The story of Servol: education for the community by the community.

AuthorMontrichard, Sister Ruth

Servol was born in the aftermath of the Black Power riots which rocked Trinidad and Tobago in 1970. Its founding members, acknowledging the cultural arrogance often present in people who want to do good, espoused a philosophy of attentive listening and developing projects based on ideas from the community.

After three years of trial and error, it was decided to focus on the two age groups suggested by the community children up to 5 years old, since these are the most critical years, and the 16- to 19-year-olds who had either dropped out of or failed in formal education.

The efforts of Servol in the sphere of early childhood care and education were enhanced through the support of the Bernard Van Leer Foundation of Holland, which not only gave extraordinary technical support to a programme in this area, but offered generous financial support for more than twenty years. With this assistance, a team of international experts was put together and it developed for teachers a curriculum in early childhood care and education that was of high quality and adapted to the culture of the Caribbean. It also received the ultimate accolade of excellence by having its certificate validated by Oxford University, which agreed to be the external examiners for the programme.

When it became known that Servol was offering such a training programme for teachers, requests were received from other Caribbean territories to expose their teachers to this type of high-quality training. As a consequence, our organization requested and obtained financial assistance from foundations in the United States and Europe to build a forty-bed hostel so that teachers could follow this programme for one year During the last twenty years. Servol has trained over 600 teachers from Anguilla, Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Montserrat, Nevis, Panama, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and The Turks and Caicos Islands.

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The adolescent programme began as a traditional skill-training centre, on the assumption that once a young person was trained in a marketable skill, employment could easily be found. The initial results were disappointing. A considerable number of apprentices dropped out and some who completed the programme preferred to rejoin the street gangs rather than look for a job.

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It became crystal clear that what was required was a prevocational course, which placed young people on a path to self-understanding, to...

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