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Teachers Without Borders

Annotated Bibliography: Education for Youth Affected by Crisis | INEE Site - 1 views

www.ineesite.org/...n-for-youth-affected-by-crisis

bibliography professional development teachers Education in Emergencies Education Under Attack

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 14 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Teachers Without Borders on 14 Nov 13
     
    Crises negatively affect the education and livelihood prospects of youth, which in turn can play a role in the perpetuation of fragility in post-crisis settings. The development and implementation of effective education and training for youth in contexts characterized by displacement, a breakdown of social services, and economic despair presents a broad spectrum of challenges. Yet, it is a necessary component of promoting self-sufficiency and long-term stability. This annotated bibliography aims to contribute to building the evidence base to effectively articulate and advocate for successful, quality education programming for all youth affected by crisis. The selection criteria for documents reviewed in this annotated bibliography were broadly defined as any texts dealing with, reviewing, analyzing, evaluating or describing educational programmes catering specifically or partially to youth and adolescents in situations of emergency, protracted crisis through to post-crisis and recovery. Preference was given to texts that address specific impacts and lessons learned. This review is not meant to be a mapping exercise of existing programmes and actors, rather it attempts to document specific impacts of programmatic approaches. To suggest additional articles to be included in the annotated bibliography or for further information, please contact youthtaskteam@ineesite.org or minimumstandards@ineesite.org.
Teachers Without Borders

Rwanda: MINEDUC Shifts Focus to Teachers' Quality - 1 views

allafrica.com/...201003090056.html

Rwanda developing nations MDGs teachers in-service pre-service teacher development

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 22 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Teachers Without Borders on 22 Jul 10
     
    "Kigali - The Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) has turned its focus to teacher quality assurance to improve the quality of education. This was declared yesterday at the opening of a two-day summit on teacher education, management and professionalisation. According to the Minister of Education, Dr. Charles Muligande, the quality of education in the country cannot be attained if the teachers who are the backbone of the change are not taken into account. "The enhancement in the quality of education can be attained through improvement of infrastructure. However, unless the quality of the teachers is assured, nothing can be attained," Muligande said."
Teachers Without Borders

Reuters AlertNet - DRC: Where schools have flapping plastic walls - 0 views

www.alertnet.org/...1ab83fd6f6c8384e15612ad0c8.htm

Congo Education Under Attack Education in Emergencies students education violence conflict

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 26 Jul 10 - Cached
  • KIWANJA, 19 July 2010 (IRIN) - It is a sunny day at the Mashango primary school in the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC's) North Kivu Province. That is good news for teacher Dusaba Mbomoya who is holding a geography exam under a roof filled with holes in a classroom where flapping pieces of plastic do duty as walls. Even the blackboard has holes large enough for students to peer through. "When it rains we allow the pupils to go back to their houses," said Mbomoya.
  • Most classrooms are dark and crumbling with limited teaching materials. With the government opting out, Save the Children estimates that parents are forced to finance 80-90 percent of all public education outside the capital Kinshasa, though under the DRC's 2006 constitution elementary education is supposed to be free. Teachers' salaries go unpaid which means parents must contribute to their wages via monthly school fees of around US$5 per pupil. Large families and an average monthly income of just $50 means such fees are entirely unaffordable for large swathes of the DRC population - with serious consequences. Estimates from Save the Children and others suggest nearly half of Congolese children, more than three million, are out of school and one in three have never stepped in the classroom.
  • Save the Children's research shows that teachers' pay is so low and so irregular that many take on other jobs, such as farming, taking them away from their classrooms and students. The situation is particularly bad in North Kivu where hundreds of thousands have been uprooted by years of war. Some like Laurent Rumvu live in camps for the internally displaced. None of his five school-aged children are in regular education.
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  • Ransacked Schools in the area were closed for several months in late 2008 and early 2009 when fighting between rebel soldiers in the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP - now a political party) and the DRC army brought chaos to North Kivu. Children were forcibly recruited from schools by militia groups and the army and students and teachers were shot and abducted, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). Schools were ransacked and many were occupied by either soldiers or IDPs.
  • After the war, he said 120 fewer pupils returned to classes. At Kasasa, CNDP soldiers occupied the school for several weeks, taking books and causing damage. Some pupils were killed during the fighting, and Nkunda said others were traumatized. "Of course the war has had an effect," he said. "Imagine going to school after your parents have been killed." Getting displaced children back in school is a priority for international agencies including the Norwegian Refugee Council.
  • "Education is extremely important to the future of Congo," said Mondlane. "With large numbers of displaced children it is extremely important to invest in education in this humanitarian crisis." "Bad government" Kasasa student Shirambere Tibari Menya, 22, lost four years of his schooling to war. Most recently, he fled to Uganda during the fighting in 2008 and is now close to finishing secondary school. But one obstacle remains - a one-off series of final exams which all DRC pupils must take before graduation. Tibari is confident he will pass and would like to go on to study medicine but says his family does not have the $12 he must pay to take the tests. "I don't accept that I'm going to lose another year, but you can see that we are studying in bad conditions," he said. "For our parents the main activity is to go to the fields, but they are raped and attacked so we have the problem of food and no money. "I blame the government. We are in a bad country with a bad government."
Teachers Without Borders

Haitian Teachers Revive Community and Rebuild Education | IREX - 0 views

www.irex.org/...ommunity-and-rebuild-education

Haiti IREX teacher development professional_development community teachers

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 07 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • When the only Haitian public teacher training institute collapsed in Port-au-Prince as a result of the earthquake, the once sparse availability of professional development opportunities for Haitian teachers became non-existent. Understanding the importance of continuous teacher training, Fanfan Joseph, an English teacher and President of the English Club of Cap-Haitien, organized a four-day training workshop for 50 English teachers in Cap-Haitien. Focusing on lesson planning, reflexive teaching, and cooperative learning techniques in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom, Joseph trained participants on practical skills that they could use in their classrooms immediately. The participants of this workshop celebrated Joseph’s efforts and encouraged him to organize another workshop, which he promptly did. This September, Joseph’s follow-on workshop focused on skills for effective teaching and learning in large classrooms. Teachers around the world struggle with large class size; a typical school in Haiti can include as many as 250 students in one classroom. The participants in Joseph’s workshops represent many different schools across northern Haiti, and each of them teaches hundreds of students. As a result of Joseph’s workshops, thousands of students across northern Haiti are engaged in interactive classrooms with teachers who have benefited from this recent and relevant training.
  • Another English teacher, Abel Mercier of Port-au-Prince, recognized that one of the most important things children need during times of crisis is the permission and space to have fun. “The secret to coping with post-traumatic stress in a community after an event such as the earthquake is to promote recreational activities among the children, teenagers, and adults,” says Mercier. This summer, Mercier organized a “Day of Fun” for over 80 high school students from Lycée Cité-Soleil in Port-au-Prince, the capital city that was hardest hit by the earthquake. Students gathered at the beach for a stress-free day of sports, arts, games, and more. By including a short workshop on the geological forces that cause earthquakes, and another on understanding the effects of psychology trauma, Mercier elevated his “Day of Fun” to a meaningful experience for a community in the midst of recovery.
  • Jovenal Thomas, another English teacher from Cap-Haitien, collaborated with Red Cross volunteers to deliver CPR training to high school students. “There is no Civil Defense Warning Program here, no 911 telephone number to call, limited ambulance service and very little access to medical treatment,” says Thomas. “Students need to be trained to deal with emergencies when they encounter them.”
Teachers Without Borders

With Haitian Schools in Ruins, Children in Limbo - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...07schools.html

Haiti education schools children violence earthquake developing nations

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 07 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake, only about half of Haiti’s school-age children were enrolled in classes, a glaring symbol of the nation’s poverty.
  • more than 3,000 school buildings in the earthquake zone had been destroyed or damaged. Hundreds of teachers and thousands of students were killed, and officials are questioning the safety of the remaining buildings after violent aftershocks in recent weeks, making the goal of Haitian education officials to reopen many schools by April 1 seem increasingly remote.
  • Children staying in the camps face trials beyond laboring in the streets. Health workers in the camps are reporting a rising number of young rape victims, including girls as young as 12. Alison Thompson, an Australian nurse and documentary director who volunteers at a tent clinic on the grounds of the Pétionville Club, said she had cared for a 14-year-old girl who was raped recently in the camp. “The entire structure of the lives of these children has been upended, and now they’re dealing with the predators living next to them,” Ms. Thompson said.
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  • Officials declared schools open in unaffected areas as of Feb. 1; some students have trickled into those schools, but many have not, say education specialists. Here in the capital, symbols of the devastated education system lie scattered throughout the city. Metal scavengers are still picking through the wrecked Collège du Canapé-Vert, where as many as 300 students studying to become teachers died in the earthquake.
  • Only about 20 percent of schools were public, with the rest highly expensive for the poor. Even in public schools, poor families struggled to pay for uniforms, textbooks and supplies. While other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean spend about 5 percent of their gross domestic product on education, Haiti was spending just 2 percent, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.
  • “The quality of education was very low, with about a third of teachers having nine years of education at best,” Mr. Cabral said in an interview here, after a recent meeting with Haitian officials in an attempt to come up with a plan to reopen schools. Mr. Cabral said the Inter-American Development Bank estimated that Haiti needed $2 billion over the next five years to rebuild its education system.
  • Children make up about 45 percent of Haiti’s population
Teachers Without Borders

Education |P6 in Uganda pupils cannot do fractions - report - 2 views

www.monitor.co.ug/...-

education assessment teachers evaluation professional development Uganda

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 28 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Although the introduction of Universal Primary Education (UPE) has boosted enrollment in primary schools (Uganda boasts 8.3 million children in primary schools compared to 2.3 million before 1997), numerous pupils continue to perform poorly at one of the most important aspects of basic education.
  • The report stated that, “Few primary six pupils demonstrated skills in other competences of ‘measures.’ Only about a third of the pupils (35.2 per cent) could for example tell the time shown on the clock face and merely 4.1 per cent of the pupils could apply the concept of capacity in real life situations.”The tests sampled pupils in 1,098 schools from all the districts in Uganda between the ages of nine and 15 and over.
  • Findings indicate that the main reason why pupils cannot practically apply what is taught in class is the teachers failure to identify the weakness of the pupils in the various areas of study.
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  • The report says: “the cause of this is failure to use assessment to diagnose pupils’ and to guide teaching and inadequate practice as these pupils do their work. Primary Six pupils, whose teachers had a university degree or Grade III teaching certificate, performed better than those whose head teachers had a Grade V teaching certificate. Pupils with head teachers who reside at school performed poorer than those whose head teachers live outside the school.”
  • Mokurai Cherlin on 29 Jul 11
     
    It is evident that the sources of these problems must be sought in earlier grades, and even in the experiences of Ugandan pre-schoolers. Compare them with what I describe at http://replacingtextbooks.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/higher-mathematics-for-children/ for children in the US. There are excellent materials on fractions online. See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Open_Education_Resources for links to some sites that have as many as 100,000 e-learning resources available. Even if students do not have computers, teachers who can access these lessons can adapt them for the classroom or for individual practice, and share them with teachers who do not have Web access. On the issue of fractions, see also http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt/Tutorials/Fractions for an approach that requires no computers, but will be enhanced with software activities fairly soon. If your students have trouble with these exercises, and you can tell us why, we will work with you and them to develop materials that meet their needs. You will also have to tell us if there are circular Ugandan foods that we can use in lessons for children who are not familiar with European/American cakes, pies, and pizza. ^_^ When you have a 4.1% success rate on a particular topic, and thus a 95.9% failure rate, it cannot be said that individual teachers have failed to recognize individual difficulties. This is evidence that the entire curriculum is misdesigned. I assume that this is some part of the holdover colonial education system from before independence, designed originally for European children, with no relation to the prior experi
stephknox24

Facilitating Reflection: A Manual for Leaders and Educators - 1 views

www.uvm.edu/...reflection_manual

peace_education reflection

shared by stephknox24 on 11 Apr 11 - Cached
  • stephknox24 on 11 Apr 11
     
    "Reflection" is a vital component of service-learning. This manual was designed for educators and leaders of service groups who have an interest and a commitment to provide reflection opportunities for students and community partners alike. College professors, K-12 teachers, community organization leaders, and leaders of service organizations have all found, "Facilitating Reflection: A Manual for Leaders and Educators," a useful supplement to their work. This manual was written during the summer of 1995. The primary author, Julie Reed, was interning at the Georgetown University Volunteer and Public Service Center at the time. I had asked her to pull together a compendium of reflection activities that would be useful for educators and leaders of service groups. None of the ideas represented in this manual are original. We borrowed examples from a variety of sources, which you will find in the "Acknowledgements" section at the end of the manual.
Teachers Without Borders

allAfrica.com: Namibia: Quality, Shortages, and Concerns of Teachers - 0 views

allafrica.com/...201107041292.html

teachers namibia teacher development education

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 08 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • What is lacking, however, is specialised training of teachers, which limit the implementation of inclusive training, he said.
  • Few teachers have specialised training, and none have formal training for multigrade teaching. This means that there is a lack of skills to pitch lessons at different grades, while many teachers generally struggle with classroom management.
  • A shortage of teachers in the fields of accounting, mathematics, languages, computer studies and geography has been identified.
  • Teachers Without Borders on 08 Jul 11
     
    AVAILABLE figures point out that the majority of teachers have Grade 12 with at least three years' tertiary education. "So, who is fooling who?" questioned Minister of Education Abraham Iyambo, in obvious reference to the less than satisfactory performance of most schools. What is lacking, however, is specialised training of teachers, which limit the implementation of inclusive training, he said. Few teachers have specialised training, and none have formal training for multigrade teaching. This means that there is a lack of skills to pitch lessons at different grades, while many teachers generally struggle with classroom management.
Teachers Without Borders

AFP Helps In Renovation of Schools | The Manila Bulletin Newspaper Online - 0 views

www.mb.com.ph/...fp-helps-in-renovation-schools

twb_app philippines schools classrooms

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 24 May 12 - No Cached
  • Teachers Without Borders on 24 May 12
     
    MANILA, Philippines - The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) will deploy thousands of its personnel to assist in the cleaning and renovation of all the public schools across the country in preparation for the opening of the classes on June 4. AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Jessie Dellosa said that his deployment order is in support of the week-long "Brigada Eskwela 2012" launched by the Department of Education which will kick-off on Monday. In Metro Manila alone, Dellosa said at least 1,000 soldiers will be tapped in preparing schools in the metropolis, adding that the military contingent is composed of active and reservists which will come from the AFP's three major services command.
Teachers Without Borders

UNESCO IITE | Publications | "Open Educational Resources in Brazil: State-of-the-Art, C... - 0 views

iite.unesco.org/...3214695

publications unesco resources brazil innovation OER

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 24 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Teachers Without Borders on 24 Jan 12
     
    The book "Open Educational Resources in Brazil: State-of-the-Art, Challenges and Prospects for Development and Innovation"(author - Andreia Inamorato dos Santos)  has been out of print. This is the second IITE publication within the series of case studies summarizing best practices of OER development in non-English-speaking countries. The study contains an overview of the Brazilian educational landscape, national educational policy and the strategies of ICT use in education. The author describes existing open digital content repositories with due emphasis on the copyright situation and considers several examples of successful international OER projects which involved Brazilian partners. The book is destined for those who study OER initiatives and projects on a national scale as well as promotion of OER movement worldwide. 
Teachers Without Borders

Midterm report: Tanzania's educational revolution needs investment | Global development... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...mdg2-education-tanzania

Tanzania Africa MDGs education EFA enrollment international_development tuition

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 01 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Enrolment at primary schools nationwide has leapt from 59% in 2000 to 95.4% today, putting the impoverished country well on course to achieve the second millennium development goal (MDG) of primary school education for all by 2015.
  • half of pupils will fail to qualify for secondary school, with 3,000 girls a year dropping out due to pregnancy.
  • The progress has come with a lesson in the law of unintended consequences. Enrolment has grown so fast in Tanzania that the school system is creaking with overcrowded classrooms, shortages of books, teachers and toilets, and reports of corporal punishment being used to keep order. In short, it seems that quality has been sacrificed for quantity.
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  • 32-year-old Grace Mayemba, who teaches English, Swahili and social studies. "It's so hard because there are so many," she says."They are noisy and can do anything. To make each child understand is very difficult but you have to try your best.
  • Salima Omari, 36, a science and maths teacher, faces classes of 76 pupils. "It's difficult to cope with when you want to give one-to-one support. There are only four toilets for the whole school and two for the teachers, and there is not much water. The MDG has been good for Tanzania overall, but it was rushed."
  • With significant donor support from Britain and others, the government has allocated more than 2tn shillings (£856,000) for education in 2010-11, about double its spending on health. But most schools still lack electricity or water – nine in 10 children cannot wash their hands after using the toilet. Education activists warn that Tanzania, where half the population is below 18, still has a long way to go to achieve the MDG in spirit.
  • "Students will be enrolled, but in a few months, because of no shoes or textbooks, they can easily drop out," says Anthony Mwakibinga, its acting co-ordinator. "Boys often drop out for child labour near diamond mines. Girls drop out because of early pregnancy or marriage in some areas."
  • In Tanzania, parents are still expected to contribute to teaching materials, uniforms and even classroom construction. Still, it's not enough. Mwakibinga says he has come across classes of 200 pupils where quality inevitably suffers. "What do you from expect from a classroom of 200 children, even if the teacher works like a donkey? What if the 200 children have no books?"
  • The national teacher-pupil ratio has climbed from 1:41 in 2000 to 1:51 today. New teacher training colleges, including some in the private sector, have opened in a bid to meet the demand, but some trainees are allegedly rushed through in three or four months. The profession also suffers from low public esteem.
  • One teacher, Florence Katabazi, 37, says: "I chose teaching and to this day people think I'm a failure. People say, 'I want my son to be a doctor or lawyer, not a teacher,' It's shameful to be a teacher. Everyone runs away from the profession. If they want to be an accountant, they just use teaching as a bridge. At the end of the day we've got 10,000 half-baked teachers and only 400 good ones."
  • Struggling to maintain classroom discipline, some of the country's 160,000 primary school teachers resort to corporal punishment. Noel Ihebuzor, Unicef's chief of basic education and life skills, says: "They see it as controlling children and don't feel they are doing anything wrong. They were brought up that way. We've had stories where parents take children to the head and say, 'He's stubborn, cane him for me.'"
  • "Another problem is the provision of decent training services to teachers. The ministry has tried to develop a management strategy this year but it has not been implemented because of scarce resources. It's good to have a target, but a target without resources is a problem."
  • the pass rate for the primary school leaving exam is just 49.4%.
  • One teacher has a class of 166, with some pupils forced to lie on the bare concrete floor during lessons. They keep up spirits in the dusty, tree-lined central courtyard by playing steel instruments on the bandstand. In headteacher Abdallah Mgomi's office, a typed sheet of paper on the wall reminds anyone who reads it: "Quality is never an accident."
Teachers Without Borders

An update on the use of e-readers in Africa | A World Bank Blog on ICT use in Education - 0 views

blogs.worldbank.org/...ereaders-update

africa world_bank education ict e-readers e-books literacy worldreader reading

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 23 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • One result is that they deliberately decided to complement the delivery of the devices with extensive engagement with local stakeholder groups, did a lot of capacity building with teachers and trainers, and tried to help align what they were doing with what was happening in the formal education system.
  • hat said, there are very real concerns in some quarters that e-book initiatives from the 'West', however well-intentioned, are potentially an important tool contributing to a subtle form of, for lack of a better term, cultural imperialism. Worldreader is apparently working on a platform for African authors and publishers to be able to distribute their works electronically, so that it will be easier for students to read books from local authors, consistent with the learning goals of local school systems.  While not downplaying the difficulties of getting large educational publishers to make their content available digitally for use by students in Africa, this desire to help promote digital marketplaces for African reading materials is perhaps the most ambitious aspect to the Worldreader initiative.
  • When they went back and asked, "what if content was digitized and made available at $1/book?", many people suddenly got very interested. 
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  • A number of research efforts of various sorts are underway trying to help provide some tentative answers to this important question, based on Worldreader pilots.  Most notable has been the iRead pilot in Ghana (here's an executive summary of the first independent evaluation commissioned by USAID [pdf]), which used a set of pre- and post- literacy tests to three groups
  • Worldreader is encouraged by the results it is seeing so far -- the biggest effects are being seen around grades 4-5, a result that many of the literacy experts attending the Worldreader presentation did not find surprising, for a variety of reasons -- but they are not yet seeing the types of 'blockbuster results' it is hoping.
  • Worldreader does appear serious and diligent in its approach, however, and so I look forward to receiving updates on the research output that I expect will emerge over time, which it plans to make available on part of its web site dedicated to "learnings". (Parenthetical note: Preliminary results from the World Bank's e-book pilot in Nigeria are expected later this year; background here, here, and here.)
  • The first challenge in this regard is (as always) money. Here Worldreader is now starting to confront a phenomenon known to many who have worked in the ICT4D area for awhile.  Finding funding support for small pilot projects, while not always easy, can be done. Large national educational technology projects are being funded in various countries around the world.  But what about the in-between level, where you do things at a much larger scale so that you can learn about how best to scale when you do things at a really big, national level?  Few funders seem able to provide support at this level.  As a result, one approach being explored is a franchising model, combining both donor and local partner funding, and a prototype 'Worldreader-in-a-Box' solution for local implementing groups is being rolled out and tested.
  • The first stage of Worldreader activities in introducing e-books and e-readers into a few small communities in Africa has convinced the organization and its backers that what it is doing is worth doing.  We no longer need to convince ourselves "if" we should be doing this, they say.  Now the question is, "how?" 
stephknox24

http://shss.nova.edu/pcs/journalsPDF/fall_2011.pdf - 0 views

shss.nova.edu/...fall_2011.pdf

peace_education

shared by stephknox24 on 07 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • stephknox24 on 07 Dec 11
     
    This article describes several of the more successful critical peace education methodologies and perspectives that I was able to bring to my classroom in a juvenile detention home.  For example, reflective writing and community analysis of nonviolent peace movements formed the core of my curriculum, as did critical analysis of the social processes of stereotyping and dehumanization.   As a result, numerous students grew in their ability to write, express empathy with others, identify bias and articulate critical analysis of their schools, among other political systems.  This analysis will contribute to the growing body of work on the practice of critical peace education.  
Teachers Without Borders

1.5 Million Displaced After Chile Quake - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...28chile.html

tsunami disaster earthquake Chile photographs statistics

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 01 Mar 10 - Cached
  • More than 1.5 million people have displaced by the quake, according to local news services that quoted the director of Chile's emergency management office. In Concepción, which appeared to be especially hard hit, the mayor said Sunday morning that 100 people were trapped under the rubble of a building that had collapsed, according to Reuters.
  • While this earthquake was far stronger than the 7.0-magnitude one that ravaged Haiti six weeks ago, the damage and death toll in Chile are likely to be far less extensive, in part because of strict building codes put in place after devastating earthquakes.
  • Chileans were only just beginning to grapple with the devastation before them, even as more than two dozen significant aftershocks struck the country.
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  • The quake Saturday, tied for the fifth largest in the world since 1900,
  • In Talca, 167 miles south of Santiago, almost every home in the center of the city was severely damaged, and on Saturday night, people slept on the streets in the balmy night air near fires built with wood from destroyed homes. All but two of the local hospital’s 13 wings were in ruins, said Claudio Martínez, a doctor at the hospital. “We’re only keeping the people in danger of dying,” he said. Dr. Martínez said the hospital staff had tried to take some people to Santiago for treatment in the morning, but the roads were blocked at the time.
  • Chile’s government had not yet requested assistance. All international relief groups were on standby, and the International Federation of Red Crosses and Red Crescents said the Chilean Red Cross indicated that it did not need external assistance at this point.
  • Cellphone and Internet service was sporadic throughout the country, considered one of the most wired in Latin America, complicating rescue efforts.
  • The earthquake struck at 3:34 a.m. in central Chile, centered roughly 200 miles southwest of Santiago at a depth of 22 miles, the United States Geological Survey reported.
  • The Geological Survey said that another earthquake on Saturday, a 6.3-magnitude quake in northern Argentina, was unrelated. In Salta, Argentina, an 8-year-old boy was killed and two of his friends were injured when a wall collapsed, The Associated Press reported.
  • The most powerful earthquake ever recorded was also in Chile: a 9.5-magnitude quake struck in the spring of 1960 that struck near Concepción and set off a series of deadly tsunamis that killed people as far away as Hawaii and Japan.
  • But that earthquake, which killed nearly 2,000 people and left more than two million homeless at the time, prepared officials and residents in the region for future devastating effects. Shortly after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck in Valparaíso in 1985, the country established strict building codes, according to Andre Filiatrault, the director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research at the University at Buffalo.
Teachers Without Borders

BBC News - Chile's long experience of quakes - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8540522.stm

earthquake Chile map statistics

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 01 Mar 10 - Cached
  • It is not possible to predict the time and magnitude of an earthquake, but certain places on the Earth know they are always at risk from big tremors. Chile is one of those places.It lies on the "Ring of Fire", the line of frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions that circles virtually the entire Pacific rim. The magnitude 8.8 event that struck the country at 0634GMT on Saturday occurred at the boundary between the Nazca and South American tectonic plates, just off shore and at a depth of about 35km (20 miles).
  • The Nazca plate, which makes up the Pacific Ocean floor in this region, is being pulled down and under the South American coast. It makes the region one of the most seismically active on the globe. Since 1973, there have been 13 events of magnitude 7.0 or greater.
  • French and Chilean seismologists had recently completed a study looking at the way the land was moving in response to the strain building up as a result of the tectonic collision. Their analysis suggested the area was ripe for a big quake. "This earthquake fills in an identified seismic gap," Dr Roger Musson, who is the British Geological Survey's Head of Seismic Hazard, told BBC News.
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  • "The last major earthquake that occurred in this area was in 1835. This was a famous earthquake observed by Charles Darwin during his voyage on the Beagle. This is a place where the stress has been gathering for 170 years, and finally it's gone in another earthquake that's repeated this famous historical quake." As is nearly always the case, the region was hit by a series of aftershocks. In the two and a half hours following the 90-second 8.8 event, the US Geological Survey reported 11 aftershocks, of which five measured 6.0 or above.
  • Saturday's quake was almost 1,000 times more powerful than the one to hit Port-au-Prince in Haiti. But size is not in itself an indicator of the likely number of deaths. One major factor which will limit the number of deaths in Chile will be its greater level of preparedness. Both the Chilean authorities and the Chilean people are generally well versed in how to cope in such an emergency.
  • The emergency response system is organised at national, regional and local level. "Chile is a seismic country. So, we must be prepared!" is the message from Onemi.
Teachers Without Borders

HaitiAnalysis.com Haiti's Earthquake Victims in Great Peril - 0 views

haitianalysis.com/...thquake-victims-in-great-peril

Haiti reconstruction relief aid Canada earthquake

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 20 Mar 10 - Cached
  • According to a February study by the Inter-American Development Bank, the cost of physical damage from Haiti’s earthquake ranges from $8 billion to $13 billion. It says, “there are few events of such ferocity as the Haiti 2010 earthquake.”
  • The study looks at natural disasters over the past 40 years and concludes that the death toll, per capita, of Haiti’s earthquake is four times, or more, higher than any other disaster in this time period.
  • The Partners In Health agency estimates some 1.3 million people were left without shelter by the earthquake. The majority of those people still do not have adequate emergency shelter nor access to potable water, food and medical attention.
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  • According to US AID, there are approximately 600,000 displaced people living in 416 makeshift camps in Port-au-Prince. Sanitation conditions in the camps remain a grave concern. With heavy seasonal rains fast approaching, the population is extremely vulnerable to exposure and water-born disease.
  • Two leading directors of Doctors Without Borders have called the relief effort to date "broadly insufficient." In a March 5 interview, they say that, “The lack of shelter and the hygiene conditions represent a danger not only in terms of public health, but they are also an intolerable breach of the human dignity of all these people.”
  • Conditions are also critical outside the earthquake zone. Cap Haitien, Haiti’s second largest city located 120 km north of Port au Prince, has received an estimated influx of 50,000 refugees. Its mayor, Michel St. Croix, recently told the Miami Herald, “We need housing, sanitation, security -- we need everything.'' He said the city has received next to no assistance from the United Nations nor the International Red Cross.
  • In an interview with Associated Press on March 5, Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive repeated his government’s growing concern with the international aid effort. "Too many people are raising money without any controls, and don't explain what they're doing with it."
  • Farmer warned against the “trauma vultures” descending on Haiti. He asked why so many years of aid and charitable funds going to Haiti has left the country poorer than ever.
  • Canada was one of the few large countries in the world that did not send civilian emergency rescue teams to Haiti. Its official aid mission arrived one week after the earthquake in the form of two warships and 2,000 military personnel. They pitched into the relief effort and earned praise for their work. But most of the assistance brought by the military, including its field hospital in Léogâne and its emergency health center in Jacmel, have now been withdrawn.
  • “The Canadian military is not a relief agency. It helped out with short-term needs. Aid and reconstruction is a long-term process. Who is going to pick up where the military’s work left off?”
  • Prior to the earthquake, Cuba had some 350 health professionals volunteering in Haiti. That number, including graduates and students from the Latin American Medical School (ELAM) in Cuba, has expanded considerably. Since 2005, 550 Haitian doctors have graduated from ELAM. The school received its first Haitian students in 1999. Currently, there are 570 students from Haiti attending the school.
  • Timely and informative articles and videos are also posted to the website of the Canada Haiti Action Network (http://canadahaitiaction.ca/) and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (http://ijdh.org/).
Teachers Without Borders

Save the Children releases The Future is Now report - 1 views

www.savethechildren.net/...2010-05-11.html

conflict Education Under Attack children school report Save the Children

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 01 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Children and school buildings are increasingly becoming targets in conflicts across the world, warns Save the Children as one of the key findings of a report published today.
  • The organisation finds that the risks of violence to schoolchildren in conflict-blighted areas are on the rise as schools are increasingly used as symbolic, easy targets by armed groups. These risks to children will continue to grow unless the international community takes urgent action to protect them from attack.
  • The report - The Future is Now - points out that civilians now make up more than 90% of casualties in the world's conflicts and about half of those are children. It warns that education is under attack by armed militias, criminal groups and even governments through the bombing of schools and is threatened by military interference in humanitarian work - all of which put children's lives in danger.
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  • Among the most dangerous countries is Afghanistan where between 2006 and 2009 there were 2,450 attacks on schools - in recent weeks, 50 schoolgirls in northern Afghanistan were reportedly left unconscious and sick after poison gas attacks by the Taliban. In the war-torn Helmand and Badghis provinces 80% children are out of school.
  • In Liberia 73%of primary-aged children are out of school. • In Somalia, 81% of school age children have no access to education.
  • They can and must be protected - in Nepal, where schools were being targeted by armed groups, Save the Children's introduction of schools as ‘Zones of Peace' directly led to a rise in attendance.
  • "Children in conflict zones should not have to forgo an education. Their schooling is crucial not only for their personal health and development but for the future peace of their communities - with every additional year of formal schooling, a boy's risk of becoming involved with conflict falls by 20%.
stephknox24

Woolman - Sierra Friends Center | Educational Community for Peace, Justice & Sustainabi... - 0 views

woolman.org

peace_education

shared by stephknox24 on 11 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • stephknox24 on 11 Feb 11
     
    Woolman is a nonprofit educational community dedicated to the principles of peace, justice and sustainability. Originally founded in 1963 as a Quaker high school, today Woolman offers educational programs for teens, retreats for adults, and summer camps for children and families. The name was inspired by John Woolman, an 18th century Quaker human rights activist, who aspired to live his life in complete integrity with his principles. Located on 230 acres in the Sierra Nevada Foothills within walking distance of the Yuba river, the Woolman campus is an experiment in sustainable community living. Most of our produce is grown here in our organic garden, much of our energy is from solar, wood, and other renewable resources, and the ideas of Permaculture and conservation are infused in the community culture. As a Quaker community we welcome people of all backgrounds, and do not require or push any religious beliefs. While many of our staff and participants are not Quaker, the Quaker ideals of inquiry-based education, consensus decision making, peace, equality and integrity are fundamental to our shared endeavor. O
Teachers Without Borders

BBC News - Should Creole replace French in Haiti's schools? - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-latin-america-14534703

Haiti Creole language bilingualism education schools curriculum French

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 02 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • "The percentage of people who speak French fluently is about 5%, and 100% speak Creole," says Chris Low. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote It's like a toddler who is forced to start walking with a blindfold” End Quote Michel DeGraff Associate Professor of Linguistics at MIT "So it's really apartheid through language."
  • He argues that French should be taught in Haiti as a second-language - after children have learnt basic literacy skills in Creole. "Learning to first read and write in a foreign language is somewhat like a toddler who is forced to start walking with a blindfold, and the blindfold is never taken off," he told the BBC World Service.
  • No matter which indicators you pick, Haiti has an appalling record on education. One recent report rated it as the third worst place in the world, after Somalia and Eritrea, to go to school. Continue reading the main story A brief history of Haitian Creole It emerged towards the end of the 18th Century as slaves from Africa began mixing African languages with French Lots of the vocabulary comes from French, but the grammar is quite different Spelling was standardised in 1979 A law called the Bernard Reform was introduced in the early 1980s, designed to boost Creole in schools The 1987 constitution states that French and Creole are both official languages in Haiti It's estimated that about one-third of children never enrol at primary school, and only about one in 10 complete secondary school.
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  • "Whether we want it or not, we are influenced by French because of the history of colonialism - this is not something we can get rid of quickly," he told the BBC World Service. "I don't think education should be only in Creole - Creole is not a scientific language."
  • The belief is widely held in Haiti that Creole is somehow a primitive, inferior language - possibly because of its origins in the days of slavery. The earthquake in 2010 destroyed about 80% of schools But linguists are at pains to counter this perception. Creole is "fully expressive", as well as being rich in imagery and wisdom says Prof DeGraff.
  • Teachers Without Borders on 02 Sep 11
     
    Creole is the mother tongue in Haiti, but children do most of their schooling in French. Two hundred years after Haiti became the world's first black-led republic, is the use of French holding the nation back?
Teachers Without Borders

As Southern Sudan looks to nationhood, education is pivotal | Back on Track - 0 views

www.educationandtransition.org/...ationhood-education-is-pivotal

sudan education girls' girls' education schools podcast

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 08 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • At the end of this week, Southern Sudan will become an independent nation. Citizens of the newest country in the world, the people of Southern Sudan face immense challenges and immediate threats.
  • They also stand before a unique opportunity to build a country that is free of war, respectful of human rights and prosperous. Education will play a pivotal role in the future stability and economic development of Southern Sudan.
  • more than 100,000 Sudanese civilians have been displaced due to recent clashes over the contested border district of Abyei. About half of them are children who are being exposed to hunger, violence and disease. They are often separated from their parents and out of school due to the conflict.
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  • Southern Sudan ranks second to last when it comes to primary school enrolment, with almost 1.3 million children of primary school age out of school.
  • For the girls, the situation is even worse. Only around 8 per cent of women in Southern Sudan are literate, giving it one of the lowest female literacy rates in the world.
  • “When we first began, there were hardly any girls in the classroom, maybe two or three,” she said. “But now, in a classroom of 60, [there] would be 27 to, sometimes, half” of the class composed of girl students.
  • “The teacher-parent associations are getting stronger,” she said. “We really need to create community awareness.”
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