Moving To The Rhythm Of The Village

We have very few rules at SDV.

Children often wander in from the field or on their way to fetching water. Similarly, older youth and adults drop by when they find the time.

Life is not governed according to a schedule here. And things beyond one's control, such as a sudden heavy downpour, can influence the day's activity.

In response to this, we are trying to allow patterns to evolve naturally, instead of imposing a structure.

We have tasked ourselves with optimising the use of the resources at SDV and the volunteers' efforts, given our environment. Where necessary, we are putting in place a few practical policies to guide the process.

Here is an example of one that came about in the course of the last couple of weeks.

Children will be asked to leave SDV at around 6:30. This one caused much uproar among the kids, and they had a point. They argued that they can only use the computers after school, and even then they have to share them with the adults. So, we made a compromise, during our lengthy negotiation. From four to six pm, most of the computers will be reserved for children.

Even so, it is always a difficult moment when we ask the children to leave.

A more weighty issue we are dealing with concerns the adults. We have a number of individuals, ranging from police officers, nurses, government workers, NGO staff, qualified young people in the process of searching for employment, who visit SDV regularly. The volunteers have been training them, mostly on an individual basis.

We very much want to train them in groups, as it is currently very taxing for the volunteers and we cannot really meet the demand. However, we recongnise that we cannot realistically create a training schedule that can accommodate them.

So, we have suggested, as an experiment, that we offer training in groups of four, and we keep a dynamic schedule for each group. And where possible, we try and combine groups.

We are not sure if this will work, but if we find that it doesn't, we will think of a different approach.

Through it all, we are reminding ourselves that it is not the structure we build that will be permanent, but hopefully the process by which we build, will be.