It's the End of the Year

Hello, happy new month to you, at the Sharing Education and Learning for Life (SELL) Foundation, we are happy that the year 2013 is coming to an end. 2013 has done us a lot of good in relation to delivering workshops in Nigeria and Ghana. Though we also experienced some tragedies of the loss of three facilitators in training; Alex Matthew, Dominic Nege, and Marcus James, but we thank God for everything because he alone knows why we had to grieve at that time. 

This blog carries the report of the workshops delivered by the SELL Facilitators in training from various communities in the North East and Plateau State in Nigeria, as well as in Kumasi Ghana. The facilitators have shown great commitment to running the workshops in their various communities over time and we congratulate them because sharing is one of the methodologies of the programme. The SELL Programme encourages sharing with one another on our experiences through facilitated process and group discussions among members at any given time during workshop sessions. 

• In Zing town of Taraba State, Nigeria, the SELL Team there delivered the Justice unit of the SELL programme, the workshop happened on the 18th – 19th October, 2013. 9 Persons; 7 male and 2 female, attended the workshop. 
• Yola Community Team in Adamawa State, Nigeria, also had a SELL workshop on Self Awareness unit on the 19th October 2013. Attendance at the programme was 30 (17 male and 13 female).
• The SELL Team in Shendam, Plateau State, Nigeria, Facilitated four workshops in that area. Here is a run-down of these workshops.

• At Total area in Shendam town, a group of youths from the Catholic Church took part in the SELL Programme that was delivered in their church. The unit of the SELL that was explored there was Leadership and recorded 48 participants (31 male and 17 female).
• In a different town called Kwande, the Peace Building unit of SELL was delivered and 26 participants (19 male and 7 female) attended. 
• In another town called Kwalla, the Shendam SELL team delivered the Leadership unit of SELL to the youth of that community and 21 persons 5 of which are ladies turned out for the workshop.
• Lastly in Langtang town still in Plateau state, the SELL Programme was taken there for the first time and 21 persons took part in it. The resource team wish to applaud members of the SELL Team in Shendam for these great efforts they are putting in to support other young people through the formation programme of SELL.

From the SELL Resource Team,

• We had our annual end of year evaluation and looking into the future, on the 25th to 28th November, 2013. It was indeed a moment of great decision for SELL. Two external facilitators; Rita Schwarzenberger and Tommy Haydan guided the process. Some many concerns regarding the programme were raised and a lot of clarity came at the end. We are grateful to Rita and Tommy for their wealth of experience that they shared with the Team and above all grateful to God for seeing us through those moments.

• The Board of Trustee of the SELL Foundation also had her second meeting for this year on the 30th December, 2013.  
• Some things are difficult to say while others are just so easy. Over one year now we enjoyed a very good working relationship with one of our colleagues; Isaac Gbenga.  Now, Isaac has resigned his appointment with SELL Foundation. This is not for any ill reasons but to prepare for further studies. I must say that Isaac is a gentle man to the core, he showed dedication to service and is blessed with great human relationship skill. We will all miss Isaac at the Foundation, just so difficult to say goodbye.
• One of our resource persons, Fr. Leo Traynor who is also one of the authors of the SELL Programme will be going on sabbatical leave and that will take some time before he returns. The Resource team will miss Fr. Leo’s support and early planning abilities. He has always encouraged us to build relationship with people; he usually says “life is all about building relationships” among other moral supports we have gotten from him. We wish him God’s blessings in this endeavor he is set for.

I wish to thank you for staying with us on this page, see you again soon.

Mhishap (Maria), 

Communication desk, SELL