Expanding Lives is a fledgling not for profit based in Chicago, Illinois. Its founders recognize the immense value of educational travel in developing self-esteem, in personalizing global issues, and in acquiring skills to become community leaders. However, few international programs exist for young people from the world’s poorest countries, and those that do usually promote travel by American and European youth to developing countries. To bridge this gap, Expanding Lives partners with MICA, a women’s empowerment organization in Niger, West Africa, to provide educational travel opportunities for young women who can influence their country’s progress in areas of health, literacy, and human rights.
MICA (MicroCredit for Africa) helps to identify young women who are successful in school, socially responsible, and the first generation in their families to attend secondary school. For six weeks between school sessions, the young women (aged 16-21) stay with host families in the US and attend educational courses aimed at improving their lives and the lives of community members in Niger. Last year’s participants were especially receptive to courses in community health, AIDS education, and democracy. Participants attend cultural events and social activities as well as training with their American peers. MICA supports participants before and after their US stay, and Expanding Lives makes every effort to remain in contact with the young women to build on our relationship.Our proposal, mentored by Lisler Bill Kinney, will support the development of the host family and cultural liaison components of the program, especially in the first week retreat. The Cultural Liaison component uses cultural, educational, and social activities to foster lasting relationships between the American and Nigerien young people. Area high school and university students act as guides in classes and social events and develop personal connections. In consonance with Lisle’s goals, these two components are meant to “broaden global awareness and cultural understanding through integrating learning and experience.”
The Niger participants will live in pairs with two different host families for several weeks. Prior to their arrival, Expanding Lives will guide the host families through a cultural orientation to help them better understand the girls’ backgrounds, experiences, and expectations. EL will hold weekly social activities with the families and the larger Expanding Lives community to forge lasting friendships and promote mutual interests as much as possible.Expanding Lives welcomes the support of Lisle International and its members, especially those interested in developing curriculum and activities to promote understanding in the host homes and/or with the young people involved. In addition, we are earnestly trying to develop depth and breadth in our organization. We invite area Lislers to consider being part of our exciting journey this summer. The Expanding Lives website is at www.expandinglives.org
This project is a series of interrelated cultural and environmental awareness building activities with the Boys and Girls Clubs and an after-school program (START) serving highly culturally diverse inner-city youth of Sacramento. The project’s purpose is to build community by empowering students to develop and advance their values of respecting and protecting one another and nature by increasing their cultural and natural community awareness, attitudes and actions in their community.
This project will foster children’s appreciation of diverse cultures and ability to communicate and cooperate with one another across cultures through theater and other experiential and democratically-organized learning activities. Nature discovery activities will encourage them to extend that appreciation to all life around them. The end goals as well as the means of reaching them correspond with Lisle’s commitment to increasing appreciation of all cultures in a global community and respect for all life through cooperative educational processes.The project consists of 10 activities that build upon each other to serve 1,500 youth aged 6-12 years during 2009. To begin, each venue will receive one half hour performance of Crane Culture Theater from its repertoire which includes plays based on African, Chinese, Japanese, Jewish-Lithuanian, and Vietnamese stories. A discussion will follow to help youth understand the concept of culture through the use of examples of the values, relationships and customs depicted in the show, and their own lives. Differences in styles and manner of expression will be acknowledged and supported. Youth will also discuss the similarities of the culture of the show with their own cultures, and will be encouraged to find common ground. An interactive cultural bingo will be played and discussed. It introduces children to one another while they learn about cultural values and ways of one another, and realize how much their culture shares with other cultures.
Each child will later draw a scene of his/her own culture and write an essay, poem, song on “what I like about my culture.” Younger children’s format will involve writing a word(s) under a pre-printed sentence. All will share expressions with one another. They will have a chance to speak with their family prior to this activity and bring something in to share (eg garment, food, artifact, art, music, dance) that reflects their country of origin. During the third week, each child will draw a scene of another culture they like (self-selected) and write a passage on this same culture. Children will share their expressions. A week or so later, the group will be engaged in a discussion on the similarities and differences of these cultures.A naturalist-led field trip to the Cosumnes River Preserve will allow youth to see and learn about the bio-diversity of a natural community and compare that with cultural diversity of their own community. The culmination of the project will be a beautification project at the students’ sites. The garden (and/or tree/shrub planting) will include vegetables and flowers from around the world that reflect the cultures of the students at a particular site. The seedlings will include attractive native and non-invasive non-native plants. Students will democratically plan the project with their leaders, learning about the maintenance needs of the plants. They will then plant and maintain plants with proper care. Most of these students return to the program year after year, so the project will be maintained over the years, and benefit all the students attending the school. This action project will advance appreciation of the natural world, while fostering teamwork and accomplishment among children of different cultures.
A post-project discussion with children will be held in June to encourage them to get involved with their community over the summer. They may include social services, a creek clean-up, a neigh- borhood fair or festival, etc. Representatives from community groups will be invited, along with children’s parents, to come visit each site to acquaint children with their projects, services and/or events that occur over the summer and fall. This project will train these program’s youth group leaders who will learn strategies for building cultural awareness and appreciation.Lisle Mentor Sonja Brodt first became involved with CCT in 2005 as a project mentor; then, as a choreographer and lead dancer for CCT’s “Lord of the Cranes.” She continues on as mentor to help with project planning and evaluation. Lisle members are welcome to participate with the on-site activities and/or on field trips. They can contact Bruce Forman at (916) 536-0550 or at Beforman@yahoo.com Other assistance can include mailing in of seeds of vegetables, flowers or fruits with origins in other countries, and/or photos of these plants when mature, being harvested, marketed and/or prepared or eaten by other cultures.
Volunthai is a small non-profit operating in the Thai countryside. Since 2001 they have recruited, trained, and placed over 600 volunteer English teachers from North America and Europe in rural Thai high schools. The results of this project are twofold. First, Thai students get the opportunity to study with a native speaker of English and improve their chances of passing the entrance exam for college or university. Second, the foreign volunteer gets to become part of a traditional Thai community and experience their way of life, including Thai food, Buddhism, and language study. There are few projects in the region that do so much to promote intercultural understanding between Southeast Asia and the West.
Volunthai volunteers live with the school’s English teacher and her family, and one of the reasons for Volunthai’s success is that Thais are such welcoming hosts. That said, there are cultural differences that must be overcome on both sides. Volunthai will use its Lisle Global Seed Fund grant to host a conference for the host teachers from our thirty target schools and ten new schools. The goal of the conference will be to standardize the homestay experience for future volunteers, answer the hosts’ questions about foreign culture, and allow the teachers to meet each other and the Volunthai staff for the first time. By strengthening the homestay experience, Volunthai hopes to attract more volunteers and work with even more schools in the future. Since rural Thai schools tend to serve between 1000-2000 students, the impact of this project is up to 80,000 students per year.Volunthai’s connection to Lisle International is through Marty Tillman. Marty was Volunthai founder Michael Anderson’s career counselor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. If anyone else from Lisle is interested in helping Volunthai, please contact Michael through the Volunthai website: www.volunthai.com. The website also has a link to the volunteer blog, which is filled with photos and stories from recent volunteers. Volunthai welcomes volunteers of any age to their projects, and is also happy to set up direct scholarships for their most promising, yet impoverished, students.
Communal and social tensions have been a matter of serious concern for all peace-loving people. Recent terrorist attacks reflect the terrible state of civil society in the world and India in particular. The scenario that has emerged during last decade in Gujarat has badly affected social harmony. These extreme sentiments have not only polarized Gujarat society sharply, but also have developed a sense of suspicion among all religious groups. Distortions at a cultural level are painful and tragic, and they require early redress in order to bridge a wide gap created in the last decade.
The purpose of this project is to build up harmony among different religious groups through intercultural dialogue, with a focus on the tribal model of harmony where our centre is located. Tribal, Hindu and Muslim communities of the Virampur area, which have exhibited a sound model of communal harmony in the state of Gujarat, are to interact with leading groups of civil society (social activists, religious leaders, intellectuals and academicians, journalists, writers and artists). We expect to work with approximately 2000 people from all sides during the period November 2008 to October 2009.Hasmukh Patel received grant support from Lisle in 2006 for a project which focused mainly on the intercultural initiative of tribal society. The outcome of this project was encouraging and hence we decided to carry our vision further through a new project. Keeping precious tribal legacy of harmony at the centre, the expanded project is planning for several events such as:
The goals of this project are to build bridges between traditional performing arts and education, to use performing arts as tools of empowerment and teaching, and to bring the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi in respect for diversity and dignity of labour projects through spinning on Charkha. We also hope to make connections with other NGOs, educational institutions and artists -- locally, nationally, and internationally.
The project will conduct a series of workshops for teachers of rural schools in the use of traditional performing arts for enhancing communication is the classroom and as teaching tools and will bring in Gandhi’s ideals of basic education as empowering tool with respect for diversity and importance of cleanliness as focus. The funding will enable bringing groups of teachers of both urban and rural schools together in a series of workshops.With the increased impact of technology, the mass media brings to India’s rural villages new and “modern’ styles of communication and performing arts. TV and the cinema are re-inventing traditional dance forms and theatre presenting familiar mythology in “avant garde” themes. Rural people, children especially, are discarding their traditional expressions of arts forms by admiring and copying urban, and increasingly “western” idioms. This has an impact on their pride and self-esteem as they see themselves as old fashioned and out of date with the modern world. This has urged me, in my work for the past two decades to train and reinforce the rich traditional forms of self expression through the performing arts.
Mahatma Gandhi's basic idea of education through craft is the inspiration for this project. The spinning-wheel, as Gandhi introspects, emphasizes self-help, self-service, self-contentment, and austerity. “The seeds of national and social cohesion can be sown through the music of the spinning-wheel.” said the Mahatma. Performing arts, handicrafts, drawings and music should go hand in hand in order to draw the best out of the boys and girls and create in them real interest in their learning.V.R. Devika will coordinate the project, and Sharada Nayak will serve as Lisle mentor. The training will involve several schools’ teachers in one location followed by demonstration and practice in their schools. Five schools will be selected for this purpose. The project will impact a population of 600 teachers and about 100 students for each teacher and will take place between January 2009 and January 2010.
The project proposes using traditional performing arts and Gandhian ideals through spinning for broadening global awareness and increasing appreciation of cultures through the workshops for school teachers to enhance their communication skills, discover greater tolerance for diverse ideas, and gain greater respect for all life. Conflict resolution, community building, and increased knowledge of self are common outcomes of the workshops and therefore are a match with the goals of Lisle.This year, Lisle has stepped into the centre of urban poverty, with its partnership with Chintan. This partnership will help Muslim wastepicker women in Delhi to organize themselves to assert their rights and to procure cleaner, safer livelihoods. A new report which describes the wastepicker's situation and Chintan's response is available.
These days, India is discussed more for its prosperity than its poverty. Yet, almost 700 million people live under 2 dollars a day, a sum that means starvation in urban India. A majority of these people are in the informal workforce, which means they have no access to social security and are not organized. In other words, their work can be treated as illegal. Amongst the worst off are the thousands of informal sector waste-recyclers: waste pickers, waste buyers and waste reprocessors. They bear the brunt of a city's consumption and offer it critical recycling services. However, such persons are also harassed and humiliated by several others: the police, local municipal actors, even residents, who nurse a severe bias against them.
The nuts and bolts of Chintan's work is organizing wastepickers and small scrap dealers at the grassroots for their rights and to work as a cohesive group, help them to access safer livelihoods, ensure children phase out of this work and go to school and train themselves to understand the laws and advocating for better policies. Lisle's partnership with Chintan addresses the most vulnerable of these people, creating a model of replicable optimism despite widespread poverty.Delhi is the first time in most of these women's lives where they step out of home and encounter complete strangers, without the support of their husband or brothers. They become sitting ducks for government agencies, who ask for bribes to let them carry home scrap, or sit near a trash dump or even to avoid being booked for vagrancy. They often pay, in order to survive. Not only is this a loss of income, but also, a loss of empowerment.
The initiative is based on building up the women to reduce their vulnerability. Two central strategies have been identified, both based on the central theme of getting organized as a distinct group. One is learn to negotiate with the government and other agencies for their rights. The other is to build capacity to secure more formal work which not only pays more, but is also safer and cleaner. Clearly, neither of these can be done unless the women work as a group and jointly safeguard their interests in the long term.Chintan will begin with forming them into a group that learns hands on as the processes unfold. A trainer will teach them to work as a collective, while others will help them to identify avenues of work. This is likely to include service micro-franchises, which will enable the women to pick up waste from the generators' doorstep, while securing a service fees from each household. Not only does this reduce the informal nature of their work, but it will also help them increase income and improve their health. Other spin offs will be domestic: reduced vulnerability and collective action outside is expected to reflect at home, with greater decision making internally. The initiative is less than a year, but the processes will constantly develop, improve and branch out with this foundation. Lisle and Chintan will ensure that the tools to do this are in place.
Lisle's 2007 grant to the Mountain Children's Forum (MCF) will allow the MCF to expand its work with young people in rural mountain communities in a new and exciting way. This proposal was facilitated by Sharada Nayak and the Educational Resources Centre (ERC).
Through a series of nine workshops in different parts of the North Indian state of Uttarakhand, the MCF will expose young people in those communities to the concepts of collective action and local engagement. Each workshop will engage about 30 children, aged 12-18.
The MCF focuses on a broad range of issues, including education, health, agriculture, environment, and disaster preparedness. But its primary focus has always been on developing leadership, communication skills, and self confidence in children, breaking down traditional barriers of gender, caste, religion, etc., and helping young people find ways to improve their lives and their villages through direct action.Although community engagement has always been a central focus of the MCF's work and workshops have always been one of our most effective tools, we have never before had the opportunity to focus our resources in this way. These workshops will use the medium of games and group activities to tap the energy and excitement of young people and help focus it on improving their communities.
In rural mountain villages, where the needs are so great and the resources so few, the young people have shown themselves to be a dynamic force for change. Driven by the inherent revolutionary tendencies of youth, children are not as bound by tradition and so are willing to reconsider prevailing beliefs-such as the idea that boys are better than girls-and shake off the debilitating apathy that makes people think they are helpless to improve their circumstances.Yet this resource usually remains untapped because, before the children can become engaged in improving their communities, they must first learn to believe in themselves and understand the importance of respecting and working with others. That is the purpose of these workshops.
We have also discovered that one of the most powerful motivators for the children is having people listen to their ideas and show an interest in what they are trying to do. That is what makes this grant all the more unique. The first workshop will coincide with a visit by some Lisle board members [Note - do we want to include their names?], who will participate actively in the workshop. It will undoubtedly be a fun and unique experience for the Lislers. But for the children, its impact can be momentous: these young lives are often defined by the borders of their small, rural villages. Through this interaction they will have an opportunity to see a world far vaster than they have imagined and, even more importantly, they will have the amazing, empowering knowledge that someone from so far away actually cares about them and what they are doing.Another powerful feature of this project is the planned follow-up. Until now the MCF has measured its work by the number of partners and children it reaches. However, through these nine workshops and the support for following up with each individual community, Lisle is providing the MCF with a rare opportunity to actually measure how the ideas and concepts discussed in the workshops are turned by the children into action and results in their villages.
Girls in a rural community in Zambia, Africa are making strides by scoring goals. Soccer Without Borders is working with a youth sports organization in the small town of Monze to help develop a girls soccer program. Monze is a poor town where many people struggle to live on less than a $1 a day, one out of four people are HIV positive, and the life expectancy for adults is only 38 years of age. Girls in particular face many obstacles and challenges. Having the money to pay for high school entrance fees is a privilege and without many goals for a future, girls often end up pregnant at the age of 14-15. When girls are given the opportunity to play soccer and be a part of a team, they are putting their energy towards a healthy lifestyle and a more promising future.
Soccer without Borders is a non-profit based out of San Francisco, which works to develop sustainable soccer and life-skills programs in developing countries. The funding from Lisle will help support The Girls Got Goals Global project to provide a full time salary for a Zambian woman to coordinate a girls soccer program as well as purchase much needed sports equipment. Throughout the year she will continue to train and support the volunteer coaches who work with four girls' soccer teams. In addition, she and other peer leaders will facilitate a life-skills curriculum with each team. These sessions will address issues such as self-esteem, being assertive, HIV/AIDS and Malaria prevention and goal setting. The girls will play in a soccer league for the first time and show off their talents in a culminating tournament.One of the most important components of the program is the creation of an income generating business to help support the teams in a sustainable manner. Due to playing on rough dirt fields, the lifespan of a ball is only a couple months Donated uniforms brought from abroad are shared with about 10 other boys' teams and will need to be replaced over time. Christine, the Girls Sports Coordinator, plans to develop a business with her coaches and teams to buy and sell chickens. The little money they generate will keep the program afloat over time by providing funds for equipment. The development of a source of self sustaining funding is a vital concept for the youth and coaches to learn and an important type of self empowerment. Hence, the program name, 'Girls Got Goals Global.'
We want to thank the community at Lisle for believing in our project. We are lucky to have Bill Kinney supporting us as our mentor. Zambian people are incredibly hospitable and welcoming, and would be grateful for any sort of support that could be provided. People can help by either bringing or sending soccer equipment such as uniforms, balls, cleats (did we mention the kids all play in their bare feet?!) or folks can come and help coach soccer, lead life-skills sessions, or assist in fundraising.For more information about the Girls Got Goals Monze program click here.
Dalumba Awende Kobotu
Thank you and Safe Journey
Soccer Without Borders team
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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
