Back To Work!

CFDP was back in action this past week, resuming after-school sessions after a short interim for holiday activities. First it was Bilingualism Day and then Youth Day. Activities included many sports competitions and other festivals. One thing for sure: Cameroonians know how to celebrate! We really enjoy life - making the most of what we have.

CFDP continues to refine our operating model and develop "THE METHOD" as we have just recently started working with another school. Last summer, our local team was equipped with a handbook providing guidance for 12 sessions - each one including discussion topics and soccer drills. We are now working on a year-long curriculum to further our mission and create a sustainable foundation for lift-off during the 2011-2012 school year.

This latest report comes from Government Secondary School Nkamlikum and is provided by Brian.

At exactly 4pm, the session began, after we had done the role call of the students present. Of the total number of students we have been working with, forty five (45) were present. Among these forty five, thirty five were boys and ten girls. More to these, six leaders were present: Brian, Nenne, Caroline, Wallace, Kama and Ashu. Dickson, who has been acting as our camera man, was ill and so he could not be present, thus we had no other means of taking pictures since all our pictures are usually taken by his camera phone.

The program consisted of warm ups, headed by Kama, Wallace and Brian, as the youths were divided into three groups. After the warm ups, we moved straight to the first activity, which was the passing drill. We came back to this exercise because we wanted to find out if they could still master what they had learned from us after our last session. The exercise lasted for over 20 minutes and we took this long because many of them had forgotten how give precise passes. Thus much emphasis had to be laid again on this. We also added another passing exercise known as push pass.

From the passing drills, we moved to our topic discussion, “changes that boys and girls experience during puberty”. Here, many of them were a little bit shy or lukewarm to discuss these topics with us. But since it is our job to make the atmosphere conducive for them, we had to explain to them to feel free and that it was essential for them to know these things, to better understand their bodies. After this, their participation in this discussion was encouraging and very interesting. As usual, whenever they found themselves settled, they always asked interesting questions and felt free and relaxed.

After the discussions of these topics, the session ended at 5:30pm with the dribbling exercises. Here, the youths did dribbling between the cones, passing between the cones and the inside drag. Here, most of them excelled in them, especially the boys and all these were done with the collaboration of the sports teacher of the institution.

We will follow-up with the same activities next week at Kosala.