Classes Under the Trees

01/10/2008

We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

World Forum participant Nathan Chelimo, representing Save the Children Uganda, offers these insights on educational challenges in Uganda as reported in the Bernard van Leer publication Early Childhood Matters (November 2006; www.bernardvanleer.org)...

"In the past, the children of pastoralists in Karamoja, Uganda, never went to school because their forefathers had cursed education. It was not an outright refusal of education, but rather the competing need for subsistence labour..."

Through the work of the Alternative Basic Education for Karamoja (ABEK) programme funded by Save the Children and the Bernard van Leer Foundation "... the people of Karamoja, who have a precarious labour-intensive lifestyle with an over-dependence on women and children for domestic and agro-pastoral activities, recognized that education and pastoralism can go together. In a symbolic ceremony in 1995 they cleansed the curse that their forefathers had pronounced...marking the birth of formal education in Karamoja."

"...ABEK focuses on changing negative attitudes to education in general, and on the education of girls in particular. It does this by providing a curriculum relevant to the Karamojong child and encouraging a path to formal school. Teaching is conducted in community centres near the Karamojong homesteads, but increasingly children are taught under trees, at suitable hours so that learning does not interfere with domestic chores, by community tutors known as facilitators. The facilitators are recruited from the immediate vicinity and trained on the job. Karamojong elders are involved in all aspects of planning, approving and monitoring the programme."

Learning Among the Trees

On July 21 - 23, 2008, the Working Forum on Nature Education: New Tools for Connecting the World's Children with Nature will be taking place — indoors and outdoors — on the forested grounds of the Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska City, Nebraska. Participants will share ideas on exciting new ways that people around the world are bringing nature back into the lives of children and families. Given the great success of the forerunner for this conference in 2006, early registrations have already filled 60% of the spaces available for attendees. You can register today!

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