RESPECT International Blog

RESPECT USA aims to enable schools in the USA to support refugee education by:

1. Increasing awareness of refugee issues in North American schools. This is done by distributing information packages to interested teachers including a full directory of refugee related teaching materials for all ages that can be ordered from various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for FREE.
2. Increasing communication between refugee youth and North American youth. We introduce a class or a school to a refugee schools in countries such as Azerbaijan, Guinea, and Kenya. Upon making the first exchange of letters, we consider that refugee school sponsored.
3. Encouraging activism amongst youth by encouraging North American schools to fund-raise and send material aid to their sponsored schools. After a couple of exchanges of letters and pictures we encourage the sponsoring bodies to try a fund-raiser to send material goods (from used microscopes to solar-powered calculators to pencils) to refugee schools in various countries.

Schools in Washington, Kentucky, and Connecticut are currently involved in RESPECT USA. Future goals include RESPECT to be implemented by high schools, adult literacy groups, and youth groups throughout all states, and to raise the level of refugee education and awareness.

http://respectrefugees.org/aff_usa.shtml

Sign Up Your Class
for RESPECT’s Letter Exchange Program

Our number one project is to introduce refugee and non-refugee students through our pen-pal letter exchange program. We receive letters from refugee students which we then forward to a non-refugee school. The students then reply to the letters, and new friendships are born.

Through this interaction students not only learn about another culture, but the experience can be used to help teach other subjects including:

* Language arts – teaching students how express themselves when they write letters.
* Geography – learning about other countries will take on new meaning because the students know someone in ‘that part of the world.’
* Math – learning about how much postage is needed to send the letters.

We ask non-refugee schools to include 2 or 3 international reply coupons with their replies to help defray the cost of postage.

Select one of the links below to learn more about how you and your students can participate.

Non-refugee School Information

Refugee School Information

A. Some information

- Any initiative that can promote the use of solar energy in our communities is welcome. This would be a window of opportunity for our organization “Artists for Humanity” (ArtHum), to explore the field of activity related to environmental protection, which has remained hitherto in our imagination, and many other related actions, despite the intentions of what we undertake.

- Long ago ArtHum was looking for an organization or network as a partner to develop certain activities on land, where activities that require both technical support and financial and material support. In other words, it would be unrealistic for our association, composed of people who volunteered for community causes during a decade (from December 1999 to date), to pretend to participate in this initiative without financial assistance and material consistent. Only with this kind of assistance we can return durability and increase our commitment to the cause of humanity.

- The term “refugee communities of war” should imply refugees, returnees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) and their host communities as they are all subject to the same fate, and this in several ways.

- Moreover, the country where the ArtHum association is based, the Democratic Republic of Congo is full of large tracts of forest and large rivers that are resource rich and compelling, a border area of interest and transcontinental for nature conservation and protection of threatened species of flora and fauna. Constituting much of what is called the “Congo Basin”, already proclaimed as world heritage, this forest and these rivers are exposed to enormous threats of destruction and abuse, which the need to find affirmative ways to limit  damage and reduce risks related to such threats by providing local communities with their African peers and partners in the international community, alternatives instead of using firewood and other deforestation practices.

- In the same country (DRC), with similarities in other communities in neighboring states, people are experimenting with certain waterborne diseases and epidemics that decimated due to the use of untreated drinking water (or non-pasteurized), whereas in a cooking system that does not cost much in terms of energy and other resources such as solar cookers, these epidemics and water borne diseases can be considerably prevented.

- Based on these realities, it is for us ArtHum members a civic duty to support the initiative called “cook food with only the sun: the solar cooker. ”

The use of these cookers can be very useful in our communities. We could use instead of “braisiers (cookers charcoal Bambule commonly called), wood fireplaces, electric stoves, kerosene stoves and ovens called” improved “.

The main difficulties we can mention, in anticipation, is not primarily on the use of solar cookers, but it is mainly related to material resources, financial and human resources (trainers trained & motivated) for preparation of participants an effective awareness campaign on land and supplying equipment to the needy population.

Open collaboration!

RESPECT University was established to provide post-secondary instruction to refugee students under the guidance of tutors from around the world. We see this as a logical extension of the mission of RESPECT International to link refugee and non-refugee schools worldwide.

To accomplish this:

• We use experienced teachers who want to use their knowledge and experience to help teach students in refugee schools.
• Many of our tutors develop their own curriculum on a subject in one of their areas of expertise.
• RESPECT International then matches the tutor with a group of students. RESPECT facilitates the initial contact between the tutor and the students, and helps, as needed, to coordinate the learning process.
• Each class normally consists of six students.
• Teaching and learning are carried out by correspondence, using conventional postal mail services, although contact with local coordinators is maintained via email. The tutor sends a series of assignments which the students complete and then return to the teacher for comments and feedback. (Each assignment can take a month or more to be returned to the tutor because of limited postal service to areas occupied by refugees.)

If you are an experienced teacher, and are interested in volunteering to be a tutor, please complete our Tutor Information form. You will be asked for your name, contact details, qualifications and experience, subjects taught, and so on. Our coordinator will contact you, usually by email, within a week to discuss available opportunities.

If you are someone working with refugee students, and you feel your students would benefit from the educational opportunities RESPECT University can offer, complete a request form. You will be asked forcontact details, number of students, subjects of interest, and so on. Our coordinator evaluates your request and determines whether volunteers are available to meet your needs. Once that is completed, we will be in touch with the contact listed in the request.

In the future, we hope to expand the role of the University by:

• providing online courses on the web site for print out or for online study
• converting the course information and assignments from successful courses into web pages, to provide an on-line resource bank of learning materials.

If you have any questions or comments about RESPECT University, you can email our coordinator at university@respectrefugees.org.

If you do not yet wish to register as volunteer teacher or a student coordinator, but would like to be kept informed of developments of the University, please subscribe to our e-Zine.

Amazon.com book drive

All proceedings from book sales will be donated to RESPECT International. RESPECT (Refugee Education Sponsorship Program) is an apolitical, international, not-for-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO) headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Worldwide networks of like-minded people who help each other, educate each other, and grow together.

The organization stands for:

1. Raise awareness on refugee issues among youth by providing educational communities worldwide with information, training and resources.

2. Build bridges between youth from refugee schools and non-refugee schools through letter exchange and beyond.

3. Take actions in helping refugees by organizing awareness-raising events to educate others on refugee issues and to raise funds for partner refugee school.

http://www.amazon.com/shops/A3N8UG8SH1IB96

by Linda Salim

In this day and age when war is rampant and ethnic discrimination against one another is less and less discrete, there are some people who provide a cooling wind of change. One such person is Mary Hughes Lee, a literature teacher at South Stokes High School in North Carolina.

Marc Schaeffer, RESPECT International’s founder and international coordinator, calls her a dynamite teacher, and having gotten to know her in the process of writing this article, we at RESPECT e-Zine couldn’t agree more.

Ms. Lee’s interests and involvement in letter exchange between students started before her collaboration with RESPECT Letter Exchange Program a few months ago. In the past, she and an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in a school in Memphis, Tennessee, organized their own letter exchange between Ms. Lee’s students and the mostly refugee ESL students.

Unfortunately, the Memphis school curbed the program over security reasons. Ms. Lee began looking outward for an alternative when she found RESPECT Letter Exchange Program.

On the first exchange, her students received and responded to 25 letters from high school students in Liberia. Ms. Lee expected nothing from the program except unwrapping pleasant surprises, one of which is the excitement her students show when it comes to discussing and connecting with their new Liberian friends.

As Ms. Lee puts it, she has to make sure that this program continues if she doesn’t want her students to protest. The young Americans show tremendous interests in knowing more about the world, nothing short of Ms. Lee’s dedication in planting in the students’ minds that every human being is as worthy as they personally are.

Being a fan of President Obama, my first impression of Ms. Lee is close to the image I have of the President himself. She radiates the peace she offers to those she meets for the first time, no matter how different they are from her.

Having always been devoted to creative writing, Ms. Lee started developing her interests decades ago. The dedication continued years after through educating her students to be tolerant and curious about the rest of the world.

Last year, she took her students on an educational trip to Great Britain. Another student of hers spent her last year of high school in Australia as an exchange student. Both Ms. Lee and her husband are passionate about the exchange students program and they dream of hosting exchange students at their home in North Carolina.

When asked about her views on the new American leadership and policies, she’s very supportive despite the facts that she believes some of President Obama’s decisions aren’t the most effective ones.

In general, she’s excited about the world changing its view about the Americans. The evolution in immigration issues and the new government’s attitude toward immigrants and refugees are what she’s most excited about.

Voicing her opinion strongly, she believes in empowering refugees, which also means eradicating all kinds of deportation. In her view, deportation is a kind of ethnic cleansing, which is very un-American. Ms. Lee believes that America has always thrived on its variety of cultures, languages, ethnicities and belief systems, among other things.

Instead of sending illegal aliens home, Ms. Lee believes the more effective way to reduce the amount of funding and resources spent on refugees is through eradication of poverty, oppressive government and increased education in developing countries.

She strongly believes that most immigrants, both legal and illegal, would prefer to remain in their homelands, given the choice. Providing them with a safe and comfortable environment back home is much more effective than driving them away from host countries.

The world obviously needs more Ms. Lees. Many people might disagree with her stance on political and world issues, but the fact that she encourages her students to be open-minded and tolerant, and that she welcomes opinions different from her own to co-exist, makes the world simply a better place.

Welcome to RESPECT

The stated goals of RESPECT are:

1. To increase awareness of refugee issues among non-refugee students in participating countries.
2. To build bridges between non-refugee students and refugee students through pen-pal letter exchange.
3. To encourage students to act to raise awareness of refugee issues and to raise some funds for their refugee school.

As a teacher or student leader, your participation in RESPECT can consist of step 1, step 1 & 2, or you can work through all three steps. Perhaps you might decide to work on step one this year, step one and two next and all steps the year after that.

It is entirely up to you.

The following paragraphs will help to facilitate the progression through these steps. PLEASE feel free to ask any questions or make any comments.

REFUGEE EDUCATION

STEP ONE
BUILDING AWARENESS OF REFUGEE ISSUES
There are a great number of resources available out there to educators and laypeople free of charge for building awareness of refugee issues. We will be making some specific suggestions for you to order so you are able to receive some basic publications in a timely manner. While there are certainly others, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are the two biggest publishers of refugee related material to our knowledge.

A list of resources can be found on our resources page.

SPONSORSHIP PROGRAM

STEP TWO
EXCHANGE WITH A REFUGEE SCHOOL
RESPECT is developing an every-growing list of contacts with refugee and internally displaced person (IDP) schools around the world. Countries include Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Guinea, and Uganda.

We would be very happy to introduce your class to a class of refugee students of similar age and academic level by pen pal letter exchange. While we may be able to give you some choice as to country, it would be best if you will accept what letters we have on hand, the refugee students can receive their letters in a timely fashion.

It has been our experience that participating students can be quite excited to initiate a letter correspondence with a boy or girl from exotic countries.

There can be no better way to build awareness & understanding of refugee life than through letter exchange.

Over the last year, we have learned a few things that are stated below:

1. Before distributing letters it is important to discuss with the students the possibility of disturbing content. The students who wrote these letters may well mention the loss of a parent or parents, they may write about the effects of war in their country of origin and life in the camp.It is your prerogative to screen letters before handing them out to ensure that even after preparing students only the most mature students receive the most mature letters.

   Please note that while SOME letters may be quite serious, others will just write about music they like, clothes and whatnot – kids are kids.

2. Students may well want to include some kind of gift in their reply letters.
   This is not recommended. Very simple things like a bookmark, sticker, or whatnot are fine tokens but any more will make other pen pals jealous and very possibly might be stolen from the letter package by postal workers.
3. Pen pals appreciate receiving photographs, postcards, cute stationary and so on.
4. Please post your letters within about two weeks of receiving them from us.
5. The first one or two exchanges should be sent as a group to save on postage and ensure delivery at the same time. Please include 2 or 3 international reply coupons with your package, so the refugee school can reply without incurring costs. (IRCs can be bought for about $3.50 at your local post office.)

To request refugee letters, please fill out the non-Refugee School Registration Form online. Include the number of students, grade level, range of ages you are willing to accept etc.. Please note that we will be sending you ORIGINAL copies of letters. If you do not post replies to those letters, none will be posted and those refugee children will be disappointed. (We recommend the teacher take care that each student receives a reply. This is easy if all students are in one class. If you are just having some interested students write, you can photocopy each letter, distribute the photocopies writing each student’s name on their original and then hand-over the original letter after the reply had been handed-in.)

ENHANCING COMMUNITIES TOGETHER

STEP THREE
FUNDRAISING FOR YOUR REFUGEE SCHOOL
Building awareness of world issues through videos and discussion and growing a personal connection between students here and refugee students there through letter exchange leads rather naturally to a desire to do something to help.

As stated before, if fundraising is not something you as a teacher or student leader are interested in facilitating this year – that is fine. You can only do what you are comfortable doing.

If you decide fundraising for your refugee school would be a good way for your students to feel like they are doing good for their neighbors far away, we have a few suggestions:

1. A bake sale – organize a bake sale either at student’s home or at school to raise funds.
2. A talent/variety show – plan a talent/variety show at school to invite everyone to come out to support the cause -large funds can be raised this way.
3. A garage sale – organize a garage sale either at home or at school – you can ask for donation of items from family and teachers.
4. A pancake breakfast – organize a pancake breakfast at school.
5. Collection jars
6. Raffle Funds can be anywhere from $10 to $1000.

Ten dollars may buy a small gift for your school – a poster for example, or it may pay for the postage for a number of used posters already around your school but not in use. With larger quantities of funds raised, you can send more stuff. We recommend you focus on sending larger quantities of used materials than to send one or two new things.

Recommended items include:
Used microscopes & slides, used school posters, quality student science projects, transistor radio, solar powered calculator, international reply coupons, and so on! Of course, there are many ideas about what kinds of items to send.

We would recommend you send items a whole class or a whole school could share, instead of pencils and whatnot that need to be distributed to specific students.

** RESPECT one day would like to try to send used textbooks and science equipment no longer in use in our schools to refugee schools abroad. Currently, this costs more than we can easily afford. If you have any ideas as to how we might practically accomplish this goal, or your school has a large quantity of items that could be donated in the future, please contact us.

Contact Information

• RESPECT INTERNATIONAL
• • 935 WARSAW AVENUE
  • WINNIPEG  MB   R3M 1B9
  • CANADA
• +1 204 284 1919
• Email: respect@respectrefugees.org

Have you ever wondered where RESPECT International has its headquarters? Or how to become a RESPECT volunteer?

These and other important questions are answered in RESPECT’s newly published Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Take some time to learn more about RESPECT and its Global Letter Exchange. There is a separate FAQ with information for refugee schools and non-refugee schools.

What if your question isn’t answered? Then email it to our webmaster and he will make sure you get an answer and will add the question to the FAQ.

by Raja M Ali

Everybody accepts that life can be unfair. But maybe it is not.

At the surface level, Atuu Waonaje’s life is an embodiment of injustice, cruelty and unfairness. He was born poor in an impoverished country and became a refugee at 15 years of age. Still a teenager, he lost his parents, had no possessions and was forced to take care of not only himself but also his brother.

How can fate be more unjust to a person? But looking deeper, we realize that while nature took many things away from Atuu, it also gave him gifts — such as compassion, drive and the confidence to make something out of nothing — which few of us can claim.

Turmoil, calamities and injustice didn’t bog down Atuu and while still in a refugee camp in Tanzania, he started CELA, the Centre for Youth Development and Adult Education, which was so successful that it won him the Women’s Refugee Commission Voice of Courage Award in 2007.

CELA, however, is an old story and Atuu is not resting on his laurels. He has recently started a new project called One Book Project (OBP).

Atuu observed that:

• There is neither a resource centre nor a library in his city, Fizi Territory (in the Democratic Republic of Congo), which means a large number of students have no access to information except what they learn at school;
• Young guys have not much to do after school. They generally do not have a habit of reading for pleasure or information and most even don’t know how to use a dictionary;
• People have books which are unused.

Ordinary people would have looked at the situation and done nothing but Atuu started OBP which collects books from various individuals and then puts them in a resource centre/library for use by locals. The main aims of the project are:

• Promoting a reading culture among community members who have lost that culture due to the war. Maybe starting a reading week.
• Empowering villagers with skills through books and connecting them with the world.
• Increasing literacy.

Atuu has already managed to collects a small number of books but for his project to achieve these aims, he needs your help. You can reach him by email.

As part of an ongoing commitment to improving the lives of refugees across the globe, RESPECT is looking to implement a project allowing sponsor schools to support their partner refugee communities by raising funds to purchase a Sun Oven.

Sun ovens are an environmentally-friendly device used to harness solar power to provide cooking facilities. They are manufactured by Sun Ovens International from Elburn, Illinois, USA.

Deforestation is a major issue worldwide, threatening not only the global environment, but the very existence of the 2 billion people worldwide who rely on wood and charcoal to prepare their food. Women often have to spend hours every day scavenging for enough wood to cook for their entire family, or to boil unsanitary water.

In areas where a large refugee influx has occurred, this problem is multiplied tenfold, as thousands of families compete for this valuable natural resource. In areas around refugee camps, the deforestation process can occur at a frightening rate. 25% of Africa is now deforested, leaving vast tracts of land useless for cultivation purposes. In Haiti, the figure stands at 90%.

The effects of stripping the land are devastating. Not only does deforestation increase the risk of landslides and avalanches during the rainy season, but the smoke produced from the hundreds of small cooking fires contributes to respiratory infections, tuberculosis and cancer.

Sun Ovens provide a clean and safe alternative. Once set up, a Sun Oven, essentially a large metal box with panels that focus the suns rays into the cooking area, has no running costs. The small ovens can cook meals for a family of up to 8 people, while the large ‘Villager’ ovens can provide up to 1,200 meals a day and save 384,000 pounds of wood a year.

Such is the appeal of the sun oven to environmentalists that even people in the US have started to use the smaller version. Las Vegas resident, Mike Little, began using a Sun Oven in preparation for potential Y2K issues, and has never stopped. Little uses his several times a week to prepare bread, rice and meat, and is now trying to raise the profile of the device amongst his fellow citizens.

“I want to raise awareness so that local agencies can get involved,” Little said, while demonstrating the Villager Solar Oven at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Earth Day celebration on April 10. “When you’re doing something for the environment you’re doing something for people.”

Worldwide, 2,500 small ovens and 250 large ovens are in use. These ovens are proving invaluable to refugee communities, not only taking away the need to toil collecting fuel, but providing income to those refugee communities who are using the ovens to bake bread for sale in the wider community.

RESPECT coordinator, Marc Schaeffer, feels raising funds to purchase these ovens for communities would be a worthwhile addition to RESPECT’s work. “We hope to introduce this idea to our sponsor schools, and also put the ovens up on our e-store. We are going to propose the idea to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and refugee communities to see if they would be interested in receiving a sun oven. From there, it’s simply a matter of raising the funds,” he said.

A small sun oven costs $299USD, while the larger version, which can support an entire community, and provide jobs and valuable skills, costs $10,000USD. A great deal of fundraising will be required to bring this project to fruition, but the concrete benefits for refugee communities are clear.

The beauty of this project is that by donating funds to help the communities, donors are also helping themselves. Deforestation, and the resulting changes to the global climate, is an issue affecting us all, and every sun oven operating in the field will help preserve the future of the planet.

kindly written by Michael Logan