My Experience at Pestalozzi's UK IB Program

Bwalya Kasanda.

The beginning of this academic year has been an awesome experience adorned by dynamism. This year, Pestalozzi widened its scope to include an eighth country (Bhutan) to its diverse community for its International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program at Sussex Coast College in Hastings, UK. The three students from Bhutan, Dawa, Thinley and Lungten are full of humility and humour. 

In addition to the three, we have two beautiful girls from Nepal, two friendly boys from Tibet, three students from India, another three from Belize, two from Zimbabwe, two from Uganda and three from Zambia. This adds up to twenty first year students. We should have had 21 initially, but unfortunately one student decided to forfeit the scholarship. At the moment we are still waiting for one of our Ugandan students who is still waiting for his visa.

I am one of the three Zambian first year students. My name is Bwalya Theresa Kasanda and I am the new Student Programme Intern. I am fascinated by the Pestalozzi principles of using the head, heart and hands and I consider it a great privilege to be here. I have my aspirations and I have my inspirations. I come from a developing country that faces many economic and social difficulties in which I have been raised. These issues have challenged me by forcing me to realise my potential. Indeed they have acted as harsh but great inspirations to me. Someday, hopefully in the near future, I want to pursue a degree in either medicine or economics. I want to develop myself so that I can return to my home country and help those who are in need there.

It is amazing to discover that there are many if not all of my fellow students here at Pestalozzi who share a background like mine and have similar ambitions, or at the very least similar motives of going back to help the needy in their home countries. And that is the interesting part about Pestalozzi, the mere fact that we are so alike, yet so unalike. By this I mean, though with similar goals, this multicultural environment has much to teach and certainly much to yield. The school is organised in a manner that every student has the opportunity to express his or her individuality fully, and therefore stand out as unique. Even the smallest difference is cherished by everyone.

Despite the fact that there were delays in arrivals for many students, everyone with the help of everyone else seems to have settled in quite well. The second years have been very welcoming by being such great mentors, and all the staff members have been a great pillar. Before opening the year at college, the first years had an opportunity to ‘enjoy being in England’. They had various trips which included going to London and other places like the Camber Sands. The enthused and high spirited youths seemed to love just about everything! College began on a good note, and the second year students seem to always burry themselves in stacks of books. They seem to be the busiest students at Pestalozzi as they have so many assignments, workshops and exams. They just recently sat for their SAT exams. We wish them all the best!

At the moment, everybody seems to be enjoying the relaxation that comes with half-term, but secretly preparing for many events that are coming up such as Halloween and the Indian Cultural Evening.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for you immeasurable support!

Yours sincerely,

Bwalya Kasanda

Student Programme Intern

KF Graduate '11

GAP YEAR

                                                                                                 
  My name is Mude. I am currently doing my Gap Year, which is a period between secondary and college. Been a secondary school graduate calls for great excitement of being a part of society and taking full time part in activities like community service. My community service started on a good note because Kucetekela Foundation had already established a literacy project through Abram in the Kalikiliki compound. The aim of this project is to provide an education to children with a desire to learn but do not have financial support to get them into school.

 As an intellectual with the desire to help others especially the needy, I decided to put in my very best interests to boost the project by offering my intelligence to teach young kids in the compound how to read and write. My journey from home to the project was long on foot, reaching there on time required me to work up very early in the morning, at times I would just feel like stopping the teaching, but thanks to KF who provided a bicycle which reduced my one hour walk to a twenty minutes ride.
 The kids at the literacy project where awesome! They gave me respect a well behaved student gives to his teachers. We shared a lot of great moments together, one very interesting moment was during sports time were we used sports to learn about HIV/AIDS, this activity was demonstrated by using a ball as the virus, so we made a big circle and the person having the virus had to stand in the middle of the circle, he or she had to throw the ball to anyone in the circle unexpectedly, if the ball was thrown to you, you had to kick it back to the middle, failure to which you had to stand in the middle with the virus. The major lesson in the activity was abstinence is better than cure.

 Each lesson I taught made an impact in helping the kids, assessment test where written every month to see how they are progressing and the results I obtained showed better improvement in writing and reading. Though faced with challenges at first, I am proud to say that my efforts to educate others paved the way to my interests.                                                                                                                
 My stay as a teacher at the Kalikiliki Literacy Project was ended due to my appointment as the KF intern on the first of October 2013. The feeling of being trusted, reliable and valued rang bells in my head, being an intern for an organization like KF meant a lot to me in the sense that only one intern was selected each year and that 2014 was my year for internship. However being an intern so far has engaged me in a lot of activities some of which are similar to the literacy project. Tutoring grade eights and nines was the first thing I did, the process of tutoring reminded me of the literacy project but this time I had no worries of teaching how to read and write.
 working In an office filled with connected people has enabled me to meet a lot of persons who have shared great knowledge about life experiences, Many of them have showed interests in working with NGOs and helping projects benefiting the communities.
 Been an intern is also exposing me to computer functioning and office management skills. The laptop and the internet entitled to the intern have helped me discover a lot of things I was missing out on, including new ways of staying in touch with friends in far places through emails.  One of my major goals as an intern is to build a strong reliable network in and out of KF. it would be a shame not to acknowledge the fact that being an intern is the most interesting and exciting thing that has happened to me in my Gap year. My hopes are to do my best not to disappoint the people who have put their trust and faith in me. Being a gap year requires me to attend gap year meetings which are held at the end of every month, the meetings are fun because they bring back all the memories we shared back in school, we also share gap year experiences which enable as to learn from each other, college and university talks are my favourite because they help me look into the future depending on career interests. Soon i will be applying to university and I would love to study something business related like production management and maybe in the near future advance my studies to electrical engineering. I am very happy to be the KF intern even as I look forward to getting into university next year.

INTERNSHIP

Internship is one way a person can give back to the community or any organisation and services that you offer are temporary. It’s awesome as a young person viewing what a successful work place looks like and getting to know its insight operations. It is so interesting to work with elderly persons as one gets to learn etiquettes which are important in any firm.

As a first KF student to be offered this prestigious position, I feel honoured and great because through this work experience, I am able to determine what I will do after graduating. From my experience, I think this is my field because I enjoy what I do because it is in line with my Career choice and that is why I want to pursue a degree in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

As an Intern who is from the Kucetekela Foundation Programme, I carry out responsibilities which require me to work closely with KF students in both Schools. My duties include assigning posts to Alumni and Gap Year Students, typing and posting to kfgapyear.blogspot.com, work with students to complete each terms Newsletter, setting up of KF Alumni database and working with Alumni to come up with ways they can contribute to KF, monitoring and evaluation of the Peer Tutoring programme, teach Junior Pestalozzi Students, attend staff meetings, work with the Kalikiliki Literacy Project and help to analyse applications from the recruitment procedure.

This has given me a vast experience on how to conduct myself in a work place. I have also grown intellectually and not only did it provide me an opportunity to learn the insight operations of the organisation but has given me the desire to come and work for Kucetekela Foundation and continue to carry its mission and vision forward in order to develop the next generation especially mother Zambia and the world at large.

At the moment, I am looking forward to tertiary education. Thank you

Kucetekela Foundation for providing me with this Internship position and for been with me up to this time.