KANSANSHI Mining Plc has, without doubt, made education as one of its greatest foot-prints in communities in North-Western Province, its chief operational area.
The giant mining firm, majority-owned by First Quantum Minerals, has, through the Kansanshi Foundation,displayed a perfect fusion of investment and education.
Along with its major investments in the mining industry, Kansanshi Mining Plc is seeking to push back the frontiers of education in the communities where it operates and is helping to empower children, and teachers alike, for the future.
It is much like what author, Baron de Montesquieu, believes in: “Liberty can consist only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will”.
Kansanshi Foundation has forged strong ties with local learning institutions in the province where it is not only distributing books and desks, but it is also cementing partnerships to introduce modern methods of education.
That way, it is acting as a responsible corporate citizen introducing helpful thoughts, concepts and values to community members.
Community mobilisation is the hall-mark of Kansanshi Foundation Institute (KFI) which believes in domestic accountability as an approach to improving the performance of schools.
Stakeholders in education need to be accountable to each other. With such an approach, schools are more likely to operate effectively and efficiently and thus produce quality education.
In this regard, as revealed by Head of Education, Onward Mandebvu in his May report, the Foundation has begun a process of developing stakeholder awareness and training in their roles in the governance of schools.
The foundation will be addressing the Solwezi Municipal Council on issues affecting education in the district and their role in addressing the situation. Furthermore, the foundation has set out to work in partnership with the USAID Zambia project – Read To Succeed – to promote school-community partnerships.
At a later stage, the Foundation will facilitate stakeholder engagement so as to improve the quality of education delivery at schools.
The education activities for the month of May, 2014 illuminate Kansanshi Foundation’s deep-seated desire to invest in areas outside of its core business, mining.
The Foundation has invested resources in the training of school management, training for teachers, early childhood education and development (ECED) teacher training, and construction of classrooms at Mushitala School.
Other programmes have revolved around books and desks hand-over at schools, as well as i-school monitoring and support at Kikombe School.
Kansanshi Foundation is driven by a vision to help local communities keep abreast with modern learning practices.
The foundation, in line with the agreement with the grade one teachers at Kikombe School, held a meeting with the teachers to help them reflect on their experience todate in the use of i-school.
The number of operational challenges has decreased as the teachers and the pupils are getting more familiar with the technology and instructional methodology. It has been agreed that the teachers meet weekly to review and jointly plan their work.
Kansanshi Foundation and its partner, Educore Services Zambia, will meet with the teachers every fortnight.
The local communities in Solwezi, and North-Western Province generally, are assured of not being left behind the computer age as the foundation is raising the momentum in computer courses.
The training of head-teachers and deputy head-teachers in Excel continued in May. The training runs every week Tuesday to Thursday afternoons only.
There will be competence assessment at the end of the training. Subsequently, schools will be expected to use their acquired competence to practice evidence-based decision-making in their running of schools.
Kansanshi Foundation is also launching a head teacher peer learning school visitation programme. This is a method of head teachers learning from each other on how they are running their schools and are implementing the training they are receiving from Kansanshi Foundation.
In preparation for the launch of the programme, head teachers came for training twice in the month of May. The training focused on developing the instrument the head teachers will be using to assess school leadership practices. A programme for the visits was also developed.
Another success story was recorded in the holiday teacher training sessions that started in April and continued into May.
The last group of 25 teachers attended training on 6th and 7th May, 2014. The training focused on how teachers could use understanding of Blooms taxonomy of learning to improve how they teach.
Following the training, Kansanshi Foundation visited Kifubwa, Kimale, Tuvwang’anai, Chamuta, Kimasala and Kimitetoschools to assess how well the teachers were applying their training.
Fifteen teachers from the schools were observed teaching, five of whom taught very well and four did not show much evidence in their teaching of what they are learning at KFI.
Most of the teachers in general are still struggling to raise their teaching-to-teaching for understanding, up from rote teaching. Further support will be provided directly by KFI and through head teachers to help these teachers adapt to the new ways of teaching.
The first five-day training of early childhood education and development teachers which started in April continued into early May. Reception class teachers from Mushitala, Kikombe and the ECED teachers from Chief Kapijimpanga’s Royal Establishment took part in the training.
The course, among other things, trained the teachers on how to make learning resources for use in their teaching.
ECED teachers were also taken on a learning visit to Trident Prep School where they saw how early grade teachers there run their classes. It was a revealing experience much appreciated by the teachers.
Other activities included the commencement of the construction of ECED classrooms at Mushitala and Kikombe schools, and the making of ECED toys by a contracted carpenter.
To increase community appreciation of Kansanshi Mining Plc’s contribution to education, Kansanshi Foundation ran book and desk handover ceremonies in the five new KanEQuIP schools of Kandemba, Kapijimpanga, Makole, Kandundu and Kimakolwe.
At these ceremonies, the Foundation formally handed over 5,000 textbooks and 60 that the Foundation had already distributed to the schools, all of which were at a cost of K207,000.00.
The level of community appreciation of this assistance was profound at all the schools!
The work planned for June includes the training of teachers and deputy head teachers, training of ECED teachers, ECED teacher observation visits to Trident Preparatory School, and head teachers’ peer learning visits to schools.
There will also be the holding of spelling bee, quiz and debate competitions in schools, addressing Solwezi Municipal Council on education issues in the district, and teacher support visits to the i-school project at Kikombe School.
With all these interventions, there is no doubt that Kansanshi Mining Plc has set out to empower local communities in Solwezi, and North-Western Province as a whole, through education- Feature courtesy of SUMA SYSTEMS.