Shafaki Blog

Yesterday I attended the second session of a series of sessions about Raising Children. This series of sessions aims at providing sound scientific knowledge coupled with practical methods for raising children and dealing with them in appropriate ways to build their personalities correctly.

The sessions are mainly target volunteers who are in the big brother / big sister program at Resala in which each volunteer selects one of the orphaned children that reside at Resala and becomes his big brother becomes or her big sister. Nevertheless, the sessions were attended by some others who wanted to know more about how to bring up their own children.

Yesterday’s session discussed discussed preventive methods that a parent should use in order to avoid wrong behavior from her children. The second part of the session discussed alternative methods for punishment of children that may be exercised whenever the preventive measures have failed.

The first session, which took place a week ago, talked about fundamental aspects of child rearing. The session discussed the basic needs of children and how to understand such needs and satisfy them.

The approach of the sessions was highly interactive. The speaker asked questions to the audience and related real cases to demonstrate the conceps she was discussing. She also answered the many questions asked by the audience during the sessions.

Yesterday I attended a train the trainer session at the literacy department of the Nasr City branch of Resala. It was my first time to attend such a session.

The session discussed the literacy program offered to illiterate people. The focal point of the session was how to motivate learners and what approach to take when dealing with them. The session also covered some common issues that face the person who is teaching them how to read and write.

According to the session, some illiterate people come for the training in order to get a literacy certificate which is required by some job they want to apply for. Others come because they want to continue their education. Still others attend the training just to get to know new people and perhaps gain some extra cash upon passing their literacy exam in addition to the other positive reinforcement methods that Resala uses to motivate them to continue learning.

Happiness is a feeling I experienced yesterday while playing with kids during a visit organized by Resala to Al Azhar Park.

The Nasr City branch of Resala arranged the trip for the deaf people and their families as well as for children with developmental disabilities. I was among the lucky volunteers who accompanied them during the trip. We took off in a large bus from in front of Resala yesterday morning, spent a wonderful time at Al Azhar park then returned back to Resala after sunset.

Volunteers who had attended training in sign language at Resala started conversing with the deaf during the trip using whatever signs they knew. Two of the volunteers who had no previous knowledge of sign language tried to ‘talk’ to the deaf as well and were so pleased in being able to make some sort of conversations with them. I tried to brush up on my sign language knowledge and was able to communicate to some extent with a number of the deaf yet used a translator when things got too complex for me to comprehend. A young kind of around 12 years old was the best translator. His mother who accompanied us during the trip was deaf.

The kids also asked me to take group photos of them.

One of the kids asked me to take a photo of him while he was dong a stunt. Kids started to gather around me each wanting me to take a photo of him or her doing the same stunt.

One of the kids who was around 5 years old kept coming to me all the time and moved with me as I moved. He asked me to run with him which I did. When I sat down on the grass he came to me again and told me “I want to sit with you.” One of the young girls, a 6th grader, gave me a flower. The nice thing about kids is that when they show that they like you they are genuine about it.

Near the end of the trip, the kids sat down on the grass and started singing. I guess I should have had an MP3 recorder with me to record their wonderful songs. The trip was amazing, I am really looking forward to the next one with those same kids.

A few weeks ago, I attended a short yet concentrated course on how to grow mushrooms. I attended the training at the Food Technology Research Institute, a government funded research center in Egypt. The training continued for five days and involved both lectures and hand on practice.

Before attending that training, I scored the net for information about growing mushrooms. I did find a huge amount of information related to this in online forums, PDF files and regular web pages not to mention videos on YouTube discussing the matter. The most practical information perhaps was the one I found in online forums because it was from people who have had first hand experience in growing mushroom or trying to grow it. Despite the huge amount of information I found online about growing mushrooms, yet I kind of got lost a midst all this ocean of information. Moreover, I did not find a complete reference that nailed down the specifics and focused on the practical side specially in relation to growing mushrooms in Egypt.

Although I am a big fan of self learning and a strong believer in its merits, yet after attending that course in growing mushrooms at the Food Technology Research Institute, I came to the conclusion that nothing could beat the direct learning method which involves taking information from the people who have the practical experience as well as the scientific knowledge to back it. The training I attended was delivered by a group of researchers who are PhD holders as well as a consultant who worked in marketing mushrooms.

Today I went with a few volunteers from the Nasr City branch of Resala to Ezbet El Haggana taking with us bags of meet to distributed on poor families there.

It is only four days till Eid El Adha. While distributing the meet bags on poor families today, one of the guides who led us to the homes of those poor families told us that the price of meet is 30 LE per kg (in Ezbet El Haggana), something which poor families there cannot afford.

A short while ago I started delivering an Introduction to Programming course at the Nasr City branch of Resala. Computer courses at Resala are for free and are delivered by volunteers.

I really enjoyed delivering that course a lot. Attendees of the course were mostly students of the Faculty of Engineering, Al Azhar University which happens to be in Nasr City. Many of the volunteers at the Nasr City branch of Resala are from Al Azhar University, perhaps this is one good benefit of having the 32ed branch of Resala open in Nasr City in particular.

In the introduction to computer programming course, I focused on the fundamental concepts of programming using the C language as the vehicle upon which students would learn the basic concepts of programming. The course covered programming building blocks such as variables, loops, conditional statements, functions as we?l as mathematical, conditional and logical operators among other fundamental programming concepts.

I have also made some of the source code used during the labs available online at my Born Trainer website.

Yesterday I went with other volunteers from the Nasr City branch of Resala to Al Azhar Park. We took a bus from Resala then passed by an orphanage from which we took a number of orphans who were around two years old. We then headed up to Al Azhar Park. Another Resala bus brought another group of orphans from another orphanage. A group of the orphans were also handicapped. Among those who came with us for the trip were children with developmental disabilities.

The idea behind that day was to make orphans and children with disabilities feel happy, feel loved and spend a nice time at Al Azhar Park.

Resala volunteers participated in various activities during that day to accomplish that goal. Two of Resala’s female volunteers sat down and painted faces of children which came to them one after the other to have their faces painted. Another two male volunteers slipped into animal masks and suits played and danced with the children who were very happy to see such colorful masks.

Music and songs played in the background while two groups of volunteers carried out some small competitions between the kids such as hopping while wearing a bag or while having one’s foot tied to that of another child. Winners got presents. We also had meals for the children. At the end there was some sort of show for the kids acted by volunteers, it was hilarious.

Seeing the festivities and hearing the music, other kids who were at the park joined us. Although the two year old children were a bit drowsy the time we took them from their orphanage, on our way back from the Park they were extremely active and kept sining in the bus all sorts of children songs. It was amazing and for me perhaps was the best part of the whole day.

On a Friday around a week ago, I went with other volunteers from the Nasr City branch of Resala in an exploratory visit to Bani Sweif to check the conditions of poor families at a village there. Bani Swief is at the beginning of Upper Egypt.

As the bus arrive at some village in Bani Sweif, we split in small groups. Each group consisted of one or two volunteers from Resala and a local guide from a local NGO at the village. The guides took us to homes of poor families. There, we entered their homes and looked at the conditions of their houses. We sat down briefly with each family inquiring about their conditions, asking them a few questions and filling a standard form supplied by Resala to all volunteers.

Among the families I have visited were those who had not bathroom and those who had no proper walls for their houses (they covered the ceiling with some tree branches. One of the families my guide and I visited educated their children, their children went to school. That was the only family that did so and they mentioned it in a way that showed they are dong some sort of exception to the norm and they were proud of it. The rest of the families had none of their children (or themselves of course) educated. Of course washing machines and refrigerators were a luxury many could not afford.

Despite the seemingly miserable condition of some of the families in that village, yet their life seemed relatively happy. They lived a simple life and ate fresh food from the farms between which they lived. Some of them had small black and white TV sets (some of which were working); several had radio casetts.After completing the exploratory visits and filling the forms, the head guide of the local NGO who brought us to the village invited us for dinner at his home. The taste of food there was amazing, everything fresh from the fields and cooked in the traditional Egyptian way.

A couple of volunteers and myself went for a trip to Al Azhar Park last Thursday with nine of the orphaned children from the Nasr City branch of Resala. Those responsible for the children at Resala accompanied us as well.

I really enjoyed that trip a lot. The children were cool and bright. They liked playing in the grass and had a good time out. Their ages range from one year to one year and a couple of months. Some of them were not yet good and walking well. It was a good opportunity there for practicing.

The above photo is for one of the nine children in the bus when we were still on our way from Resala going to Al Azhar park. He is one year and three months old. I am looking forward for more trips with those cute children.

Today I attended a third session at Resala about dealing with children with various kinds of learning and developmental difficulties. The session continued discussion of the observation phase and how to observer children closely and try to explain any abnormalities you observer. The session also explained using various games with children to improve several of their skills and also to determine their skills levels.

Following the session, we dealt directly with several children who had several types of developmental and learning difficulties. The one I was assigned to had down syndrome. After going through various games with him, we finally provided him with a paper on which a circle has been drown and another empty paper and a pen. We asked him to draw a circle on the empty paper. That he did well. Upon asking him to draw a triangle, he refused. We showed him several times how to draw it, each time he tried he was unable to and resorted to draw a circle again. Repeatedly we showed him how to draw a triangle but each time he either drew a circle or started to color inside the circle. He refused to tray again drawing the triangle. He then refused to try and draw the triangle. He did not want his inability to draw a triangle to show.

The one responsible for the special needs children at Resala came and held a ruler asking him to draw a line using that ruler. She wanted to teach him how to use a ruler to draw the triangle. He failed even to draw a line using the ruler. All he was able to do was circles. After her persistence with him for several times he was finally able to draw a straight line using the ruler. He was very happy with that and we encouraged him by praising his small achievement. She then kept guiding him showing him how to connect one line with another using the ruler to make up a triangle. It was not easy for him, but in the end he was finally able to draw a triangle with the ruler with her help.

You cannot imagine how happy he was upon being able to draw that triangle after his repeated inability to do so at first. Children with learning difficulties can and do learn but they just need some persistence. The sense of achievement he had upon managing to finally draw a triangle was remarkable.