Volunteer Society Nepal : The best experience for volunteers, the best value for Nepal.
Aflatoun International is a non-governmental organization focusing on educating children about their rights and responsibilities and managing financial resources through social and financial education. They do this by providing trainings and teaching materials to schools. The Aflatoun program is a curriculum that can be taught 1 hour per week to children between 6 and 14 years old.
Volunteer Society Nepal got into contact with the Startup4Kids foundation to receive help for the Talent School. The Talent School is an afterschool homework centre where children with a disadvantaged background can go and do their homework and do social activities together. Katja from Startup4Kids mentioned that Aflatoun could be a good program for the Talent School and suggested to help us. Katja arranged a trainer to come to Nepal from India to train some of our staff members in the Aflatoun program.
During the first day there is time to get to know each other and the program. In the next two days there were many exercises, brainstorming and practicing of doing energizers, playing the educational games, following the material guidelines and trying different teaching styles. The goal is that after this training the participants can teach the Aflatoun Program in the Talent School, but maybe also the women centre and the CBIA school.
Volunteer Society Nepal has selected two persons from its own organisational staff to teach and implement Aflatoun at the Talent School: Sonam and Lakpa. On top of that, Volunteer Society Nepal has offered an opportunity to Latisha and Ramesh, who both have little experience in teaching but show great promise. The extra training will increase their opportunities in life enormously.
All of them have really enjoyed the training and have all shown a great increase in skills and personal growth.
Here are some of their responses:
“I learned about Brainstorming, KWL chart -know want learning. I learned many more educational games. I learned about the 5 components of Aflatoun. And so much more! It’s really interesting to have a training like this and I am very happy to start teaching this program to the kids. It will be a lot of fun!”
“We learnt about Aflatoun for the past few days. We learnt about children’s rights and responsibilities as well as a new way of teaching. we also learnt to manage financial resources through social and financial education. We enjoyed and learned a lot during the training. The Trainer was excellent. We hoped to get a kind-hearted and talent trainer and she really met our hope. We are going to use our new skills not only in the classroom but everywhere! In school we can teach students and make the class very interactive. We could use it as a must thing for upcoming life. We can implement the learnings on a daily basis. But we will also be informally teaching the same thing to our fellows and juniors. Aflatoun training has made a great impact on our life. Thank you very much for the training!”
The Aflatoun training was interesting and was full of fun. We got to know about the topic itself: Aflatoun, which helps the children to be self-depend in social and financial enterprises.
After the winter break, the Aflatoun program will start with classes at the Talent School. Everyone at Volunteer Society Nepal and the Talent School are looking forward to the program. If the program is successful here, we hope that, with the help of Startup4Kids, we can further roll out this program. A big thanks to Aflatoun and Startup4Kids for making this program a reality for our children of the Talent School in Nepal!