Program and Results
Program name: “The Fanos Light After School Program”
Duration: Ongoing from October to June each year.
Location: Winnipeg, Canada, and Vancouver BC
Ultimate Result
To provide a safe space for children and youth; to provide basic school supplies and other educational aid material, resources, tools, learning opportunities; tutoring and mentoring, and the support these children and youth need in their learning adventure. We would provide the programs based on the need and the interest of these children who come to our program
Projects beneficiaries
This project benefits children and youth from the circle of life, children, and youth from immigrants’, new comers , and indigenous community.
The Fanos Light After School Program was officially launched in December 2021. This project was designed with the purpose of providing children and youth access to safe space where they can come to relax, study and research. Through this program The Fanos Light provided access to computers, books, other educational aid materials, resources, and programs like tutoring, mentoring and programs related to their interest and passion.
Though we had capacity limitations as an organization we are so grateful of the accomplishments of this program. We had around 21 students access the program through the 2021/22 school year. We had around 27 children and youth during the the 2022/23 school year.
These students have been coming to the program with some excitement, and motivation to learn, to have some time to play. The program offers 5 key areas of learning: reading, writing, art, design it science and mentorship.
Reading.
To support and improve literacy, the activity provides various levels of books. The main objective is to help children develop their reading skills and reading stamina. During this activity, we have learned some children love to share.
their reading. So, we created an environment where we all come together after the reading session to share what we read about and ask questions for explanation. If it’s a fiction book, we would often talk about some literary devises.
the writer uses, characters in the book or the story, and other important elements of writing. We give some children an option to share their reading through writing and art. We have learned there are some students who love reading,
and some are working on their reading skills.
The main purpose of this activity is to support and improve writing skills. This is done through teaching children to learn to write using their own words, style, and tone. We often give a topic for our writing, then write about our feelings, thoughts, or what we have learned/observed. We would tell children that writing help us organize our thoughts and ideas. Writing is one aspect of literacy and its equally important as other skills.
Art.
Each student has unique talents and interests. Art expands minds and helps students think differently, to be creative, think outside the box, to expand their imagination. The art activity is designed to help students be creative, to expand their thinking using art as a means. We provide art materials and equipment and let the children do their own artwork, painting, drawing, and designing using various materials. Many children who come to our program love painting,
drawing and other forms of art.
Design It Science.
This activity is designed to help children design, create, and build things by understanding simple design and scientific concepts. We provide children with some basic science concepts, and then we provide them constriction paper, pencils, and other tools to design the things they would build on paper first, before they actually build it. We would often tell them and remind them the importance of design, planning, and thinking before building. Then we provide tools and materials they would use to design and build the physical concept. We have seen some great designing and building activities during our program. We believe children learn better by being engaged and through hands-on activities.
Therefore, this activity has huge potential to grow, and become successful. It can help children to think, rethink, design, plan, work together, interact, fail, create, problem solve, and develop communication skills and other skills.
Mentorship.
This activity was designed to help children understand the importance of values in their growth and development and eventually success in their studies and life. This activity brings learners, and teachers together to share their views, opinions, experiences, knowledge and feelings with the purpose of learning from each other. During this activity we all sit around the table and discuss various topics, often about values and characteristics we want to develop as individuals and as a group that would help us succeed. This activity is very vital because it gives students the space to share their thoughts, feelings, aspirations, values, things that challenge them, things they need to work on.
We often talk about our strengths, and areas we need to work on.
We want to take this opportunity to extend our thanks and appreciation to all the people who supported our work, we want to thank all the students and the parents who entrusted us with these children. We want to thank all our wonderful volunteers, and a special thanks to Dinu and Sheila. We also want to thank the Government of Canada for providing funding through the Supporting Black Canadian program. We are grateful because of this fund we were able to buy computers,
tablets, tools, and equipment needed to run the after-school program. Below are pictures captured in various times during the program.
