Linking Case Study – Zambia

This page, kindly hosted by GLADE, has been created by the Cary-Mufulira Community Partnership Trust (CMCPT) and is still being developed.  By the end of  2011 it will tell you a great deal more about the work of CMCPT.  Within it you will find reports, newsletters, pictures, documents, teaching notes  and other material derived by CMCPT from its linking activities, which we hope might inspire you in your own linking.  We include:

It will also lead you to other sources of information, weblinks etc., to help you.

It will include a lot of material relating to the MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS (MDGs).  These activities were funded by a British Council Global Community Links grant funded from UKAid through the Department for International Development to raise awareness in UK about the MDGs.  This grant programme is no longer available. 

CMCPT acknowledges an enormous debt to GLADE.  Its help and support in developing its links and networks has been invaluable.

Click here for the latest copy of Linking News, the magazine produced jointly by CMCPT and its sister organisation MCCPT (the Mufulira-Cary Community Partnership Trust.

 

Setting up and developing our link

CMCPT acts as the "umbrella" for a wide range of links.  These include primary schools, secondary schools, a special school, church links, Rotary Club.  CMCPT keeps a summary of how these links are going which is updated on a regular basis. Individual links act independently but lean on each other for advice and guidance, and when link members travel to Zambia they often act as ambassadors for other links.

Click here for the latest issue of the Community Links Update. 

Many of the schools in our partnership started their linking with a reciprocal visit to a school identified for them by teachers from another partnership in the group, who had visited the chosen school to make initial contact and check out its motives and commitment to linking.   Communication between the two schools would then start, and a reciprocal linking grant be applied for. 

Two of the founder members of CMCPT have assisted Zambian colleagues in setting up a hostel in Mufulira and take groups of teachers and other interested peolple to Mufulira every year.  This is our IntroZambia scheme.  New links can send teachers to their link school knowing that as part of an IntroZambia group they will have the support and advice of other group members, while they find their feet in a totally new environment and culture.  If you haven't got a school to link with, there are plenty in Mufulira still looking for links – talk to us if you need support in finding one.

Newly linking schools also have the advantage of access to GLADE's extensive Zambia resources, to enhance and enliven their teaching back in the UK.  Before their first visit, the UK school may ask GLADE to deliver a session to the teachers and teaching assistants to help them understand the linking process and how it can benefit their pupils' learning; later they may borrow resources to support their own delivery of lessons on their return. (The complete range of GLADE's resources and services for schools is described in their new brochure – click here to access it.)

 

Running our student exchange with Zambia, a developing country

CMCPT has nearly 20 years of experience  supporting Ansford Academy's link with Mufulira High School in Zambia, and, in fact, it was for this purpose that it was set up.  It is a registered charity with a constitution and committee which meets about 6 times a year.  Eight two-way exchanges have taken place over this period and most have formal, critical reports.  We will shortly be putting excerpts from a selection of these reports on this site for you to view. 

Using our link activities to help with curriculum delivery and global learning.

 We feature here a number of activities used recently to raise awareness of the MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS as examples of the sort of active learning linked schools can be involved in.  We give examples in our downloadable resources section.  Look at

  • Activities involving photographs used by a GLADE facilitator to prepare UK students for their visit to Zambia
  • Visiting Zambian teachers taking part in an MDG workshop with fellow teahers in UK, bringing their personal knowledge of  Zambia's progress towards meeting its MDG targets into the discussion
  • Exchange students visiting Zambia from the UK investigating progress towards MDGs through project work at a local level.
  • UK and Zambian exchange students in the UK helping younger students learn about the MDGs
  • A Zambian environmentalist helping very young UK primary school students learn about MDG1 and relating it to their own lives, through looking at the use of water.
  • An informal craft activity at a fete introduces passersby to the concept of the MDGs
  • Generating discussion about MDGs in a pub, with help from visiting Zambians, at a "Pints of View" session
  • Active learning exercises based on a set of MDG posters to introduce adults to the MDGs
  • The "On the Line" method for generating discussion and collecting views about global issues

 

Widening our link to include other schools and community groups

 A number of non-school groups have come under CMCPT's umbrella, and are now very much involved in linking activities.  The "spin-offs" from this are numerous in terms of aid, ambassadorship, cultural understanding and sponsorship for school linking :

  • Including non-school adults in your student exchange visits.
  • Spin-off aid – the Rotary Club in Mufulira and its impact on the linking network
  • The church and its links
  • Ex-exchange students and their return visits.
  • Gap year students
  • Professional visits
  • Our community links group
  • Workshops, seminars and other activities in Zambia

Using resources and support from GLADE or from your own Development Education Centre to help you

Amongst its many country collections, GLADE has a two very large Zambia Collections, one general and the other focussing on food and agriculture.  Each collection includes many artefacts, packs of photographs (also provided on CD), and teaching notes and suggestions.  They are designed to be of help both to teachers who have experience of Zambia and those who have never been there and know little about it.

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