Mr James Schone to the Yemen Times: We are seeking to enhance the leadership in young people [Archives:2002/23/Reportage]

Education was the target of many researchers to seek the best and the affective techniques. And we always get surprised by the new methodologies for educational purposes. The British Council of the UK, is introducing a project which focuses basically on learning the targeted strategies indirectly through different activities and carrying a title that expresses the idea behind it. Mujahed al-Mussaabi met the project Manager, Mr James Schone and had the following interview:
Extracts:
Can You tell us about the idea and the objectives of your project?
Dreams and teams is a British Council initiative that has been running since April 2001. The idea behind it is basically to use sports to develop leadership skills in young people. In the UK, they developed a program whereby in a secondary one teacher trains young leaders are roughly 16 to 19 years old. We train the young leaders in the skills they need to organize and deliver many sport festivals. We help BE teachers in primary schools to train young leaders to organize sport events. What happens is that young persons get lots of interesting new skills to be able to plan and deliver these sport events {the leadership comes in}. In the Uk, Secondary school teachers train the young leaders to go and organize sport festivals for primary schools children so they enjoy the festivals and the young leaders get the leadership skills. The aim is to help create e and encourage these leadership skills in young people . The British Council took this idea and we exported the idea to 20 countries, including the middle east, Asia, Africa and south America.
How are you going to implement this project here in Yemen?
We are going to select 5 prospective local tutors from different schools and sport clubs, collect them together and send them to Cairo for a 3-day training course by Uk tutors. After they come back to Yemen, these local tutors will organize the first course in Yemen to train up to 20 young leaders between 15 to 19 years old. It will be initiated in December. By the end of this course, the 20 young leaders will be able to organize the first sports festival for about 1400 primary school children. Those young people will be responsible for equipment, medical care, telling the press and etc.
What kind of activities children will be involved in?
The sports festival young leaders will organize, depends on situation and the children interests and they know their interest well. So it may include football, tennis and many other team sports at any where. The important thing is that it should be active because the purpose is to get the children think.
Does it have a specific educational purpose?
The whole course is for educational purpose. We help young people learn useful values through interesting sports. We dont need more facilities to do these festivals, all we need is an area and simple things because the important issue is to make the child active and use his/her mind well. The children are the target of many festivals and the target for us is the young leaders because those young leaders will represent the future of Yemen and that is important for us in the British Council to build more close relationship with Yemen.

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