“We are always enthusiastic when new schools join"

The way that coordinator Emifa Ansah walks around during the Global teenager workshop at Africa Day, clearly shows that she is also a teacher. In a big room in The Hague University of Applied Sciences (Hoogse Hogeschool), a groups of about thirty people are sitting behind their computer screens. Emefa explains very clearly how the computer program that is used for the Global Teenager Project works and patiently answers questions. “That’s right, I was a full time teacher before becoming a coordinator”, says Ansah. “I worked at the Morning Star School in Accra.”

Tremendous progress

While she was teaching, she was first introduced to the Global Teenager Project. Ansah learned how to use the computer and how to use it to communicate to other school children abroad through structured learning circles.  In the learning circle, schools from all over the world discuss topics by asking each other questions. Ansah: “The first learning circle I did was about HIV AIDS with some school from Zambia. At first I was not sure if my students were able to do it, but they showed tremendous enthusiasm and progress. The impact has been enormous for them.”

The passionate response from her students also enthused Ansah. She started teaching the project and its use to other teachers in her school. After that, the step to become the coordinator of the Global Teenager Project wasn’t that big. “I realised how things can be done more easily by using computers and how much students can learn from students in other countries, that’s why I started working as a coordinator.”

Gender with a new twist

In June, Emifa Ansah and the Global Teenager Project coordinators of the other countries will meet face to face in the annual Johan Kooij Fellowship Event. Ansah: ”This is a great opportunity to plan, share experiences and discuss what’s working and what’s not working. I will make a strong case for the thematic area gender, but with a new twist, because so far, that learning circle theme does not seem to get a lot of response from the students in Ghana. I will also talk about the using Wikis more often.” Wikis are web pages that encourage collaborative writing. Ansah says this is much easier to do than working with schools abroad through email or forums.

On Africa Day, Ansah demonstrated the use of Wikis to the Dutch visitors during a workshop. She was surprised to see that no one knew how to use a Wiki and managed to quickly teach the basics to most people. She got great responses and also found Africa Day as an event very inspiring. “It’s big and wonderful, I went around and saw how involved people are in cooperating with African projects and partners.”

Integrate The Global Teenager Project in classes

Emifa Ansah also used the opportunity at Africa Day to express her vision for the Global Teenager Project in Ghana. “Like  I said; Wikis will become more important as useful tools for the teacher and students to generate and share new content. I also hope to see new schools joining the project. We are always enthusiastic about getting new schools to take part in the project. Another thing is that I hope the project will be even a bigger part of the student’s curriculum. So far it is often seen as an extracurricular activity, whereas it could be a nice addition for students to integrate the Global Teenager Project and its themes in regular classes.”