First Post

Greetings to all! This is our first post.

Garth came back yesterday from a 4 day visit to the Baha'i community in Zimbabwe. We thought he would be heading out again this morning for Northwestern Province 800 km from here for another 4 days. But this trip has been postponed due to the need to further develop the Inshindo Foundation project proposal we submitted for funding. Inshindo Foundation (see links) is the local non-government organization that we helped form and which Garth is currently the director. Our institutional partner for this proposal BASED-UK (a Baha'i inspired agency in England) and representing BASED-UK is Michael Richards. Michael and Garth will be working on the proposal this week. The interesting thing is that Michael is currently in Honduras which is about 9-10 hours behind us here. So their email consultation will start in the afternoon and continue into the evening.

Karen gave a talk in Lusaka last Friday on 'On Moral Education and the Media'. Specifically she spoke about the elements of our program "Preparation for Social Action" and the curriculum that focuses more on 'what a person needs to be able to do in life' rather than only on 'what a person needs to know'. This capability focus is much broader than knowledge and integrates concepts, knowledge & information; skills & abilities; and attitudes, values & virtues. In this curriculum moral education is not learned as a separate subject but in the context of how we act in all spheres of life. The attendees really appreciated learning about this new approach to moral education.

As usual during the week Karen will be working with Ryan in his semi-home school class as well as doing the moral education with the first and second graders. The boys are back in school after a week mid-term break and there are only a few more weeks before the school year ends in November. Scott will be finishing the first grade and Ryan his modified second grade. It has been a month of birthdays which the boys love. First was Ryan's 8th, Garth's 55th, and then a slew of friends around us: Musa, Rosie, and Houman. The guys are in the process of showing us that they are responsible enough to have bicycles. To do this they have 4 chores that they must do each day without being told (make beds, pick up bathroom after baths, set dinner table, and pick up toys). For each task done daily they earn a bean (eight beans a day if all goes right) and when they reach 350 beans then they will have shown us that they will be able to look after their bikes. An added bonus is that as we accumulate beans in the can, we count them into 10’s and wrap them up so the guys are learning to count by tens as well.

So with Garth's trip canceled and looking at the weeks schedule we will have a nice family week home together at the Foundation.