Wow! Starting a cluster is really something great, but this greatness comes with challenges from different angles.
As we started, mostly the community thought we'd come to waste time for the learners and just feeding them wrong information, which is not in the Zambian syllabus.
Apart from that, in some centres the administration or staff thought we've come to take away there positions or jobs, the attitude to this was really threatening, thought we were not welcomed, hence work for some coaches became boring and they started missing there previous centres, hahaha others reached to an extent of crying so sad indeed! Because we believe in the Edulution core value, which says "I AM UNSTOPPABLE, WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE" those challenges never stopped us, we had to find a way.
This was a strong advocacy to both the community and administration, with the help of Father Rapheal we actually called for a meeting with the administration just to explain to them about the program and why we chose their schools, which was very successful. We in turn used the school administration to help us advocate to parents by calling them for a PTA meeting so as to also advocate to them about the program.
After all this was done its been rare to having such challenges as coaches we are truly happy operating from the Schools and working with teachers, who often attend Edulution sessions to give a helping hand. We can say we've created a strong bond with the community and administration at large.
Away from the challenges we faced with the community and administrations we also experienced different challenges with learners, who neither knew how to read nor understand a question. This was kind of tiresome for coaches, for it was the first time to start up a new centre for some coaches. We had learners who would speak languages that aren't common. This made it difficult for coaches to get them to know how to login and logout.
Getting learners to study their specific day for Edulution sessions was a challenge too because we had incidents like a learner not attending sessions due to he or she forgot the day they suppose to come.
But with time and perseverance all this is a success, because in 6 months now we've seen many outcomes such as graduates and learners moving from being dependent to at least being involved. As coaches we are definitely encouraged seeing them improving each time.
Together we can!!