SALZ, a Lifestart Programme, set up by DCU students
Tuesday 6 December

The SALZ Team

Maria Mulhall, Stephanie Gimore, Tom Bourke, Niamh Power and Rachel O’Brien, who are all 2nd year students in DCU, have set up an organisation called SALZ. SALZ stands for Students and Lifestart Zambia. In June 2006, they will travel to Mazabuka, Zambia to lend their efforts to the Lifestart project there. The Lifestart Programme is an educational programme that provides a spiral curriculum for parents with children aged birth to five.

Lifestart emphasises that the basic fundamentals of learning are the same for every human being regardless of culture, nationality or economic status. These fundamentals include movement, art, dance and storytelling and these factors are important not because of content but because they are the building bricks of learning. The years birth to five are concentrated on because they are home to 95% of the entire brain growth of a human being.

In Mazabuka, the SALZ team will provide workshops for the parents and children on the programme and integrate themsemves in the delivery process of the material and activities. Also, in response to what has been requested by the Lifestart Zambia council from the vist, the team will prepare, shoot and produce a documentary detailing the works and the goods of the project. This, in turn, will we distributed to other African countries for the potential of establishing more Lifestart projects. And also, to the likes of UNICEF and Concern for funding for the development of the Mazabukan project.

SALZ was set up under the belief that providing educational help in the critical phase (birth to five), is the key to combating third world poverty and ill health cycle. It has long been practised by charity organisations, to make the people in these situations self-sufficient in terms of building villages and growing their own food. But SALZ is offering a self- sufficiency in terms of education, and this, they believe is the key to breaking the cycle.

Please visit their website at www.salz.ie. Details of how make a donation are included.