Helen won the Sports Zone in June 2011. Here’s what she wrote about spending her prize money…

I wanted to write to update everybody who voted for me and anyone else involved in ‘I’m a Scientist – Get me out of Here!’ in June 2011. I was the winner in the Sports Science Zone, and I had fierce competition so it was a huge surprise when I won.

South African school children

I had previously worked with very underprivileged pupils in schools in townships in South Africa and I used the prize money to return to the schools and deliver some more sport psychology and life skills lessons.

These pupils have a very different home and school life than students in the UK do. Many of them are orphans, because they have lost their parents to HIV/AIDS, and it is estimated that between 20-40% of the pupils in the township schools have HIV themselves. On top of this, many children get abused at home, or live with parents or guardians who have drug and alcohol problems. Home is often nothing more than a small shack, shared with many people. The cane is still used frequently in the classroom and many students will have nothing to eat all day, even at lunch time. All their lessons are in English, even though that is not their first language, and they learn by “rote” which means that things are written on the blackboard and they copy them down. Often this means that they don’t actually know what they are reading and writing even though they can repeat it back in an exam.

My job as a psychologist is to encourage people to talk about their thoughts and feelings, but I found this hard in South Africa because the children were scared that I would hit them if they “got something wrong” or they would be laughed at – even though the types of things I was asking them had no right or wrong answers. Eventually they learnt to trust me, and learning some words in their own language, Xhosa helped a lot.

The classroom activities

The types of topics we discussed in class included: confidence; being part of teams and groups; respecting other people’s differences; controlling our anger; learning from our mistakes; making goals and plans for the future. Part of the anger workshop is shown in the picture on the left – where we came up with alternative ways to deal with anger. Although I often look at these topics in my sport psychology work, I encouraged the students to think about how they could use these skills in other parts of their life too – such as in school and with their friends. Life skills can help these children to lift themselves out of poverty because they can focus on their school work and make plans beyond school to get a job or go to university, and avoid being sucked into drugs and crime.

I used the £500 that I won towards classroom materials for three schools and producing the in-class materials and handouts that the children could keep and take away with them. I recorded all my sessions, which I am editing into DVDs that the schools can keep, and use to have life-skills discussions with other groups of students in the future.