Today's Children, Tomorrow's Future

As the fall session comes to an end, children in the Core Child Program hold their certificates and diplomas close to their hearts.

In our final days, children are exposed to all psychosocial themes implemented in the Core Child Program, including myself, family, community, and communication. Through this, we are able to review each theme to ensure that the children understand each and every concept presented to them throughout the session.

Because our focus is on exposing these children to open expression, we provide them with a wide array of non-formal activities to encourage learning through play. Examples of activities we offer at TYO include, storytelling, art, sports, and our pilot English language learning program.

Along with the non-formal education program, TYO offers children daily homework help.  This is done to encourage high performance in school and ensures educational assistance for our target children. Teachers, interns, volunteers, and myself offer children help in Science, Math, English and Arabic. This provides children with the individualized attention most of their parents cannot provide. Many of our children come from large families, in which case, their parents cannot afford to give them the individualized attention the need. Additionally, some parents may not be able to assist with homework help due to limited education. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), illiteracy among females is three and a half times higher than among males this year. This is a problem because our mothers play a central role in their families.

By providing a "safe and creative space for children to develop personally in and out of the classroom", the TYO Core Child Program, provides children with a means to improve tomorrow's youth.

-Reema

Reema is a Fall 2013 Zahi Khouri Fellow at TYO in Nablus.