The Fanos Light Education and Virtues Inc. is a charitable organization established with the purpose of supporting children and youth education in Canada, Ethiopia, and beyond. Our vision is t see a generation equipped with proper trainings and values. Our mission is to provide children and youth who are in need to have access to resources, tools, support, and opportunities to help them succeed as individuals. It is to educate and inspire positive change through teaching and engagements. It is to create a learning environment that facilitates learning, growth, and development. It is to provide opportunities that will help children and youth acquire knowledge, and develop the skills that help them succeed in their studies and their life. It is to educate and empower children and youth with knowledge and values. It is to encourage, engage, and equip children and youth to believe in their potential, and the endless possibilities ahead of them.
We are grateful for what we have been able to accomplish thus far through the Fanos Light Education and Virtues. We know that we are still humble for we don’t have enough human and capital resources to do what we thought needed to be done, but we are hopeful with the help of God we would do what we can to support children and youth education. We are grateful for what we were able to do during the 2021/22 School year. We have been running an after-school program and we are grateful for what we were able to accomplish through this program. We had around 25 students came to our program throughout the year. This program, The Fanos Light After School Program was designed with the purpose of supporting children and youth education here in Winnipeg and has five main programs. All these five programs were designed based on the need and the interest of these students. We have a program related to reading where we provide books and other resources that would encourage children and youth to read. We know that if we are able to help children understand the importance of reading and help them build stamina for reading we believe we would bring a difference. Therefore, in our program, we provide these children and youth who came to our program with books to read. We often expect them to read for an hour or less depending on the day and their interest. What we tried through this program was helping them read by taking a book of their choice and asking them questions that would guide their reading. In this program, we have seen some wonderful moments of learning where we have seen these children express their knowledge through various means, through art, and through conversation, and question and answer.
We also had a program related to writing, which goes together with reading. We believe writing would help these children to develop their writing skill and their thinking skill through writing. We believe writing is a skill, therefore we provided them with means that would help them develop their writing and thinking skills. Therefore, we provided books, ideas, and other resources that encourage them to write and keep writing, often about what they read and what they thought or feel, or observe during their time.
The other program we had in our after-school program was a program related to art and creativity. We believe in the power of art and creativity in their learning and development. We do not only believe in the power of art and creativity but also in the potential of these children and youth to develop their skills related to art and creativity. So what we did in our program was that we provided these children and youth the resource and the tools and some ideas, so that they would use art and creativity to express themselves, their thinking, their ideas, their aspirations, and their dreams. We have seen these children do some amazing work throughout the year. We have seen some amazing and fascinating artworks that were so inspiring for us all. We also had a program related to designing it science program. This program was designed with the purpose of teaching these children about some concepts of designing and planning to build something using materials and resources. So, what we did during this program was, we would provide the students with some basic science concepts and materials and help them design and build something using the idea and the materials we provided them. The other major program was mentoring program. This program was designed with the main purpose of proving these children with opportunities to speak and share their ideas with us, it’s a time we all come together to discuss and share our experiences, ideas, aspiration, thinking, and challenges together with the purpose of growing and finding pathways that would help us grow individually and also as a group.
At the Fanos Light, we believe in education and the power of education. Our role and aspiration are to work with what we have, to be able to provide children and youth who are in need to have access to basic school supplies and other educational aid materials, the tools and the resources, the opportunities, and the support they need in their academic and life pursuit. We believe in the principle of the journey is the destination and we believe it’s not what we have that matters for we believe it’s what we can do with what we have matters to bring a difference in this endeavor.
“We believe we would bring a difference in children and youth education with a bit of faith, compassion, sacrifice, dedication, and responsibilities.”
