Closing day of Literacy Training

Our Khartoum office reports the successful conclusion of the training course for literacy teachers.  One of the trainers commented that the trainees were highly motivated and had participated effectively in the training programme.
See the start of this training here.

The British Embassy representative participated in the training too. 

Teacher Leila went on to say that she was sure that all the trainees were qualified and motivated to set up and run their own literacy classes.

The trainees come from all areas surrounding the three towns which make up the Sudanese capital and should therefore be able to ensure a wide availability of classes for displaced women.

Trainers and Trainees proudly pose with their certificates.

The challenge now for Together for Sudan is to mobilize resources to support at least 20 of these classes.  Each class, for 20 women, will cost us around 50 pounds a month.

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Embassy Grant Update

 Baha el Din Mohamed seen addressing the trainees.

The training of 30 literacy teachers in the Reflect method started today in our Khartoum office, with a bunch of very enthusiastic and interested trainees. The training is being funded by a generous grant from the British Embassy, whose representative, Baha el Din Mohamed is seen in this photo addressing the trainees during their first session. The training will last two weeks. Thereafter we expect the trainees to set up classes for women using the meeting facilities of self-help schools and community centres in the displaced areas around Khartoum.

Check out some pictures of this on our Facebook Page.

Back from Sudan

My early November visit to Khartoum and environs was, as always, both endearing and heartbreaking. The Sudanese people, both northerners and those displaced from the south and Darfur, are so friendly and kind that visitors tend not to understand how stressed, unhappy and even hungry many of them are. Victor Gali Thomas, Together for Sudan’s Deputy Country Coordinator, and I visited two of the “self help basic schools” in the squatter settlement of Soba Aradi . Together for Sudan has been helping these schools for more than ten years but circumstances at Soba Aradi, a miserable waterless wasteland of blowing sand and deep poverty, are worse than ever and the future more precarious.



Khartoum is expanding and one day when the bull dozers arrive yet again, they will not stop and even the schools and places of worship will go. Meanwhile, we do what we can although due to the present international recession this is far less than we have done in the past. A member of the Parent/Teacher Association at one of our partner schools wept as he explained present circumstances to us.

During every visit to Sudan I am reminded how precarious life is for the majority of the 38 million Sudanese and how important education is to their present and future. In a country which is oil rich, survival remains the primary objective of millions of Sudanese, including the perhaps three million who now live in squalid encampments for displaced persons outside Khartoum.
For thousands of these people – and for similarly impoverished and marginalized people in the Nuba Mountains – the Together for Sudan Eye Care Outreach is the only medical attention they ever receive: thus the importance of keeping Dr. Nabila in antibiotics as well as eye ointments.

Together for Sudan is using this time of economic recession to reconsider several of our projects. Readjustments already include combining the Teacher Training and Basic Scholars projects and a planned reduction in the number of universities included in our University Scholarships Project. The expansion of the Vocational Training Project is another intension but one which currently lacks funding, as does our previously dynamic Women’s Literacy Project. There is much to ponder and to plan but we face the current situation in full confidence that by listening to what displaced and marginalised people say they need, the way forward will be found. Please join us in this life saving effort.

Training Teachers to Train Other Teachers in the Nuba Mountains

This week I read a report from the TfS office in Khartoum about teaching teachers to become trainers of other teachers in the Nuba Mountains of Southern Kordofan. That ought to be simple because Nuba people are clamouring for education of all sorts. But life in the Nuba Mountains is difficult for many reasons and this time we came up against the weather when delay in a funding transfer took us into the July to October rainy season.

When it rains in the Nuba Mountains everyone and everything bogs down; even tractors are often unable to get through the mud. So training had to be rescheduled for November/December 2008 when 25 kindergarten teachers, all women, were finally taught training techniques, administrative skills, preparation and use of teaching aids, how to identify possibly useful materials, etc. This may sound simple to those who have enjoyed the benefits of well equipped schools and university trained teachers. And so it is: simple, effective and efficient. So efficient, as the report revealed, that two months after the training some of the participants had already set themselves up as teacher trainers and were teaching other teachers how to become teacher trainers.

Things don’t usually happen this quickly in Sudan and the reports writer in our Khartoum office allowed himself a bit of rather unrestrained rejoicing. The impact of the training was, he said, “good news”, in fact it was “a triumph for the people of the Nuba Mountains”, as well as “a milestone to our endeavor to upgrade education in the region” and “a beginning which makes us hopeful that more work will follow”. Well, that sums up fairly well how I feel, too.

Lillian Craig-Harris