Field Band Foundation (FBF) has since its beginning had the vision of teaching lifeskills through the medium of music and dance, and is all about developing young people from disadvantaged areas in South Africa. Through music and movement, members take part in positive, joyful and affirming activities that teach them lifeskills and develop their imagination, team spirit and self-discipline. The lifeskills are closely linked up to the values of FBF. The values are Honesty, Empathy, Self-belief, Diversity, Excellence, Discipline, Respect, Equality and Integrity.
Field band foundations “Theory of Change” impact:
“Empowered, healthy, and self-confident young people able to contribute to a vibrant society”
This is the lifeskills curriculum in 2018:
Lifeskills have always been a big part of the FBF. The improvements for this year is that there has been developed a year plan with an overview of which lifeskills topics that should be covered in which month. All the bands have to follow this plan, and the POs are in charge of reporting on the progress in their monthly reports. PULSE is in charge of monitoring this process and to give feedback on what was good, and how it can be improved. All the bands are scored on how well they did and reported on the lifeskills sessions, and this score is added to the monthly scorecard. The monthly report and scorecard is a way for the FBF head office to monitor that all band are on top of everything that needs to be done. The bands that do well are rewarded. There are different sections bands are scored at, such as Social development, stakeholder engagement, monitoring and evaluation, information management and education. The lifeskills part, which PULSE is monitoring falls under the education category. At the end of the year, all bands are scored based on their performances at the educational band visits conducted in the different bands.
Lifeskills session in Blouberg Field Band
Awareness and knowledge about HIV and Aids has been a part of the FBF lifeskills curriculum for a long time. As mention in a previous blog post, FBF has received funding to make this an even bigger priority, read more about that here. PULSE has developed a set of HIV and Aids awareness activities that many of the bands are following. The PO report has its own section where they report about the HIV and Aids activities that has been conducted in the bands each month. In addition to reporting about how they did the activities, PULSE is also hoping to get feedback from the teams on how they could have done the activities differently, or if they have any suggestions of improvements.
The activities are covering many different topics about HIV and Aids, such as the importance of using condoms, how HIV is transmitted, what you can do to prevent getting transmitted, stigma, ARVs etc.
Here is an example of an activity they are doing in the bands:
Written by and pictures by: Hanna Bakke Negård
PULSE Music Matters 