Day 6

Today we returned to the school to work with the Thrive Africa coaches. We focused on helping them refine their active listening skills, and a presentation was given on Sexual Abuse. The day began by working in dyads with a coach and role-playing and talked with them about paraphrasing, asking open questions, and identifying the feelings. We have found that the coaches use many of these skills already, and we helped them to work on those skills that needed more refining.

In this area a women or child is sexually abused every minute. The rates are extremely high in this area and due to the culture, many of the incidents are kept within the family and not reported. The presentation was broken up into segments and small groups discussed the many issues that arise after sexual abuse has occurred. The issue of sexual abuse can be a very traumatic and complex issue, and the small groups helped the coaches and the team to break down the concepts and better understand them.

The team has been tired after each day but we are each excited about what is occurring with each group we work with. Working with the school suffering from the loss of their headmaster tomorrow is what we have been specifically trained to do, and we can see how God is taking our skills and putting them to His use.