Saturday, February 1, 2020

Grow Boys Global- Our First Partnership


We are excited to announce that Grow Boys has initiated its first global partnership with PEEM PEACE School in Lagos Nigeria, West Africa. The school's headteacher and founder, Ese Dodokior contacted us through mutual colleagues and is very interested in working with Grow Boys in support of the young boys in her school. She describes her school as a private school with fifty-two students. She states that,
We believe in raising a generation of Godly children is a priority. Our Motto is God is our strength. We believe that all children are very unique and special in their own way. Here we promote social intellectual, physical and emotional development.
The challenges of operating a school in Nigeria on a shoestring budget, and without the various sorts of supports and equipment that we enjoy in Canada are humbling to be made aware of. That Ese has pulled her school together and is capably and caringly providing a high-quality education to her pupils is inspiring to say the least.

This project is very exciting to Grow Boys Global for many reasons, but primarily, it will prove that the Grow Boys concept and foundational reliance on the HOPE Wheel perspective are transformational and scalable anywhere in the world. As our good friend, Michael Josefowicz says, "if it can be made to work in a village in Africa, then it can be made to work anywhere."  This morning Ese and I had our first brief dialog around what point to jump off the curb in support of her boys at PEEM Peace School.

The Grow Boys belief has always been that our HOPE Wheel model is more than integral enough to form a solid foundation for any effort in support of boys throughout the world. Michael Josefowizcz's post from 2012 proves that scaling the Grow Boys model has been front and center for a long time. Now is the time for Ese to take an audit of the sorts of protective factors her boys experience in the local context and compare those to the risk factors within the same environment. In the HOPE Wheel context, we can then juxtaposition these realities on the HOPE Wheel, and more specifically in the related directions under the heading of Respect, Understanding, Relationships, and Responsibility. This is the beginning of our scaffolding into action to reduce and eliminate risk factors while in turn growing the exposure to protective factors... all in the local context of Ese's community in Lagos, Nigeria.

This is just the beginning, and where this goes will completely depend on the vital audit of risk and protective factors that exist currently in the local context. Stay tuned as we grow this project together in support of happy, healthy, well-adjusted boys in Lagos, Nigeria, West Africa!