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Life Skills Curriculum - Racism/Sexism

What Are We Doing and Why?

Race is a very sensitive subject in South Africa. For today’s youth, it is an issue much different from that which their parents faced during the Apartheid era. Today, though programs like Playing for Peace, black kids play with white kids and Indian kids play with Coloured kids where in recent years this simply would be an outrageous thing to even suggest. Our kids are in a position now to make important decisions about how they will view people of races different from theirs. Sexism is also quite an important issue in South Africa as well. Women are often seen as second-class citizens in the eyes of many people here. The youth of SA need to understand the importance of both racial equality and gender equality as well.

August, September, and October 2003 marked the second step in the implementation of the Playing for Peace, South Africa Life Skills Curriculum. This peer mentorship program involves our Playing for Peace coaches educating their kids on many important social issues they face every day. Playing for Peace, South Africa is using the sport of basketball as the vehicle to grab the attention of the youth involved in our program, and in turn provide them with valuable life skills information necessary to leading long and healthy lives. Following HIV/AIDS awareness, Playing for Peace coaches presented our Racism & Sexism program to their learners leading up to the City Wide basketball tournament on November 5, 2003.

What Makes Our Life Skills Program Different from Others?

What differentiates our program from others is that our coaches have now established strong relationships among the kids they work with outside the classroom. We have trained our coaches as mentors/ role models to their children. The information they are trained to present is done so through open discussion outside the confined classrooms that encourages participation and interaction. A bond of trust has been formed which allows our coaches to reach their kids where others programs do not.

Coaches Training

  • Our coaches participated in an intensive 2-day Anti-Racism/ Anti-Sexism workshop hosted by Lynn Maree of CARAS Trust (The Centre for Anti-Racism and Anti-Sexism) in late June 2003. This workshop was a great opportunity for the coaches to examine the many aspects of race and gender needed for the curriculum. For many, this workshop allowed them to examine personal views and long buried questions concerning prejudice, race, stereotyping, and gender roles.
  • In August 2003, the entire PfP staff was taken to the Drakensburg Mountains for a weekend retreat in preparation for the Racism & Sexism program. Coaches were given an informative train the trainer workshop with Manqoba Myeni, clinical psychologist. This was also an opportunity for the Life Skills team to review in detail the Racism & Sexism manual. The weekend also served as an opportunity for team unity as coaches participated in nature hikes and horseback riding excursions.
  • Weekly support is provided for all the coaches by the Life Skills team. Coaches sit down with the LS team to go over upcoming sessions, discuss information that needs further explanation, and to lend general support and ideas for future training sessions.

What is the Current Status?

The Racism/ Sexism curriculum was presented in 2003 to over 1200 kids from downtown Durban, Sydenam, Morningside, Glenwood and Montclair, Durban North, and the Umlazi Township. The Playing for Peace Racism & Sexism manual is distributed as a guide for the coaches to follow during their sessions, which took place for 1 hour before practice, once a week. Playing for Peace’s Racism & Sexism manual was created with valuable support and guidance from Lynn Maree and her structured lesson plan, and with the guidance of professor Steven Collings from the University of KwaZulu Natal in Durban.

Measuring Our Success

Throughout the months of September and October, the Life Skills team sat with coaches and conducted reviews to gain feedback on the Racism & Sexism program manual. Continuously, our coaches reported positive response from their learners during their sessions. Initially, at the end of August, the learners fill out a detailed questionnaire presented in English and Zulu so as to determine their views and opinions about race and gender. A second questionnaire was then distributed during the final session to be used as a comparison to determine how much of an effect our curriculum had on our learners. Life Skills co-ordinator Andrew Gordon and Steven Collings at the University of KwaZulu Natal-Durban evaluated these questionnaires. We expect to have an analysis complete in the near future.

Goals

Playing for Peace, South Africa hopes to positively change the lives of each child in our program. We hope these children take the important information learned in our Racism & Sexism program and use it to live informed and open-minded lives. We also hope that this opens the lines of communication in a society where silence is the norm. In the future, we look forward to assessing what has taken place during this initial program to make necessary changes or improvements so as to provide our learners with the most effective life skills training. All of our coaches and staff see the urgent importance of this taking place. There are endless opportunities for Playing for Peace, South Africa to expand to hundreds of schools waiting for assistance in the KwaZulu Natal province and beyond.

Racism & Sexism Curriculum Partners:

  • CARAS Trust (Centre for Anti-Racism and Anti-Sexism)

    Many thanks go to Lynn Maree for her support and guidance. Initially, she hosted a thorough 2-day training workshop in June 2003 for all of our coaches on anti-racism and anti-sexism issues. This workshop provided the essential learning tools for our coaches to take with them as they prepared to begin their sessions. In addition, Lynn helped support the Life Skills Kids Retreat to Shongweni Dam for our grade 6 learners in July 2003. She hosted mini workshops with the learners that gave them valuable anti-racism and anti-sexism information. Lynn also was the driving force in the creation of our manual. She has lent her guidance in creating an effective manual using the philosophy she has been using during her own training programs. In addition to Lynn’s support in 2003 with the manual and training, she was the extremely helpful with the life skills portion of the new Pod Program initiated in May 2004.
  • University of KwaZulu Natal-Durban

    Dr. Steven Collings is head of the Psychology Department at the University of KwaZulu Natal in Durban with a focus on HIV/AIDS awareness, race issues, and conflict resolution/ crime & violence. He has lent his expertise when it comes to the development and implementation of the life skills curriculum, specifically for AIDS awareness, race issues and conflict resolution/ crime & violence. Presently, he is assisting with the assessment for our Racism & Sexism manual. We distributed and collected over 1200 Racism/ Sexism questionnaire’s to our children from the first sessions and collected 1200 follow up questionnaires in November 2003. We hope to find significant differences in what information these children had prior to our program compared to what they now have through these sessions. Dr. Collings will be providing a statistical analysis in assessing our questionnaire results and also review information gathered from mandatory notes taken by our coach’s and those coordinators facilitating the sessions.