This morning at 10:30 we met with our final SWC in the south in Mahebourg. Around 50 social workers showed up, as usual, and Vedant spoke with them in Creole for over an hour. Vedant explained the program, and explained that the Fellows will be coming to work together with the community to help both them and underprivileged children throughout the country. We were received warmly and enthusiastically.
At the end, we passed out slips of paper and asked the social workers to write down the programs they thought would be most beneficial for Fellows to run. The answers they gave were very helpful, and we have analyzed them in addition to the responses from the other centers. The programs they most support, with number of social workers supporting such programs in parentheses, are as follows:
1) IT training/computer facilities (15)
2) Parental education (11)
3) Women empowerment (9)
4) Agriculture (8)
5) Adult literacy/education (8)
6) Leadership (7)
7) Moral values (7)
8) Health/fitness (6)
9) Entrepreneurship (6)
10) Counseling (5)
11) English literacy/language courses (5)
12) Facilities improvement (4)
13) Vocational guidance (3)
14) Art/music (3)
15) Cooking (3)
16) Drug education (2)
17) Swimming (2)
18) Driving (2)
19) Call-center training
20) Young mothers/sex education
21) Artisanal projects
22) Environment
23) Book clubs
Not all of these programs may be entirely compatible with a Fellows program that we might run. However, they show what the Social Welfare Centers would value most in programs.
The value of these centers in the Fellows program is enormous. When Fellows arrive here, SWC’s will help them to find resources and resource persons to run the projects that they design, and working together with the SWC’s, they will be able to teach both the community and kids.