As every year, 100% of the sales of these calendars will be used to provide more girls from Fodecariah and Balimama the opportunity to continue their schooling up to secondary school.
Please also read a report by Bettina Rocholl (in German language) about the motivation, our goals and the current status of the important girls' support programme.

A calendar in DIN A3 format with motives from Fodecariah costs 20.- EUR. (5 EUR for the production and 15 EUR donation).
If you are interested, please contact Mrs Clémot, to request single or multiple copies.

The new headmaster of the primary school, Mr Diakité, explains that he took care of it himself, to prepare his protégés from the 6th grade for the college entrance examination. Of the 80 participants, 66 were admitted, including 6 of our sponsored girls.

As we know that the national average rate this year is only 55.86%, we congratulate Mr Diakité on this important achievement.

On the left side we see Mr Diakité and the photo on the right shows Mrs Konaté, the new Head of our sponsorship with 4 of the promoted girls.

With pleasure we welcome the activities of the two youth clubs of Balimana and Fodecariah: at the end of the rainy season and before the beginning of the school year, they care for the country around the youth center

We are pleased that the regional ministerial education authorities are strongly committed to the future of our education project in Fodécariah.

They came to Fodecariah to admire our educational facilities and buildings. They would like to reduce the weaknesses in the maintenance of the buildings with an annual inspection, which means that the students and the Parents' Association (APEAE) will have to take more responsibility and meet the requirements.

Their visit was mainly used to lay the first stone for the construction of a fence around the elementary school. The aim is to prevent motorcycles from crossing the schoolyard and causing accidents.

Une petite réflexion sur un village
Que dire de ce beau village
Qui forme un heureux paysage ?
Lorsque le chant des tams-tams
Sur la colline de « khondén »
Et l’appel matinal du muezzin
Restent graver dans mes oreilles

Lorsque la luminosité des flammes
Devant les cases pendant les nuits
Et l’éclairage des suaves ampoules
Brillent encore au fond de mes yeux

C’est Forécariah ! C’est Forécariah !

Quand le soleil pousse de son ciel
Le silence des oiseaux se prolonge
Et l’odeur de ses fleurs attire les abeilles
Ce qui rend ses journées avares.

O Forécariah ! T’en soucies-tu de ton unité
Qui a été déchirée par cette route
Rampant jusqu’au delà de tes limites ?
O Forécariah ! Une cité que je sers

Ma lettre aux « diseurs de mensonge »
S’il s’agit de mentir
Pour ruiner le village
Je me lave les mains
A ce beau petit matin

S’il s’agit d’égorger un bélier
Pour tromper une « femme blanche »
Qui vient de loin
Je préfère rester dans mon coin

Si dire la vérité
Est contre vos intérêts personnels,
Je demeurerai aveugle à vos problèmes
Et je resterai sourd à vos bruits.

Allez-y lire à la bibliothèque !

Ainsi je dois crier plus fort
Que les sons de vos haut-parleurs
Qui détruisent vos connaissances.
Si c’est pour enterrer les livres
Que j’attends dans la bibliothèque
Je suis vraiment déçu !
Si c’est pour nuire les écritures
J’en suis également désolé

Our General Assembly will not take place on 2 May as planned, we are waiting for the end of the restrictions on assembly and the stabilisation of the spread of the virus.

AGENDA

13.00 H to 15.00 H

• Report of the Rocholl delegation of December 2019 
• Report of the Delegation 2020 with the inauguration of the Youth Centre
• 4 minutes summary about the inauguration of the youth center on the national Guinean TV channel: look! (start at minute 25)

15.00 H to 15.30 H coffee break

15.30 H to 17.30 H

• Our calendar 2021, our flyer
• Status of the promotion of girls
• Foundation of a subsidiary of our NGO in Kankan
• Taking care of young girls?
• Health in Balimana, where to start?
• Sustainable agriculture in Balimana (according to the principles of circular economy of the project phase Bio Hof SONGAI )
• New members?

18.30 H Aperitif and restaurant

Our NGO has just completed the cycle of secondary school infrastructure by building a youth centre..

Here you can find a detailed photo documentation about the new youth centre and its opening. (with German annotation; PDF, 32MB!)

Our intentions:

• Improvement of the school infrastructure through extracurricular activities
• Learning only with the joy of playing, without fear of grades and reprisals.
• To give children whose parents are poor and cannot afford to buy books/BDs or toys the opportunity to come to this house to take advantage of the benefits of games and toys, a key activity for child development.
• Develop motor skills and sensations through swings, slides, turnstiles, circus games, etc.
• Learning to play in a team by playing basketball, table tennis, table football, boules, etc.
• discovering other worlds to arouse curiosity.
• Singing, painting, do-it-yourself are allowed to discover talents
• Development of the 3-D imagination through mechanical games and Legos to facilitate the learning of mathematics
• Encourage the imagination by telling stories from those who can already read.
• Organising reading competitions, poetry slams, theatre performances, scenery, singing songs, etc.
• Support secondary school teachers in motivating their pupils by stimulating them through educational games (commercial games, remake of the game For a Champion, Scrabble competitions, etc.).
• Using television documentaries to initiate open debate and learn to express yourself freely.
• Organise competition activities (general knowledge, skill in finding words in the dictionary, use of as many symbols as possible to form stories, etc.).
• Organisation of theme evenings to pass on information
• peer-to-peer help with exercises, revisions, etc.
• Learn to take responsibility and become an adult citizen

Will the Ebola crisis of 2014-16 help Guinea to react more quickly to the spread of the coronavirus?

For the fourth year in a row, remedial teaching in Fodecariah is interrupted.
In the last 3 years, due to general and repeated strikes by the teaching staff, the number of exam revisions had been reduced to a minimum in such a way that the rate of exam results (entry into 7th grade and PEBC) had dropped significantly to 35%. Now that the corona virus is spreading around the world, it is likely that tutoring and exam revisions will be disrupted again.

While reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography, I learned that what I felt was specific to Guinea is ultimately representative for the entire African continent. Learning comes first by observation and then by imitation, but never by questioning. This essential difference between our two cultures and these two learning methods leads to serious misunderstandings in our daily communication between North and South. For us Europeans, it is irritating when about ten young Africans gather around us, in order to watch and observe what we are doing. We rather interpret this as useless behaviour and intrusive curiosity. As far as they are concerned, they do not understand why they are confused with abstract and boring questions and forced to give banal answers, often unrelated, sometimes even wrong, in order to quickly achieve peace.

When analysing these two methods, we quickly realise that the observation-based method is a learning method, which refers to the acquisition of know-how and experience, while the question-based method focuses on understanding of knowledge and its examination.

As a psychologist I am convinced that modern learning necessarily requires a combination of these two methods, that complement each other. Before one learns the how, one must first learn the why. Our NGO, which in the last 10 years has mainly built up school infrastructure in Fodecariah to help young learners in the region, has found over the years that this approach is far from sufficient in order to improve the level of the students. Why?

Because poorly trained and poorly paid teachers, who were forcibly transferred to regions where they do not know the local language and culture, and deal with overcrowded classes of 70 to 100 pupils, furthermore use the old methods they learned during the military dictatorship: passive listening and memorizing what the teacher wrote on the blackboard. What does this mean for our teachers in Fodecariah who, according to Freinet, have begun learn a more active education? - Will they learn to use both methods? - Will they and the students be ready to overcome shame and shyness and to ask questions, that are in contrast to their culture, to arouse their curiosity and critical thinking?

Read here an answer to Martine's thoughts (french) on learning in Guinea by Pascal Leno, professor of psycho-pedagogy in Conakry and member of the Association Réussir Ensemble (ARE) in Partnership with the Freinet School of France.

Thanks to the new French teacher, Mr. Doumbouya, who has a personal experience in active pedagogy acquired during his stay in Switzerland, organized this competition with Mr. Soumah, the headmaster, in which class teams competed in the speed of vocabulary research in the dictionary.

This competition was moderated by Mr. Doumbouya, the exercises were judged by a jury consisting of the computer teacher, the librarian and the students who selected the term to be searched for. The fastest person who found the term and the page of the dictionary checked by the jury won the game.

The spectators watch and congratulate the winners

Thanks to Oumar's activities with the youth and the motivation of the new school director, Mr. S. Kaba, the students performed a play that deals with the forced marriage of young girls in Guinea.

Atelier musique••..Text goes here...

"Africa is a life experience: smells, tastes, colours, sounds, noises, landscapes, encounters, situations... unique and extraordinary, or more precisely "outside our European common ground".

Africa is also another reality: a harsh economic, health and social reality, and I think that we all have to act within our means, because the urgency is there.

Africa has an extraordinary cultural richness, a natural and omnipresent generosity, an authentic everyday life and also a return to the original.

Africa is for living, feeling and sharing: this message is an invitation to travel and to collective solidarity".

Happy New Year and good health to you all, our December delegation will inform you about the condition of the health station in Upper Guinea.