Teachers Without Borders

School brings hope“I like to draw, sing and play with my friends. I am so happy today,” said Yolanda, who lost both her home and her old school in the quake. Yolanda’s teacher, Onickel Paul, told me that the opening of the tent school had helped bring children and parents hope that things would get better in Haiti.

Despite only a handful of schools being open in the Haitian capital and outlying areas, everyone is working to support the Ministry of Education in its efforts to resume classes on 31 March. To achieve this goal, tents will be set up for immediate use as classrooms, and teachers will be identified and trained. An accelerated learning programme will be also be put in place to ensure that students do not fall behind.

Approaches to human rights-based schooling In this section, you will find three manuals outlining very different approaches to the implementation of human rights schooling - a more theoretical UNESCO guide, a more legalistic and declarationist approach by ActionAid, and a more pragmatic, activist-oriented handbook by Katarina Tomaševski. By no means do these approaches have to be differentiated - it is possible to formulate a unique approach based upon a number of perspectives. Only you know what approach is right for your institution.

Participants get enthused by these problem-solving simulation experiences based on real life. Students "step into the shoes" of others, to face the decisions they face and appreciate how different life can be from their own.

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Material for training and education in human rights for download

The New York City schools has taken this directive seriously and to heart by creating its School for Human Rights, a combined middle and high school academy that is built around the concept of human rights.

Located in Brooklyn, the School for Human Rights is rare, even for the New York City schools. Its core values are dignity, respect and responsibility, which is the driving force behind its curriculum, how the students learn and the teachers teach, how they treat one another, and the types of adults the New York City schools hope the students become. Human rights are demonstrated to students by how the school meets the educational needs of each and every student; in its practices, such as discipline with dignity; examples given in class, questions raised by teachers, the active discussions, critical thinking and reflection that are part of the project-based coursework; and even in the human rights enriching field trips.

The School of Human Rights is the only New York City schools that integrates an academic and social skills-based curriculum. It even immerses human rights into its extracurricular activities, such as film festivals and workshops with human rights defenders.

My sister and I now go to sleep behind a tree. I don’t have dreams. We have both been sick. My sister makes tea for me but I have to ask people for food or some money to buy food. Some people tell me a bad word that I can’t repeat. Some people tell me to go away before they kick my butt. I tell them: “You don’t know what you’re saying.” I just walk away and go somewhere to cry.

What do I want for the future? I would like somewhere to sleep – and for God to bless me. I need money to buy a tent and to eat with my sister. My clothes and phone are still in my house, so I have no clothes to wear. I have no tennis shoes.

My school is still there but I can’t go because I have no money to go to school. The school asks me for money but I don’t have a job or any money. I ask people if they have jobs, but they swear at me and tell me there are no jobs here because there are too many people. We keep seeing the planes. What they bring, I don’t know, maybe food boxes, water and maybe a tent. I try to see if I can help with the unloading. I’m going to see if I can get a tent and put it up near the tree where I sleep. It should help me sleep better than I have been at least.

Ikotos, South Sudan-a scenic region that belies its tragic past. For the past two decades the area has been ravaged by conflict, disease and deprivation. Basic services are scarce with education facilities suffering from a desperate lack of trained teachers and teaching resources.

Education is vital to the recovery of a region. Education will enable Ikotos' youth to escape a life of poverty and lead prosperous lives.

UNICEF has launched an initiative to get children back to school but there is a significant and unaddressed gap in teacher training. Education was near nonexistent during the civil war and has been slow to recover. Schooling mostly takes place in temporary shacks or under trees with limited or no teaching resources. Only 67 out of 353 primary school teachers in the Ikotos region received any training at all. Not only are most of the teachers untrained but some of have not completed even primary school education. Few have access to basic teaching materials. Without sufficiently trained teachers, increasing the rate of school attendance will be ineffective. With 11,809 pupils in Ikotos needing education, this is a desperate situation and a severe block to Ikotos's recovery.

“My seven-year-old said he will only go to school if I sit beside him,” said Jean “Neil” Moretta,

Neil “Junior” and his mother, Kateline, were at her aunt’s house when the 12 January earthquake struck, so were unharmed when their apartment building collapsed.  But Neil “Junior” is still distraught about losing his home. Luckily, the grown-up Neil had had a house built in Port-au-Prince and already was in the process of moving his family there.  So he’s optimistic things will settle down for his son very soon.

The first days and weeks after the quake were not easy for Neil.  He swiftly relocated his wife and son to their new home.  He helped pay for emergency medical treatment for his wife’s first cousin, Danny, whose leg was crushed when her building collapsed, killing her 5-month-old baby and her aunt.  Neil stayed by her side as volunteer Cuban doctors amputated her leg the day after the earthquake.  The surgery was performed under a tent outside the city’s general hospital.  With no anaesthesia.

water crisis threatens Yemen’s long-term stability.

But environmental problems don’t always make for exciting news stories, and amongst the plethora of threats to Yemen’s stability, the water crisis is often lost in the background.

Water resources are being rapidly depleted in many countries around the world, including the western United States, and access to clean water is a common problem through out the developing world. But even in the context of worldwide fresh water depletion, Yemen’s crisis is staggering: Yemenis use about a fifth of the amount of water recommended by the World Health Organization for healthy and hygienic living; the capital, Sana’a, may be the first world capital to run out of its own water supplies; and thousand-meter wells have recently been drilled in the country’s highlands to get at so-called “fossil water.”

Nearly half of new teachers do not feel properly equipped to deal with violence in the classroom, a survey suggests.Figures released to BBC Breakfast suggest two-thirds of newly qualified teachers have received no clear guidance on restraining violent pupils.

Schools minister Vernon Coaker said the government backed the proportionate use of force. He said: "We know that we live in the real world, we know that sometimes teachers will be faced with difficult situations."

The union's Sharon Liburd said: "These violent confrontations can erupt very very quickly, they [teachers] need to be clear about what sort of steps they can take to try to stop the situation from escalating, if they have to physically intervene and how in fact they do that."

And yet, there's an additional heartache for Haiti in hearing this news. Why was it so much worse here? Chile's quake registered at 8.8, about 500 times more powerful than Haiti's. But the numbers of Haitian dead have already surpassed 220,000 – close to the horrendous toll of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Chile's dead, at last report, number some 700 – a tragic loss, but orders of magnitude fewer than Haiti's. What explains this deadly disparity?

Where Chile had strict building codes, Haiti suffered from haphazard construction. Poor, rural people had for years flooded into the capital, living in precariously built shantytowns. Lack of enforcement, corruption and weak governance all contributed to grossly magnify the proportions of the catastrophe. It's easy enough to see the exceptions here, which might have been the rule if earthquake-resistant building codes had been enforced: a few solid structures still tower above the rubble – scarred and cracked, to be sure, but standing all the same.

I worry that, as so many times in the past, Haiti will quickly fade from public consciousness, once the world's TV screens are no longer broadcasting terrifying pictures from Port-au-Prince. All the more important that those of us who are working hand in hand with the Haitian people maintain our commitment for the long term, not just with material support but with the determination to rebuild safely and prudently.