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Winter 2012 Interaction available

Lisle Global Seed Fund has awarded to 4 new grants for 2011-2012. More information will be posted shortly.

 

2011 Annual Meeting

The 2011 Lisle 75th Annual Meeting was held Friday, September 16 - 18 at the Chamounix Mansion hostel in Philadelphia.  

Global Seed Grants for November 2010 - October 31, 2011

The Lisle Board announced three Global Seed Grants at the 2010 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, the Board awarded grants to:

• Empower the Children: In Our Global Village - Kolkata, India
  
• The Mountain Children's Foundation: Uttarakhand Workshop on the Juvinile Justice Act
  
• Nepal Charitable Foundation: Bigutar Library Project
  

 

New Global Seed Fund Grants Awarded

The grant committee reviewed five proposals for Global Seed Grant funding this year. This year, the Board's decision was to fund three of the proposals as submitted. In our seventh year of the grant program, the three proposals selected for funding are great examples of how the work of Lisle continues in the new era of Seed Fund Grants. These projects are described below.

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Empower the Children

This project, entitled "In Our Global Village " Kolkata, India; ETC will give the children in Kolkata, working with volunteers from abroad, the opportunity to document their lives and share their world with students in Scotland. During the past year, ETC has developed a cultural exchange program between seven of its Kolkata schools and seven schools in Perth/Kinross, Scotland. The goal of this partnership is to raise the consciousness of the students in Scotland and help them understand the living conditions of children in another part of the world and to provide the slum-dwelling and disabled children in India, whose lives are generally outside of mainstream society, an opportunity to increase their knowledge about the world around them and create a bond with the Scottish children.

Over a three month period in the coming year, about 95 students in ETC's educational programs will be paired up with volunteers from abroad to create picture books documenting their worlds and lives. The books will include photos, drawings, and text, enabling the Kolkata students to directly "speak" to their Scottish friends about their everyday lives. Their goals are to assist the students to document their community and learn as much as possible about the students' lives.






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The Mountain Children's Foundation

The Mountain Children's Foundation (MCF) was one of the first recipients of a Lisle grant and continues to credit Lisle with giving it the boost that enabled it to prove the power of its child-focused model.

Based in the mountain state of Uttarakhand in Northern India, the MCF empowers young people by providing a forum from which they can speak and be heard, harness the power of collective action, access resources, and bring about positive change in their communities. The current project, entitled Uttarakhand Workshop on the Juvinile Justice Act, will support an educational workshop for children from the remote mountain villages of the Indian state of Uttarakhand, located in the Himalayan foothills in North India. The 3-day workshop will take place in Dehradun, the state capital of Uttarakhand, with 42 children from all over the state participating. The workshop is intended to help children discuss the important problems and issues in their lives vis-a-vis peace and security. It will also help them build leadership skills, learn more about the world, and acquire new ways of thinking and new tools to address the problems facing children in conflict with law or those that are in need of care and protection. The workshop will focus on the state's Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act and how it can help protect children from exploitation and abuse.

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Nepal Charitable Foundation

The Nepal Charitable Foundation is a federally recognized 501(c)(3) corporation primarily dedicated to investing in the future of Nepal through the promotion of education. Their main goal is the identification and support of promising poor, rural students. One area of focus is a small, remote village called Bigutar. It is a peasant village of about 400 persons situated in the mountains of East Nepal.

This project, entitled the Bigutar School Book Project, is to provide books for a library at the school. With a few exceptions, the only books available are small, paperback-like versions of perhaps fifty or so pages issued by the government. Cross-cultural tensions have a very long and bitter history which until two years ago were being played out militarily. Nepal consists of a confederation of many different caste/tribal/ethnic groups and in the Bigutar area, five completely separate cultural/languages groups exist. The general feeling has been that it would be seen as preposterous (especially by the smarter students and some teachers) that outsiders could reconcile their ethnic differences. Thus, the establishment of a library is an attempt at a practical (neutral) and more fundamental way of approaching this problem  

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Winter Interaction is available

The Winter 2012 Interaction can be read by clicking [here]. This issue has wonderful memories of the 75th anniversary celebration in Philadelphia as well as much information about Lislers of many ages. This issue is the swan song for our editor, Dianne Brause and composer Elise Kimmons. We will miss their work terribly. The board wishes them all the best in the future, and look forward to their continuing contributions to Lisle.

If you are not on the mailing list and would like to receive a copy please call the Lisle office at 512-259-4404, or email office@lisleinternational.org.

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