The Mountain Children’s Forum (MCF), supported by a grant from Lisle, and mentored by Sharada Nayak will hold an educational workshop for children in the remote mountain villages of the Indian state of Uttaranachal, located in the Himalayan foothills in North India. The six-day workshop will be held in the district of Pithoragarh, which borders Nepal and Tibet. 70 children from all over the state will be participating. During the workshop the children will stay in the homes of local villagers, giving them an opportunity to learn more about one another. In this mountainous terrain travel is difficult, and the young people rarely go far from their villages, let alone to another district.
Using music, games, art, field trips and other activities, the workshop is intended to help children discuss the important problems and issues in their lives, build leadership skills, learn more about the world around them and acquire new ways of thinking and new tools to address the problems in their communities. The topic of the workshop is education, particularly the high dropout rate of girls. However, this theme will be interlaced with discussions about the environment, leadership and citizenship, overcoming barriers between people, the rights (and responsibilities) of children and how they can help drive the forces of change in their own communities.
The MCF strives to include senior officials from the district and village governments in these meetings and discussions. That serves the dual purpose of making government seem less intimidating and more accessible to the children, while also carrying the children’s voices and concerns to the government officials. The outcomes of the workshop, including the children’s discussions, will be shared with local and state governments as well as with Lisle.The Mountain Children’s Forum (MCF) helps young people improve their lives by giving them a voice and a role in the development of their communities. The mountain communities where the participants will come from are remote, cut-off from resources and opportunities, and are made even more isolated by the difficult terrain that surrounds them: they have long been marginalized and forgotten. By tapping these community’s energy and idealism, the MCF endeavors to create a platform from which the young people of the mountains can discuss their problems and work together to find solutions, and act as the ambassadors of the mountains.
The MCF is a non-profit organization, registered under the Indian Societies Act . For more information about the MCF, please see: www.mymountains.org.The new chapter initiated the program, Teen as Coach, in August during a week-long program involving nearly 40 teens. Rose Ann Kennett and Vicky Martin (Bali ’98, Leader Training ’98, India ’99) were the co-directors of the Oregon chapter of Service for Peace. In addition to coaching and mentoring talents, Rose Ann was a social worker for 16 years with at-risk youth. Vicky, an elementary school counselor, has taught peacemaking skills in schools and summer peace camps in the U.S. and overseas for 15 years. She also created a successful high school to elementary school mentoring program.
The Teen as Coach program is a unique mix of leadership, mentoring, mediation and professional life coaching. The researched benefits of mentoring prove that teens who help each other and the younger children they serve have increased self-esteem and are more equipped to contribute to their communities and families. The message and goal: "Teenagers living with confidence and courage create lives of purpose, direction, and contribution." The program instills core leadership values through education and service to others. The summer service projects for 2004 were renovating an after–school teen center and mentoring/coaching elementary school students in a summer camp.This grant will help build up this innovative program. For the next eight months, Rose Ann and Vicky will meet with 10–15 of the teens who began their training this past summer. They will provide continued leadership training in communication, coaching, conflict resolution, and community building for two hours each month. Each teen will find a younger child or peer to "buddy" coach. This will provide a foundation of peacemaking, leadership and service skills for each teen.
In addition, the co-directors will assist the teens in fundraising and writing other grants to meet their ultimate goal of working on an overseas project next summer, which will involve teaching, coaching and mentoring children. The plan is to work with an existing children’s program in a country with historical and/or ongoing conflict between different racial, ethnic and/or cultural groups. In June, the co-directors will provide a two-day training to help prepare the teens to participate in this overseas project, which will take place in July and August, for 10–14 days. Supporting an organization like this really does feel great, doesn’t it?The refurbishing process included cleaning the original foundations, painting inside and outside walls, fixing some leaky roofs, painting desks and chairs, improving the plumbing system to allow for working toilets on campus, working on the grounds to plant grass and pull weeds, and cleaning up garbage and other debris. At each of the sites, the children worked alongside us and participated arts and crafts classes. Part of our team also painted murals at each of the schools. Local leaders informed the parents about the importance of education as a key to the development of their country and society. Community seminars on health, agriculture and sanitation also took place. The presenters were experts from the various government ministries. These were important educational experiences for the participants in addition to being very helpful to the community.
Daily educational content on leadership and community development was provided to the participants each morning by Service for Peace and local leaders. (I led three of these sessions). Guided reflections and journal writing plus a combination of team and general meetings were also a part of the program. A final community celebration at Los Corozos was attended by participants, community members and representatives from several partner organizations. Despite its standing as a developing third world country, the Dominican Republic is very close to reaching the United Nation's millennium goal of Universal Primary Education. Accordingly, the Service for Peace project was highly geared towards supporting that goal, and it was exciting to contribute to an international initiative. It was especially encouraging when several United Nations representatives interviewed Service for Peace and reported on our work of advancing the educational development of the country.Thank you again very much for the mini-grant. It really made a difference over the past two years in being able to provide training for some wonderful teens who are already providing leadership and other skills to make a difference in the world.
Volunteers will also meet with local community groups, including Community Councils, Artisans’ Committees and Youth Committees from both communities. Together, international and local participants will create a community action project in order to work together, learn from each other, and promote Shunku Llacta’s mission of developing sustainable and viable economic opportunities for the communities.
This project will outlast the duration of the trip, allowing the local communities and the volunteers’ home communities to benefit from cross-cultural exchange and cooperation after the trip is over. The trip will end with a community celebration bringing together both local communities and the volunteers for a night of traditions, music, Ecuadorian cooking and fun. To learn more about the project or to participate: email:shunkullacta@yahoo.com.You can also search for Shunku Llacta at www.shunkullacta.org for the full volunteer description. Abby Rosenheck is the granddaugher of Vede Rosenheck (Lisle ’39). Besides working with Shunku Llacta, Abby works as a garden educator in San Francisco public middle schools and is starting a non-profit to support urban school gardens, called Burbank Sprouts.
Second, support from 2005 volunteers has continued to expand the impact of the work started during the volunteers' stay in the communities. Volunteers gathered donations at home which allowed the communities to buy materials and add expansions to the work projects started during the trip. Santa Rosa has completed public sanitary facilities for their community, and Guayabillas has completed a water system, finally providing a much-needed water source for all families, as well as public sanitary facilities at the community center. Volunteers have brought home their experiences, and shared with their home communities the transformation and cross-cultural experiences they enjoyed with Shunku Llacta. One volunteer from Denmark sent us these reflections:
I planned a presentation to the Scouts, ages 10-15 years old, and my biggest problem was too short time and too much I wanted to show. I showed them pictures and they had Melcocha, Panella and peanuts to taste. We listened to Cumbia, smelled leaves from Jim and Mimi's garden and we played with the small marbles. We sang "Los Pollitos" in Spanish, looked at beautiful handicrafts from the women's groups and to end we had dinner; quinua soup, bananas, patacones (mashed plantain), coca tea and sugar water.To do all of that we had only two hours, which were all too short. But I think they had a good time and learned more of Ecuador, communities and life there. And I had a great time doing that and telling and remembering it all again :-)
Sometimes I read my postcard to remember what I promised myself, and now I did some of it. I will still try to sell the handicrafts.In Denmark it is windy and rainy now, but the good thing is - it is very soon Christmas :-). I love Christmas time. I want to travel some more in the spring. I never know where I'll end up.
Back to TopMulti-cultural first-third grade classes from two schools will participate in a local habitat improvement project which will stress team building and cooperation across cultures, and end with a tour of a Sandhill Cranes Reserve. Students' global awareness will be strengthened by learning of the various countries (USA, Canada, Cuba. Russia) that Sandhill Cranes live in, and other regions of the world that are home to other species of cranes.. Students will also see and learn about the diversity of other wildlife at the Reserve. A second field trip for each class will visit cultural sites in Sacramento reflecting the three dominant ethnic groups of the classes (eg African American, Chinese American and Mexican American). Mask-making sessions in classrooms will be led by a local Mexican American artist and continued by the school teachers. Children will make masks to represent both local animals and the many countries reflected by their heritages and will present their masks to their peers in school parades. Language arts (through free writing and haiku poetry) will also be incorporated.
The Project's purpose is to build community by empowering students to develop values of respecting and protecting nature and one another by increasing their natural and cultural awareness. By juxtaposing activities that focus on natural with activities that focus on different cultures, and by interweaving the two in the theater program, the project aims to increase students' awareness of the value of both natural and cultural diversity within their own communities.Classes will be targeted in low income areas of south Sacramento with a high mix of cultural diversity inclusive of African Americans. These communities have among the highest degree of social and cultural friction in the region. In addition, children residing in these communities have very limited awareness of and opportunities to visit local natural areas, despite their relative proximity to these areas. Schools with Healthy Start programs (wide array of social service programs in areas of high need) will be given top priority. One hundred eighty students at each of two schools will attend the theater program and have mask making instruction. Three hundred twenty students from each school will participate in the field project, followed by a slide show presentation of the field trip and discussion on diversity.
Lisle funding will help to catalyze additional activities beyond this 7-month project. For example, these same schools might receive other CCT theater programs on a fee basis. The African theater program created through this project can also be brought to other schools and community groups in the future. The field trip component can also continue for other schools and community youth groups if additional funding is secured for transportation.CCT is open to suggestions for other schools that could get involved, prospective public performance venues and people that could assist with the field trips, classroom instruction (either a currently planned activity or a new culturally focused activity) or the theater performance.
In Northern Uganda war has waged for the last 18 years. It led to the killing and maiming of thousands of civilians, the massive displacement of entire district populations into IDP (Internally displaced people) camps (approx. 2 million) which are under deplorable living conditions; it included the abduction of over 25,000 children, rape, sexual slavery, forced marriages, physical disfigurement, spread of HIV/AIDS, destruction and erosion of moral and social values of the community and severe poverty. Thousands of women and girls are affected by severe war traumatisation through sexualised violence.
Medica Mondiale is in the process of developing a training programme for Ugandan health workers and other professionals working with traumatised women and girls. With the support of Lisle mini-grant and hereby mentored by Annerose Heck, medica mondiale will conduct a workshop and additional meetings in Lira, Northern Uganda with 40 women living and working in Northern Uganda. Participants will have diverse backgrounds concerning age, social status, profession, religion, ethnicity, sex/gender, population group and district.The content and goal of the workshop is an exchange of existing concepts and ideas for trauma healing both in the medica mondiale project countries (like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Kosova) and in the various districts of Northern Uganda. Through this process of mutual learning the danger of just importing western concepts of healing and treatment will be diminished. The workshop and meetings offer the possibility to enhance Medica Mondiale's knowledge about the needs and coping strategies of survivors of war violence in Northern Uganda, about the working circumstances of local staff and about suitable cooperation partners and trainers for the planned Medica Mondiale training programme.
The participants of the workshop have the chance to make a crucial contribution to the concept of the training programme which implies that their needs can be met in a more appropriate way in future trainings. They learn about models of "best practice" for the support of survivors of war related violence in other conflict regions of the world and can discuss what might be useful and helpful within their work context and their own specific cultural background. Their knowledge about violence against women and girls and its specific consequences in different countries will be increased. Additionally, workshop participants from diverse backgrounds, districts and population groups will have the opportunity to exchange their experiences of war related violence and specific coping strategies which have been developed in their communities.For more information on the work of Medica Mondiale e.V., please see: www.medicamondiale.org.
Our delegation will be made up of lead organizers from organizations of welfare recipients, homeless people, public housing tenants, uninsured people and the unemployed from around the US, most of whom have never traveled internationally (if at all). These organizers have much to share and to learn with and from other delegates at the WSF from around the world, as well as from communities in Caracas that are confronting the same problems of unemployment, poverty, homelessness and struggles for health care and education.
Delegates will attend the (polycentric) World Social Forum to be held in January 2006 in Caracas, Venezuela. In addition to attending the World Social Forum, delegates will stay in a poor neighborhood in Caracas and will visit communities in Caracas and possibly beyond. Following the trip, delegates will hold educational sessions in their communities (which are all poor US communities around the country) and organizations to share the experience with fellow grassroots organizers, from among the poor, unemployed and homeless in different parts of the US.We are very grateful to the Lisle Fellowship for helping to make this important project possible. For more information about the PPEHRC and/or this delegation, please contact jenkwru@yahoo.com or see www.economichumanrights.org
.For a report on the World Social Forum (WSF) held in Caracas, Venezuela got to humanrightsvenesuela2005report.doc
In Ketterschwang '57 Hans Spiegel introduced Dotty Hess (Guyot) to Lisle and to life in small town Bavaria. In November 2005 at a Yale conference, Hans and Ellie Spiegel and Dotty introduced the seven lively Burmese students to Lisle, to students from elsewhere in Southeast Asia, to American students studying that region, and to the experts who gave the major papers. The papers delivered dealt with economic, political, and social developments in contemporary Southeast Asia. A powerful keynote address was given by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a Yale graduate from Indonesia who is now UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development. The papers are available on the Yale Southeast Asia Council website at www.yale.seas.
Our students even asked questions of the panelists. They discovered a wide array of cultural and social similarities between Burma and other Southeast Asia countries. Prior to the conference they had chosen a country for focus, selecting between the two where Yale has special strength, Indonesia and Vietnam. They all chose Vietnam, greatly attracted by Darlene Damm, a Stanford graduate who served as a volunteer in Vietnam and then came to Burma to guide our students into weekly service and internships. How working in Washington for Asia Society she attended the conference to help the Burmese students to reflect on their lives in their first months in America and on the conference as it was occurring.Particularly valuable at the conference, as at Lisle deputations, were the informal exchanges that took place among students. A small team of Yale undergraduates and graduate students organized the conference so as to maximize the interchange between the Burmese students and other conference participants. They also invited students from Wesleyan, which has an impressive number of Southeast Asians thanks to the Freeman Foundation. The Burmese students shared rooms in the residence halls with Yale students attending the conference. For Burmese students to meet fellow Southeast Asians their own age is a special privilege since Burma has experienced forty-four years of isolation. The cultural evening on Friday was a high point as our students were on-stage clapping rhythmically as a mixed Burmese and American group from Yale performed a Burmese folk dance celebrating rice planting. At both of the dinners for the invited speakers, our students were invited to participate and thus able to talk informally with researchers and activists who have a passion for Southeast Asia.
The substantive goal for the project is that Burmese students will begin their life-long, multi-layered connections to people of their own geographic region and to Americans who care about their region. The process goal is that they begin early in their college careers to integrate their learning from personal interactions with academic learning. After the conference, at the end of the semester, they completed reflective papers on how what they learned at the conference connects to their understanding of their own country. These diverse papers are based on their interactions, impressions, and personal understandings that stem from meeting at the conference plus email exchanges. They each have taken a first step to synthesize their experiential learning with their ongoing academic learning. They have all had wonder in their eyes as they discovered fundamental cultural similarities with other societies of Southeast Asia thanks to long night conversations with their student hosts.These students from Burma have become close friends through fourteen months of liberal arts immersion in Rangoon in the Pre-Collegiate Program which Jim and Dotty Guyot helped create. To date eighteen students have won scholarships to college in three countries and all aim to return to Burma to begin their careers. The seven with an asterisk attended the conference because they live relatively close to New Haven and could leave their academic responsibilities for a long weekend.
The Diplomatic School, Yangon, which is the only Burmese-run independent school, offers the Pre-Collegiate Program, a course in liberal arts and community service open to exceptionally promising high school graduates. The Myanmar Foundation for Analytic Education, a U.S. non-profit operating foundation, supports the program while a distinguished Academic Advisory Council advises the foundation. The core faculty of the Pre-Collegiate Program is led by Dr. Khin Maung Win, emeritus professor of philosophy at Yangon University and a former Minister of Education. Assisting the Program are his friends, Drs. James and Dorothy Guyot, whom he met more than forty-five years ago when all were graduate students at Yale. They have served on the faculties of UCLA, Columbia, Baruch-CUNY, and St. John's College, Annapolis. Visiting teachers have come from Berkeley and Stanford, while each year graduate students from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies or Princeton have worked ten weeks to open service and internship opportunities for the students. Professors and all sorts of international travelers drop by to give a talk or a mini-workshop.The courses are Comparative Literature and Philosophy, Modern World History, Comparative Life Cycles, and Environmental Biology. As an integral part of all courses, students discuss, write papers and take field trips -- reflecting on what they know, what they want to learn, and what they have learned. Touchstones Discussions are an essential means to learn to discuss cooperatively. Described at www.touchstones.org , they encourage students to reason together. The whole integrated program develops a community of learners who surmount the local tradition of rote memorization as they learn to think in new ways.
Next summer, Shunku Llacta volunteers will work closely with an artisans ’leadership group in each community. Members of the artisans' groups will host volunteers in their homes, as part of a community tourism program they are developing. Volunteers will help with projects in each community, like working on construction of the community center, teaching children in local elementary schools, helping with sustainable forest management work, and leading workshops to share their expertise. Last year, volunteers taught about knitting, children's health in the home, and Brazilian dance. Volunteers will enjoy homestays with local families and will explore the beautiful and dramatic natural surroundings, including pristine rain forest, diverse native flora and fauna, waterfalls and swimming holes. International and local participants will experience cross-cultural exchange, will learn new skills, and will grow personally in many ways. A community resident from Guayabillas told us after last year's trip, ’I felt proud because the little bit that I knew I was able to share with the whole group. This experience helps me to remember that the same way the volunteers helped us, we also can help others.’
Together, the volunteers and community members will build on the successes of last summer's project, to further develop the artisans groups' international network and business skills. The artisans groups work to market local handicrafts and community tourism opportunities, and to promote Shunku Llacta’s mission of developing sustainable and viable economic opportunities for the communities of Santa Rosa and Guayabillas. The trip will end with a community celebration bringing together both local communities and the volunteers for a night of traditions, music, Ecuadorian cooking and fun. If you would like to join us this year, please visit our website atwww.shunkullacta.org, or email:shunkullacta@yahoo.com.This broad worldview has inspired us to carry out several humanitarian activities since its inception in 1959. The track record of the activities undertaken so far, by the SK underlines its overall worldview. SK aims at bringing about total transformation in the lives of less fortunate brotheren of our society through various peaceful means. Service to the humanity is its motto in spirit and action. Besides, running three formal primary and secondary schools for the tribal children, SK has undertaken various developmental projects in 200 villages with participatory approach. Its activities include watershed development, water conservation, women empowerment, low cost housing, provision of sustainable livelihood through various programmes including handicraft. One hundred thousand marginalized rural poor belonging to 10000 families have been directly benefited by several projects undertaken by SK.
SK has always been at the disposal of the natural disaster affected people. During past unprecedented floods and cyclone, draught and earthquake the SK had rushed to the rescue and relief operations with a team of doctors and volunteers with medicines and relief material. SK has also established a core group of trained volunteers who provide their selfless services during natural disasters. SK has constructed 312 houses, 2 Schools, one temple in 4 earthquake-affected villages in Kutch.For the last six years, SK's intervention in 42 tribal villages of Virampur area of Amirgadh Taluka in District Banaskantha located in North Gujarat, adjacent to Rajasthan, through various socio economics programmes has resulted into shaping out a sustainable model of development. These villages are still alienated from the mainstream of development. The tribal population living on small patches of their farm land of these villages along Arvalli mountains barely manages to make their two ends meet. Consequent droughts had made their lives more miserable. Basic needs such as education, healths are, by all standards, inadequate. Tribal habitat area is so invulnerable and difficult that it takes hours together to walk down to people's huts. They have no access to any other income generation source except agriculture and animal breeding which provide supplementary income. Development of this area is strangled to some extent due to social evil customs and addictions. Innumerable families in these villages are to unfortunate too have two times meals and roof to shelter their family members. The literacy rate among girls is less than 2%. This is 8th lowest ranking area in the country as far as girls' literacy is concerned.
In such a horrifying situation, SK has been striving to transform the face of this area by taking up several sustainable activities without any support from Govt. funding agencies. Construction of 65 check dams and deepening 6000 water wells of tribal farmers with the help of American Red Cross has provided additional water to farmers, which has substantially helped them in agriculture operation, which is the only source of their livelihood. Formation of 70 self help groups comprising 1000 illiterate tribal women is also a landmark work done so far.Lack of infrastructure and inaccessibility deprived 500 tribal children living in the remote hilly areas from schooling. Many brilliant children had to leave their studies half way and are forced to look after their animals. In the era of globalization, if proper education is not imparted to the children of these native people, tensions of all nature may occur resulting social imbalances as happened all some South American and African Countries. To avoid this awful situation. SK was instrumental in starting 10 informal schools for these 500 deprived tribal children in the deep inaccessible hilly regions.
There has been close bond between Lisle and SK. The perception of Lisle very much matches with the worldview of SK. Cultural intervention and initiatives could be moving spirit of strong base of peaceful and just society. Children are the best ambassadors for spreading and strengthening cultural values. Taking into consideration the rich cultural values. SK has selected four tribal villages where its informal schools are located for the development of a model of just society through cultural initiatives. SK intends to take up several activities in these four villages with the help of Lisle. Ms. Sharda Nayak, an old Lisler has been an inspiration for SK volunteers to take up the challenging task of transforming the tribal community where SK has been located. The activities under Lisle Mini-Grant Project include,Transformation cannot be achieved overnight and hence one has to try tirelessly. Bigger should be
the efforts if challenge is big. This is a short story about what crazy people have been doing.
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The Leadership Program educates and trains students in cross-cultural understanding, environmental awareness and social action, empowering students to take critical steps to eliminate racism and social inequalities and become environmental stewards both at home and abroad. The program provides opportunities for participants to build friendships across racial, ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds locally and internationally. The program trains participants to develop tolerance, respect and acceptance of those different from themselves. One way that students do this is by staying with Guatemalan families. The Leadership Program is targeted at high school youth aged 15-18. As of now, 40% of the participants are from low-income backgrounds are receiving scholarship support, and 37% are students of color.
Through culturally and environmentally focused class nights and involvement in local volunteer work teams, Global Visionaries strives to provide participants with a better understanding of regional environmental and social justice issues as well as build their own capabilities in community leadership, communication, outreach, acceptance, and self-esteem. A paramount focus of Global Visionaries' class curriculum and work team collaborations is making youth and local communities aware of their own "ecological footprint" and consumption habits.For more information on the work of Global Visionaries, please see: www.global-visionaries.org.
Project participants under the co-guidence of Lisle mentor Bill Kinney will acquire basic skills in an IT curriculum, knowledge of computer hardware assembly, basic MS Office applications, and internet usage. Students and teachers involved will establish a "pen-pal" type of communication with their counterparts prior to the program. American participants will prepare for the experience by assembling computers and researching Jamaica. In the process, classroom presentations, home-stays, and community outreach will help develop the relationships for the participants. Students will have the opportunity to train Jamaican teachers how to use the equipment.
Current and future middle school students will be in constant communication with the trainees at the Jamaican school through web page development and email conversations. They will be responsible for assessing the needs, engaging in necessary fundraising to get support for technology, helping implement improvements, and teaching new information in the following years to maintain the lab. The Jamaican Technology Exchange would impact student lives in many ways. They learn valuable lessons in leadership, respect, problem-solving, communication, positive self-esteem, and generosity, through this cross cultural exchange. By sharing technology skills with a middle school in a developing country, we empower a population to improve themselves and build stronger communities. In addition, the Jamaica Project encourages parents, families, and corporations (through in-kind labor and ongoing maintenance) to strengthen our commitment in helping others help themselves.The project has a website at www.tyeelovesjamaica.org . You can also contact the project leader James Burke at inibara@mac.com
