Making wishes

I feel like the tooth fairy, Santa Clause, fairy godmother, or whoever else listens to people make wishes. This past week has been busy with community meetings. Getting parents, teachers, and community members to share some of their wishes, dreams, visions for the school is the one of the first activities we do in a session on community school planning.

It all started like this. I attended a parent/community meeting a few months ago at one of the schools that my organisation has supported with books, furniture, and training for teachers. It started out as a typical meeting discussing tensions between the teachers and parents and church (school is held inside church premises). Then the committee opened the discussion of future plans for the school. The room was silent. Now, I have become accustomed to allowing periods of silence before anyone answers, but looking around the room, it didn’t look like anyone was coming up with anything. So, I decided to take advantage of the fact that people are inherently interested in me because I’m different and use myself as an example.

I start talking about myself and how one person gets a chance to go from once upon a time being born in small town Alberta to Zambia. Sharing any kind of information about myself always seems to gets people’s attention. I blab about making wishes on shooting stars as a kid that I would one day get to travel and visit other countries. Interestingly, wishes cannot directly be translated into the local language. Dreams is lotto (I think of lottery to remember the word). I think the shooting star explanation is cheesy makes me sound like a nutcase, but seems to translate well and get people excited.

Then, we open the floor up and people share their wishes. The first few responses involved fixing current problems: new latrines, fence, more books, teachers’ salaries, etc. Then as the energy kept building, people start talking about having the school go up to grade 12, adult classes in the evening, technical courses like tailoring, computer lessons, a bus to take pupils on field trips. Cool!

I was impressed by the ideas people were coming up with. People need to be given the opportunity to speak and I think hear each other speak. The hierarchies are so ingrained that most people expect to be told what to do and for those in authority to have the answer. There are a few standard wishes of infrastructure improvement, but the bigger dreams vary depending on the community. It’s a fun and energetic exercise to start with. While the bulk of the session is about how to plan and mobilise resources, the initial dream and goal setting stage really sets the tone.