I’m one of America’s Unofficial Ambassadors. Today I’m traveling to Jordan to lead the Building Peace by Building Homes trip. What has me step up to be an unofficial ambassador is my taste for adventure—my eagerness to see up close how people around the world live, the joy I derive from just being myself in new settings, and my commitment to putting America’s best foot forward by being of service.
I acquired this taste for adventure tagging along with my Mom as she launched a global career as an artist. By the time I was ten, I had visited countries in Africa, Europe, South America and Asia. Highlights of my early unofficial ambassadorial career include attending public school in Germany for a decade and a blind-faith move in my mid-twenties to the heavily Muslim Western Chinese megalopolis of Lanzhou to learn Mandarin from scratch.
The Building Peace by Building Homes trip is way more than just an adventure. Seven unofficial ambassadors, each representing a different facet of American life, are coming together as an expression of our joint commitment to build people-to-people partnerships with the Muslim World. We are all first-time visitors to Jordan. We will help build a house for a disadvantaged family in the ancient city of Salt. We will meet with Jordanian students and members of Jordanian civil society, we will experience city life and village life, and we will visit the Dead Sea and the caravan trade hub of Petra.
Even before the Building Peace by Building Homes team sets foot on Jordanian soil, our trip is causing stereotypes to unravel. Earlier this month, the team held a webinar with students from the King’s Academy boarding school outside Amman. Fully expecting a homogenous student body, I was astonished that the high school students I saw live on my computer screen appeared at first glance more heterogeneous than my own remarkably diverse team. Can’t wait to see what surprises the rest of the trip holds in store!
Participants march to the Governor’s residence on the sixth day of the caravan
Recently I attended a Youth Caravan in The Gambia to cover the event for Tostan’s Communications Department. The objective of the annual six-day caravan was to inspire cross-village and cross-generational interaction. One youth participant and one facilitator from 73 Tostan villages came together to form a large group that visited five other Tostan communities representing three different ethnic groups. This caravan visited two Serahule, two Mandinka, and one Fula village. In each village, youth participants presented to the host community what they had been learning through Tostan’s three-year Community Empowerment Program (CEP) as well as its importance. After spending a night in a village, the group moved on to another the next day.
Getting to The Gambia from Dakar was a bit of a hassle. The initial voyage took 17 hours. I woke up at 6:00 a.m., was at the gare routière or transport station by 7:30 a.m. and on the road in a sept-place by 8:00 a.m. A sept-place, an old station wagon that seats seven people plus the driver, is Senegal’s preferred mode of transportation for long distances – always very crowded with a lot of luggage strapped on the roof (often including large farm animals like sheep). I always get stuck in the back.
A sheep on top of a sept-place
Once I reached the border six hours later, I grabbed my bags, got my passport stamped on the Senegal side, walked across the border and bought my visa at the Gambian immigration office. I then took a taxi to another garage in Bara where I met up with Lilli, the Tostan volunteer in The Gambia. We waited three hours for a sept-place to fill up and then embarked on another six-hour ride to Basse. The Gambia has a gazillion police checkpoints so we stopped every half hour, which chewed up a lot of time. After crossing the Gambian River, we arrived in Basse, the Upper River Region’s (URR) largest city, around midnight.
A crowd gathers around caravan buses arriving in a village
A youth participant speaks about human rights during the afternoon ceremony
The next day was the first day of the six-day Caravan, which was an amazing experience but super exhausting. We spent each day in a different village. In the morning we woke up, ate breakfast, packed up the vans and headed to the next village. Each afternoon featured a ceremony where participants spoke about youth rights, for example, the right to education, the right to chose one’s husband, and the right to be registered at birth. Then host community members performed a skit. Participants in the last village we visited performed a powerful play about a teenage girl who gets seduced by a young man who promises her money; she becomes pregnant and dies during childbirth. In the final scene, the actors sang a funeral song warning about the dangers of teenage pregnancy. Other skits addressed the importance of education and the consequences of child/forced marriage. The speeches and skits were in local languages, so Tostan Supervisors translated for Lilli and me.
Scenes from the play in Bassendi
After closing words by local leaders, such as the Female President of the village and the National Coordinator of Tostan Gambia, we had some down time before dinner. I ate a lot of rice and meat that week. It seemed we had fruity soda after every meal, as well (I’ve been eating a lot of vegetables and drinking a lot of water this week!). Every evening included a cultural night of dancing, poetry recitation, and cultural entertainment. Lilli and I were usually so exhausted that we left the soirée early to go to bed.
Alisa with the crowd during a cultural night
The sixth day took place in Basse and was my favorite. All of the Caravan participants, over 200, and Tostan organizers gathered at the Tostan office and marched to the residence of the Governor of URR. There youth participants presented a manifesto stating what they wanted from the government as support in their quest to improve the lives of Gambian youth. Key points included education scholarships for girls and boys, skill training centers for technical jobs, and better enforcement of laws prohibiting child/forced marriage.
Youth participant, Fatou Baldé, presents the manifesto
My favorite part was riding on the back of Moussa’s motorbike while taking video footage of the march. I took a lot of video throughout the week and am hoping to put together a short piece for Tostan’s blog or website. My written article is currently featured on Tostan’s blog and soon to be in the November Newsletter. Very exciting!
Alisa filming on the back of Moussa’s motorbike
I had so much fun and hope to cover another Tostan event in the future. The experience was incredibly enriching and one of the best times I’ve had since living in West Africa, although I was quite anxious to get back to my bed and overhead shower after a week of changing mattresses and taking bucket baths!
Ba beneen yoon! – Until next time!
Photos courtesy of Elizabeth Loveday, Tostan Regional Volunteer in The Gambia.
The following is a guest blog by Peace X Peace, an international organization that connects women working on the frontlines of peace building in 120 countries. www.peacexpeace.org.
Laura Boushnak is a photographer, a third generation Palestinian refugee, and an activist. Now she’s also our 2011 Peace Media honoree. She draws on her background and life experiences to create photography that uncovers issues and subjects most often overlooked.
Though she started out as a sociology student working for the Associated Press and then Agence France-Press, she now pursues freelance work and long-form photo projects full time. What is she working on now? Not just one project! She has three in the works, collections of images ranging from cluster bomb survivors in Lebanon to Arab women’s literacy projects and the LGBT community in Beirut. She covers the Arab world from multiple angles, finding lenses (both figuratively and literally) through which to reflecta region of the world that is so often distorted in the mainstream media.
Laura reports that she chooses her projects based on her personal experience, which alerts her to social issues that deserve attention. She explains, “…in general there has to be a personal side to any of the stories I work on. For example, I started my project about cluster sub-munitions survivors a few months following the end of the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli war, where I actually covered the whole event. I was taken by the fact that cluster munitions left behind after conflicts kill and injure civilians who are already trying to rebuild their lives after war.”
Some may scoff at the idea that photography can build peace. But Laura (and Peace X Peace) contend that the opposite is true. In the case of her literacy project, she “…wanted to show what is being done about women’s education and raise questions over the obstacles which stand in the way of their development.” The images of situations or events that are captured and disseminated can shape our understanding of those situations. Laura helps to build peace by shifting perceptions of conflict and possibilities for peace in Lebanon, Egypt, and other countries around the Middle East.
Peace X Peace Celebrates its 2011 Women, Power, and Peace Awards
Join Peace X Peace, an international organization that connects women working on the frontlines of peacebuilding in 120 countries, at their 2011 Women, Power, and Peace Awards event, which will be held on Monday, December 5th, at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington DC. This gala evening honors six extraordinary award winners, a catered reception, fine wines, live music, an inspiring theatrical piece by Woolly Mammoth actors enacting voices of women change agents, and a 10-minute Catalyst video of Israeli and Palestinian women working for peace. Each attendee will also receive a complimentary copy of Patricia Smith Melton’s remarkable coffee table book, Sixty Years, Sixty Voices, valued at over $50.
The following is a message from Ambassador Osman Siddique, the Chairman of AUA’s Diplomatic Council and the first Muslim-American to serve as a US ambassador, and AUA Director Ben Orbach. The message was published in the International Business Times and Microfinance Monitor on November 1, 2011.
WASHINGTON, DC: Much has been written about the achievements of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs since he passed away on October 5. A part of this story not yet covered, though, is how the idea of what Jobs represented for America will be missed across the Muslim World. From the alleys of Nablus to the streets of Lahore, the American people have long served as our country’s best representatives; the loss of Steve Jobs is the loss of one of America’s foremost Unofficial Ambassadors.
For years, people across the Muslim World have drawn a distinction between their disaffection for US policies and their affinity for the American people. For many ordinary people, certain policies offended sensibilities – such as torture at Abu Ghraib – or made lives more difficult – like supporting the Mubarak regime in Egypt for decades.
It is this strong rejection of the US policy that has led to widespread “disapproval” of America in polling across the Muslim World. According to the Pew Foundation, America’s favorability in Pakistan in 2003 (the start of the war with Iraq) was 13 percent; in Jordan it was just one percent. Eight years later, it is 20 percent in Egypt and just 10 percent in Turkey.
At the same time, the American people are regarded differently – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may twist the masses in knots, but Facebook makes people smile. Our political processes and entertainment sector have long been international standard bearers, from the “rags to riches” election of the son of an African immigrant to explosive Hollywood blockbusters.
Our businesses are known for innovation and our education systems for teaching critical thinking. A degree from an American university has long been coveted while an “unlocked” iPhone is the latest and greatest American export. Steve Jobs and the company he built were a Colossus of this kind of “soft power,” a symbol of the value of the “people-to-people” component of international relations.
If this past year’s events in the Middle East and North Africa have demonstrated anything, it is that America’s relations with countries such as Egypt and Pakistan will not be determined solely by the dialogue that occurs between the leaders of our respective governments. In this age of technological connectedness and the 24-hour news cycle, governments cannot survive indefinitely if they don’t enable their people to pursue their aspirations. At the community level, people form their opinions of their national leaders and of America, too, based not upon the promises of treaties but upon the merits of deeds and the style of conduct.
In this respect, Steve Jobs was an American force for inspiration, innovation, and empowerment. Millions of iPhones and iPads bought all over the world reflect American ingenuity but significantly, the product of that ingenuity carries the promise of new possibilities.
While few Americans will have the impact of a Steve Jobs on a global level, many of us can serve as unofficial ambassadors at the grassroots level across the Muslim World and be a part of representing that same promise of a better future.
For example, Matthew Stackowicz is an English teacher who volunteered for three weeks in Sana’a, Yemen, and taught refugees from Somalia to tell their stories through photography. Brittany Richardson is an outdoors trip leader who volunteered for seven months in villages surrounding Lunsar, Sierra Leone, training young girls to ride bicycles. And Jean Kurtenbach is a senior who helped build a home with a Tajik family in Khujand.
Matthew, Brittany, and Jean represented the best of America to local leaders and citizens and formed partnerships that created a positive impact from a human development perspective. They supported the freedom of speech, the empowerment of women, and access to a healthier environment. Their deeds spoke volumes, and they improved America’s international relations at the community level.
Importantly, the partnerships they formed were not one-way endeavors. They were ambassadors to communities in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, and they returned to their homes in Indiana, California, and Nebraska as representatives of the idea that our personal actions can take us beyond stereotypes. Sadly for us as Americans, a 2010 Pew Foundation poll showed that 38 percent of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Muslims.
America needs more unofficial ambassadors to the Muslim World, which is why we launched the America’s Unofficial Ambassadors initiative this past year at Creative Learning, a Washington D.C. not-for-profit. More than 61 million Americans volunteered last year, but less than 1 percent of that number volunteered overseas and only a fraction of that one percent volunteered in a Muslim-majority country. By the end of 2012, America’s Unofficial Ambassadors will encourage 1,000 Americans to commit to volunteer for a week to a year, and we are building a community to offer them guidance and support.
Steve Jobs left an indelible mark as a great American, revered and respected worldwide for his contributions to our global community. His inventions catalyzed creativity, but one does not have to be a world-leading innovator to be a part of generating new possibilities – to build a house in Indonesia, to teach English in Jordan, and to help build peace as an unofficial ambassador.
The people-to-people connections we form, the decency we can demonstrate in the process, and the impact of the partnerships we create are all invaluable, from a development perspective and from a mutual understanding perspective, too.
M. Osman Siddique was the first Muslim-American to serve as a US Ambassador and chairs the America’s Unofficial Ambassadors Diplomatic Council. Benjamin Orbach is the Director of the America’s Unofficial Ambassadors initiative at Creative Learning. (www.unofficialambassadors.org).
Creative Learning is excited to announce the fall schedule for the AUA Network’s monthly webinar series. AUA webinars, which are open to members of the AUA Network, offer the opportunity to engage with leaders and expert practitioners in the fields of international development, relations between America and the Muslim World, and cross-cultural dialogue. Future Ambassadors, Ambassadors, Ambassador Mentors, and the other Peace Builders committed to AUA’s mission are welcome to join the AUA Network and take part in these hour-long, lunch time sessions, starting this Tuesday, September 27, 2011, when AUA Director Ben Orbach will introduce the America’s Unofficial Ambassadors initiative and the AUA Directory.
Ben Orbach’s presentation kicks off a dynamic series of interactive discussions with a number of expert practitioners. In October, Luby Ismail, the President of Connecting Cultures will speak on “Dialogue and Engagement with Muslim World,” and in November, Susan Raymond, Executive Vice President of Changing our World, Inc. will present, “Researching and Writing Successful Proposals: Supporting Grassroots NGOs.” These sessions will be indispensable for unofficial ambassadors seeking to volunteer with a grassroots NGO in the Muslim World. Margaret McLaughlin, Deputy Director of Stability Operations at the US State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, will lead a similarly valuable session on building community partnerships in December.
AUA Webinars will be held from 12-1 PM Eastern Time and are open to members of the AUA Network. The format is an initial presentation of 30 to 40 minutes followed by a lively discussion session. To join the AUA Network:
1) Select your appropriate membership type and click on the membership title link to fill out a short application. For descriptions of each, please click here.
Once you have submitted your information, an AUA team member will confirm your application, and then grant you full access to the AUA Network.
Members of the AUA Network can RSVP, and receive instructions on how to access each webinar by sending an email to CharlotteH@creativelearning.org. RSVPs will be accepted up to the morning of each event.
The schedule for this fall’s AUA Network is listed below. Click on speakers’ names for their full bio.
September 27, 2011 – Introduction to the AUA initiative and the AUA Directory, Ben Orbach, Director, AUA, Creative Learning
October 26, 2011 – Dialogue and engagement with the Muslim World, for volunteers and practitioners, Luby Ismail,President, Connecting Cultures and intercultural trainer
November 9, 2011 – Researching and writing successful proposals: supporting grassroots NGOs, Susan Raymond,Executive Vice President, Changing Our World, Inc
December 9, 2011 – Community Partnerships: Building personal and productive partnerships that reach across cultures, Margaret McLaughlin,Deputy Director, Stability Operations, Foreign Service Institute, US Dept of State
In America, how many times do we toss around the ideas of “service” and “volunteering” as just one of those things you do when you have enough material goods that they start to make you feel vaguely guilty? I know that for many of us, volunteering means taking an hour or two to take some clothes to a donation point, some food to a food pantry, maybe even spending some time with local kids or elderly neighbors. Don’t get me wrong, these are all important things that we should be proud to do as part of a community. But that’s not the only concept of service that exists in the world. This summer, I experienced a pretty different way of looking at things as I spent some time being a member of our global community.
If you’ve never tried volunteering with an international organization, you’re definitely missing out. Now I don’t mean going with a U.S. project to a foreign country. You need to work with a group organized by people who actually live in the country you’re in. While I was in Palestine, I had the good fortune to work with one such organization called Holy Land Trust. Founders and employees all live in either Bethlehem, Beit Sahour, or Beit Jala and are for the most part native Palestinians. As such, they are in a unique position to place volunteers because they are personally aware of the needs of the community. Their awareness and constant contact with civil society partners provide anincredibly rich volunteer experience because they are able to place volunteers with particular skills in the places they are most needed. The result is that the people you work with are always thrilled to have you there. Often it feels more like you are a temporary employee because your tasks may be essential to the function of the organization – there’s simply not enough time or money for someone else to do them. The ensuing sense of fulfillment is immense. Knowing that you made a real difference somewhere outside your own head is a feeling that these days can be fairly hard to come by. At the same time, you discover that the people you thought you had been serving have possibly been giving more back to you in return.
While I worked at al-Malath Charitable Society in Beit Sahour, I was given gifts that turned out to be something quite spectacular. The Center was a pre-vocational school for teens and young adults with developmental and mental disabilities. Founded by a driven mother, every day spent there was full of patience, excitement, and discovery for all present. The goal in founding the organization came out of a lack in the community that was felt by a frustrated mother. Although she was the wife of a well-off restaurant owner, this woman struggled daily with her son. In his twenties, Hassan needed constant care and supervision, but is family wanted something better for him than an adult daycare or a sitter at home. Despite having the money to place him in a program where he could make as many developmental gains as possible, no such place existed in the Bethlehem area. And so with typical Palestinian determination, a group of women got together and started one themselves. At work I met Saana, a female Muslim occupational therapist and social worker, and Wa’el, a male Christian special education teacher. Our summer team was completed with another volunteer, Kelly from Colorado, who did a lot of work on the website, and myself. My greatest contribution, I think, was helping to edit and compose progress and donor reports for the organization that provided their funding. Since the audience of the reports would be other Americans, I wanted the writing to be as perfect as possible for my temporary colleagues. Their hard work kept the organization up and running – it was the least I could do to make sure that the description of all that effort said exactly all the great things they were doing.
In comparison to all the things I was given, that short statement of my contribution, no matter how important it may have been, seems kind of small. Lunch and tea each day became an awesome part of my week as Saana and Wa’el taught me more words than I ever learned in Arabic class and Kelly and I traded stories of the kinds of adventures that come when you try and live somewhere like the Middle East. I learned how to count to ten while I was helping Rami, a young man with Downs Syndrome, make finger rosaries to sell and help raise money. Dance time and household teaching tasks were always an adventure and the passion that everyone working there brought to their jobs was inspiring. I loved watching their patience and gentleness and the amount of time they spent at the Center had to have been far more extensive than what their salaries covered. Essentially, I miss my time there every day and I think everyone should have the same kind of wonderful experience!
Guediawaye water basin. This area floods when it rains and poses huge health/safety hazards.
In addition to education on human rights, health and hygiene, literacy, math, and project management, part of the CEP is the formation of local organizations called CMCs. CMCs are made up of local leaders and are responsible for carrying out projects to better the community even after the completion of the Tostan program. Some examples of CMC projects include constructing a well, fundraising for a millet grinder, selling millet, creating an irrigation system for a community garden, making and selling soap, etc. CMCs focus much of their effort on “income-generating activities” (IGAs), but they are also responsible for maintaining the health and safety of their community. Each CMC is made up of several commissions (health, child protection, education, the environment, etc.) which raise money and lobby for new projects. For example, the Health Commission may lobby for a newposte de santéor small health clinic. The Education Commission may raise money and purchase school supplies. Guediaweye’s Environment Commission is lobbying for a new fence around the water basin to keep children and animals from falling into the water.
Micro-garden and sewing machines used by CMC members for income-generating activities.
At the social mobilization event, Guediawaye’s CMC, which is made up primarily of women (way cool!), showcased its recent projects, which include cereal preservation, soap making, and fabric dying among other income-generating activities. But before attending the main event, Elaine, Lucy (Tostan volunteers), and I interviewed the CMC Coordinator, Nogoye, and another key member, Marième, for the article Eliane was writing for Tostan’s blog. Marième is blind, and her success has made her a local celebrity. She attended all of Tostan’s CEP sessions and participated in every activity except those concerning literacy. She and other CMC members in Guediawaye are urging Tostan to translate materials into Braille so that people who are visually impaired can fully participate.
From left to right: CMC member, Marième, Nogoye, and Oumou, a CEP facilitator.
Even though Marième cannot see, she sells vegetables and braids hair for a small profit. At the end of our interview, I asked Marième how she could count money if she could not see it. I knew that she would be able to but thought she might enjoy showing off her skills. We role played me buying a handkerchief from her. Instead of giving her 100 CFA, the price she stated, I handed her 50 CFA, a smaller coin. She immediately called me out. To make things more difficult, I handed her a 2,000 CFA bill. She took less than 10 seconds to name the bill. Then she pulled out a handful of change from her purse and counted it out rapid fire. The seven or so women in the room cheered her on. The exercise was a lot of fun and made every one laugh.
Beaded sandals and bagged cereal made by CMC members.
Eliane, Lucy, and I headed to the main event after the interviews. First we looked at the table of products made by the CMC (bags of millet, soap, beaded sandals, and dyed fabric). Then we took our places in plastic chairs under the big tent. The MC introduced the event, and then Nogoye, Marième, and other community leaders gave small speeches. After the opening words, there was a small competition where the MC asked audience members (mostly girls and women who participated in the CEP) questions relating to the Tostan program. Those who responded correctly chose from a table of prizes, which included soap, hair gel, and sanitary napkins. For the quiz questions, the MC had the audience members read sentences in Wolof, answer simple math problems, and answer questions about human rights.
Audience members and a CEP participant wearing her classroom tunic.
After the competition, a handful of girls acted out a skit in which a woman, Aminata, learns that she has HIV. During the play, the girls acting giggled after their lines and audience members often laughed in the way you would when someone you know really well is acting in an informal skit. I imagine that the situation addressed in the play does not often result in such a happy ending. The stigma surrounding HIV/AIDs in rural/suburban Senegalese communities is significant largely because of misinformation and lack of education. In addition, any illness of a family member is a hush-hush topic not talked about openly. The fact that these girls acted out such a taboo issue in front of a large audience is huge and signifies a milestone in health education and reducing the stigma of HIV/AIDs in Guediawaye.
I asked Nogoye, the CMC coordinator, why all of the Tostan participants in this town were women. She told me that the men and boys were usually at work or at school. Tostan’s Community Empowerment Program gives people without access to formal education, who are usually female, the opportunity to learn and better their. One could argue that instead of providing informal education, Tostan should be working at the systemic level to make sure that women and girls do have access to formal education. I’m not sure which approach is best, but from what I’ve seen and read, working at the grassroots level is more sustainable. If decisions and social movements come from the bottom up, then systemic/policy change is more likely to be long lasting than if some outside party pushes reform from the top down. Though this process may take a long time, the results are long term benefits instead of temporary successes.
The highlight of the afternoon may have been when word got out that I could dance Uusa (pronounced “yooza”), the current popular dance in Senegal. The MC called me up to dance in front of the audience. I told him I couldn’t dance without music, so he quickly had the DJ put on some tunes. So I danced. People clapped, cheered, and laughed hysterically. There’s nothing funnier than a toubab chick trying to dance to Senegalese music. I really have no idea how to dance Uusa; I just mimic what I see other people doing. Apparently, I do alright because people always ask me, “How did you learn to dance so well?” Either I actually look like I know what I’m doing or they’re just humoring me – probably the latter. I don’t mind, however, because my dancing seems to make people very happy, which makes me happy.
After Uusa-ing off the dance floor, Eliane, Lucy, and I said good bye to our hosts and hopped back into the Tostan car for the 30 minute bumpy ride back to Dakar. The afternoon was very pleasant and a great way to take a break from the office. I would love to go back and visit the CMC women again. I’m sure they would all recognize me as the dancing toubab. There are worse things to be remembered for!
After a couple weeks in the field working on sanitation, microfinance, legal aid and agriculture programs, I was really looking forward to my first visit to a BRAC school. As it turns out, the students were quite excited themselves.
We had dismounted our rickshaws at the edge of the village whose school we would be visiting. We began the twenty-minute walk through lush greenery and muddy trails and worked our way past clay homes and tin shacks. The path led us to a picturesque clearing surrounded by banana and mango trees, home to the village’s BRAC school. Outside the one-room tin schoolhouse, we saw the students’ colorful sandals arranged in a perfect circle. Their teacher later explained that each morning, they lay out their sandals just so, to instill ideals of routine, order and care. We added our shoes to the display and entered the school.
As soon as we appeared in the doorway, the children enthusiastically and respectfully stood up to greet us, and quickly executed the first of many traditional song and dance performances they had prepared for us. The teacher explained that they had learned of our upcoming visit three months prior, and had since begged to practice the routines every single day. Now that the day was upon us, most of the girls had arrived to school an hour early, dressed in their family’s nicest clothes. They looked beautiful and their performances were absolutely lovely.
Throughout the day, we interviewed the teacher, played with the students and spoke with many of the parents. We learned about BRAC’s unique approach to education, and observed first hand how well it works. BRAC addresses education as a root cause of poverty, and hopes to break into the perpetual cycle by greatly improving the educational opportunities to students throughout rural Bangladesh. High dropout rates, the cultural prevalence of early marriage, and the unavailability of schools and/or transportation in rural areas have plagued the formal education sector for decades.
The BRAC education program hoped to supplement this government sector when it began in 1985 with the creation of the first 22 schools. Today, there are more than 35,000 schools nation-wide, all run sustainably without any help from the government. In its first fifteen years, the program reached more than 1.5 million students, 70 percent of whom were girls.
What’s more, BRAC schools consistently have impressive student-teacher ratios, incredible student retention rates and higher standardized test scores than their government school counterparts. Yet, a BRAC education, though free to students and their families, costs $20 per year compared to a government school’s $52 per year. It is BRAC’s unique model and innovative approaches that has created this anomaly, which seems almost too good to be true.
Before deciding to open a school in a particular village, BRAC officials (mostly women) meet with parents several times. The parents learn about their children’s educational potential and promise to send them to school each day and attend monthly parent-teacher meetings. Three mothers form a management committee with the teacher. This committee checks in with the school regularly, and if a student is absent, they go to the student’s home to check on them. A mother from the village is actually chosen and trained as the school’s teacher. BRAC usually selects an uneducated woman and provides her with complete initial training and monthly refresher courses. She receives a salary for this important job and becomes a hero in her village.
We had the chance to sit in a monthly refresher course at a BRAC regional office and were very impressed with the women’s abilities.
The school calendar and hours are set each season by the management committee and parents. If needed, the school will run two shifts each day to keep class size under BRAC’s maximum of 33. The hours are set according the families’ needs, often changing with each harvesting season. The location of the one-room school is very carefully chosen – as close to students’ homes as possible.
In this particular schoolhouse, we asked the parents what their children did before the school was built. Most children worked. The boys were often field laborers and the girls were house help. The closest government school is over 15 kilometers away, with no transportation provided. Additionally, the school requires that students purchase a uniform, which is a significant financial deterrent for most families. So, without this BRAC school, these vibrant and intelligent nine to twelve year old kids singing, dancing and practicing English with us would instead be working as day laborers, with no chance of an education.
BRAC has always exhibited a completely apolitical approach and maintains an amicable relationship with the Bangladesh government. BRAC’s vision is a future without the need for aid. Their schools, like many of their programs, are working to bridge the gap between the country’s high need and the government’s limited potential. Hopefully, in time, the government will learn from and incorporate BRAC schools into the formal sector and all students will officially have access to proper education. Perhaps when these happy, bright and talented young students eventually have children of their own, they will have multiple quality education options.
I also had the chance to visit a government school, and of course those uniform-clad students are just as vibrant and adorable.
Wow Alison! This seems like an awesome experience – Great job!
A year ago, I studied for a semester in Dakar and have now returned to volunteer. Anta, one of my host sisters from my semester abroad, recently had her twelfth birthday. I took her out for ice cream to celebrate at a restaurant/bakery called La Glace Moderne. Anta had strawberry, and I had chocolate. We had both just eaten mafé for lunch - mafé is one of my favorite Senegalese dishes made with white rice, cooked vegetables, and beef with a rich peanut sauce – so neither of us had much room for ice cream, but we ate it anyway of course!
Anta and I took this video while swinging on the swing set behind the restaurant. I love how she decided to film the paintings on the walls of Disney characters – Snow White, Jasmine, Bambi, and Dora the Explorer. She filmed what she is used to seeing on television. Although these days, I think she watches more MTV than the Disney Channel, especially with her older sisters who are 15 and 20 years old.
Inside the restaurant, we interviewed each other with the video camera AUA provided me to record my experiences in Senegal. Anta asked me my name, what I do for work, and the names of my family members. I asked her name, the names of her family members, her favorite color, what she likes to do outside of school, and what she wants to do when she grows up. It made the feminist in me a little sad that her favorite color is pink and that outside of school, she likes to watch TV and talk to her friends on the phone. Anta doesn’t have a cell phone, and I’ve never seen her talk to her friends on the house phone. Maybe she sees herself as someone who would talk to her friends on the phone if she had one. She does have a Facebook account, though, which I made for her on my laptop at the same restaurant when I was here last year. She was disappointed that I didn’t bring my computer with me this time.
Anta’s responses to my questions reminded me of an article, “How to Talk to Little Girls,” by Lisa Bloom that I read recently and made me feel guilty for giving her a hairbrush and body lotion as birthday presents. The article talks about how our first reaction when we see little girls is to tell them how cute they are, which conditions them at a young age to be very conscious of their appearance. Looking good is incredibly important to women in Senegal. The Wolof word for “dressing well” issañse, and what you wear is a way to display economic status and social standing (check out Debra Heath’s article, “Fashion, Anti-fashion, and Heteroglossia in Urban Senegal”).
Instead of remarking on a young girl’s cute-ness, Lisa Bloom suggests asking about her favorite book or favorite subject in school. I did ask Anta about her favorite school subject in the ice cream shop. She responded History because it tells us about our past and where we are coming from, “which is very important.” She’s so right! In the future, I’m going to make a point not to give my host sisters beauty products as gifts, even though I know they like and use perfume and lip gloss. I once gave Anta a sketch book and crayons because I noticed how much she enjoyed drawing in my notebook. Next time, I’m going to try and find something History-related.
Anta wants to go to a university in the United States. I want to help her achieve this goal as much as I can and for the right reasons, those being a quality education and more professional opportunities in the future (not so she can live in a trendy apartment and buy flashy clothes like the ones she sees on MTV). My host sisters have summer vacation right now, but when the school year comes along, I’d like to help tutor them in Math and English (I hate History, I must admit, and am not sure how well I’d do with Biology in the French language). In the meantime, we’re going out for ice cream!
AUA Initiative Promotes Volunteering in the Muslim World for Professionals
Washington DC, June 7, 2011 — Creative Learning, a Washington DC based non-profit organization, is pleased to announce the expansion of America’s Unofficial Ambassadors (AUA) Directory of Recommended Organizations. The addition of 23 new organizations, offering specific opportunities for professionals in medicine, civil society, and business, is a significant step in the development of the premier resource for researching short-term volunteer opportunities in the Muslim World. The AUA Directory provides analytical and descriptive profiles of leading organizations that send or host American volunteers serving in human development in Muslim-majority countries. The AUA Directory is available free of charge at www.unofficialambassadors.com.
The AUA initiative helps mobilize Americans to reach across cultural differences and to build people-to-people partnerships by volunteering in human development. In producing the AUA Directory, Creative Learning researched more than 1,000 organizations and conducted extensive interviews with program staff and alumni so to create descriptive and analytical profiles of 59 recommended organizations that offer volunteer opportunities that vary from teaching English in the Palestinian Territories to building schools in Mali to training NGOs in Bangladesh.
By December of 2012, AUA aims to encourage more than 1,000 Americans to commit to at least one week of service in the Muslim World. The AUA Directory is an invaluable resource for those future volunteers to find the opportunity that is right for them. As Steven C. Rosenthal, Founder and Executive Director of Cross-Cultural Solutions explained, “This is a substantial step forward for our field. We are proud to partner with AUA and work together to build a better world.”
Brig. Gen. Ronald Sconyers (USAF, Ret.), President and CEO of Physicians for Peace, welcomed his organizations’ inclusion in the AUA Directory, too, and commented on its value as a tool to advance peace-building and development goals. He said, “We see the AUA Directory as an excellent resource for volunteers and nonprofits who share a commitment to effecting meaningful, lasting change in Muslim societies and beyond, and we are delighted to be part of this new effort.”
About Creative Learning
America’s Unofficial Ambassadors is a strategic initiative of Creative Learning, a Washington DC-based not-for-profit organization that enhances the capacity of local organizations around the world to improve the lives of people in their communities. Through the creation of people-to-people partnerships, Creative Learning is especially dedicated to protecting human rights, supporting economic and social development, and building peace. Consistent with the program’s theme that American citizens should do more to make a difference, AUA does not seek government funding. For information about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Tracy Key at Tracykeyevents@aol.com.
I’m one of America’s Unofficial Ambassadors. Today I’m traveling to Jordan to lead the Building Peace by Building Homes trip. What has me step up to be an unofficial ambassador is my taste for adventure—my eagerness to see up close how people around the world live, the joy I derive from just being myself in new settings, and my commitment to putting America’s best foot forward by being of service.
