Learning centre a boost for volunteers

EARLY childhood volunteer teachers are grateful to Digicel Foundation for the Tisa Programme community learning centre it has provided.
“Teachers are the architect of our future society,” says Digicel Foundation chief executive Beatrice Mahuru.
“Children at their early age need to be nurtured with care and gentleness and anyone who wants to teach must be patient with children.”
The Tisa Programme is designed to provide teacher training, board mentoring and workshops for community learning centres (CLCs) in rural, remote and marginalised communities.
It is to enable CLC’s to effectively deliver quality early childhood learning while building the skills and capacity of the students, the teachers and the board who comprise of members of the community.
The programme is the first of its kind to have registered volunteer teachers from Central, Gulf and National Capital District.
According to the programme co-ordinator Mara Wape, 58 volunteer had not been certified.
“They just have the passion to teach,” said Wape of the 58 volunteers who have come from all walks of life.
“This is why I have to teach them to become teachers.”
As the major sponsor of the programme, Digicel Foundation worked in partnership with the publishers of Bilum Books which has helped teach the basics of phonics to the volunteer teachers.
Digicel Foundation provided student and teacher phonics guide resource textbooks from Bilum
Book publications for the programme.
“I have taught phonics in other provinces but this is different with this group of volunteers,” said Irene Sawczak, of Bilum Books.
“They bring together children who have nothing to do under a house to teach them.”
Wape said that the first phase of the intensive training was six weeks and that would end on Friday.
It is a year-long programme which ends in December.