Do It Yourself (DIY) Clubs Initiative: Enhancing Students' Lifeskills

• In Event: Strategies for Cultivating and Assessing Critical Thinking in sub-Saharan Africa

Proposal

The Do It Yourself (DIY) Clubs initiative was designed with the goal of shifting power dynamics and improving learning outcomes in Ugandan secondary schools. DIY is rooted in a Positive Youth Development approach, specifically the framework created by the USAID YouthPower Learning Project in 2016. It puts forth four domains—assets, agency, contribution, and enabling environment—that they argue contribute to more active, engaged, and thriving young people. The crux of DIY is the “contribution” domain, or “meaningful youth engagement.” Providing opportunities for youth to show what they can do can be transformational, changing the perspectives of teachers, administrators, and other students that often undervalue youth agency and potential. It also contributes to shifts in power dynamics that lead to safer, more equitable, and engaging school environments. While we expect all learners to benefit from these changes, girls should experience the strongest impacts given the gender-based disadvantage they experience in all facets of life.

After participating in a set of foundational capacity-development trainings (e.g., lifeskills (including critical thinking and problem solving), health education, gender norms, community engagement, program planning, etc.), DIY members take the lead, designing projects that address student-identified needs in their schools and communities. This is the key component of the DIY program – learning through the participatory process itself. From conducting a needs assessment, to planning and implementation, students are involved in genuine, meaningful ways. Below are some of the inspirational projects DIY members have designed to date:
• Reusable Sanitary Pad Project: Providing menstrual hygiene management education and making reusable sanitary pads as an entrepreneurial venture.
• My Health, My Concern Project: Promoting awareness among students about sexual and reproductive health through the performing arts.
• Save My Environment Project: Environmental education and recycling waste to make and sell charcoal briquettes as an income generating activity.
• School Diet Improvement Project: Changing students’ perspectives on fruits and vegetables through development of a sustainable and environmentally friendly school garden.
In order to be successful in creating more conducive learning environments, we must also address the other side of the equation – teachers. Through DIY we engage teachers in their own personal reflections and growth, and address teacher-student dynamics. Training topics for teachers include self-awareness, financial literacy, youth-adult partnerships, harmful gender norms, student-centered pedagogy, and alternatives to corporal punishment.
Importantly, while DIY has an intense focus on club members and teachers who participate in DIY activities, our program theory posits that program effects will “spill-over” and diffuse throughout the school as DIY participants begin to adopt and model positive attitudes and new behaviors, and gain enhanced visibility in their schools. We have also observed that as teachers and administrators encounter examples of student leadership, their own views on youth capacity and potential begin to expand. Cumulatively these pathways of change are expected to lead to improved life skills, increased agency, greater participation, and a more engaging and safer school environment for all learners.

Author

• Matthew French, Komo Learning Centres