using the program with less computer-experienced teachers by test driving a lesson. The engagement and enthusiasm was high. It was a great thing to witness and I am confident that a few of the teachers will use the program in the future. This morning we ran into the head master of the school the training was conducted at--he reported that he received 12 calls of appreciation and satisfaction about the training. In an informal evaluative sense, we feel we were at least successful reaching some of the teachers.

There may be one more work task involved here in that we may be on the radio on Tuesday morning to be interviewed about disability and the work we've been doing here. Apparently the show is wide-reaching in Livingstone, so this would be a good opportunity to reach many people.

The Copperbelt

Hello all--we thought we'd write a quick post as long as we have got internet for... a little while? We have been busy up in the Copperbelt. Yesterday we had the opportunity to meet with officials from the Ministry of Education in Kitwe, 60 kilometers from where we are based, at the Franciscan Center in Ndola. We have heard a lot about the importance of the Ministry in bringing access to education for all children, so we were very happy to get the meeting and make some connections at the Ministry. The staff we met there were, a lot like people we have met in other groups, feeling constrained by their budgets, and also open to discussion and new ideas. It was good to make their acquaintance.
We then met a self-advocate, Julien, also in Kitwe. She is a dynamic woman, very outgoing, very personable, and is a strong advocate in her community, despite many, many challenges.
Today we did a training here in the morning at the Franciscan Center, with teachers, nurses, self-advocates (including Julien), parents, and clergy. The diversity of the group made for a strong conversation. We were happy that many of the people in the training connected with each other, and hopefully built upon their advocacy network. In particular, Julien had told us that she plays sports every week with her group of self-advocates, and in our group was a sports education teacher who needed ideas on how to include people with disabilities in class. It was wonderful to see these two make a connection and share ideas.
In the afternoon we did a training with the novitiate (friars in training, basically), who are in a year of spiritual reflection here at the Franciscan Center. The group asked a lot of good questions, and we had a fruitful discussion on inclusion, community, and the roles they can take towards advocacy as religious persons in their community.
Tomorrow we head back to Lusaka, then on to Livingstone. The friars have been gracious hosts, and we have been enjoying our time in the Copperbelt.