On the 7th of January, while still just waking up to a new year, Ian and Cori presented the 121 detention program to the staff at Clapham High School in Queenswood (Pretoria). The response seemed positive and we’ll be running our detention program there every Thursday afternoon. Along with this we’ll still be running our program at Pretoria North High on Friday afternoons. Ian and Cori also met with Centurion High and are looking to start a program there within the next few months. This is very exciting stuff, to have expanded from being active in one school to now being involved at three schools, with others indicating their interest as well.
As far as our team goes, things have also started on a high note. We met with our facilitators to start preparing for the year ahead last week. Our team has expanded somewhat, with a couple of fresh young guys joining us! Some of our regular facilitators are going to start ‘head’ facilitating the program allowing us to run two teams at different schools. We’ve also been blessed with two sets of equipment (projectors, lap-tops, sound systems etc.) allowing us to be that much more effective.
There are usually forty learners at a detention session. We divide these learners into groups of ten, each group with a facilitator. We then have a head facilitator who walks the group through a program of group discussion, activities, games, worksheets that need to be filled out and a DVD clip. The kind of content covered seeks to engage learners on quite a deep level, exploring some of the positive and negative issues that may be underlying the behaviours that land them on detention.
Our term program includes a monthly training session for facilitators and a quarterly fun day where facilitators and their families can get to know each other better and relax after a demanding school term!
Some items for prayer:
- For our facilitators, that they will be well prepared and sensitive to what God wants to do through them in the lives of learners
- For our program, that it will hit the mark and be relevant to learners
- For our equipment and the load shedding which may compromise our power-intensive program!
- For the learners we interact with and the schools we engage, that real and lasting change may become evident
- For sufficient funds to meet our budget needs
