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.

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

Available from now at RESPECT TV the new TV channel as support to all refugees people around the world.

The goal of the project is to let people understand deeper and deeper life of refugees people and see with their own eyes what is going on apart from their lives.

Yaounde RESPECT Club

• Since January 2005, a group of 8 urban Burundese refugees ages 13 to 18 years has correspond with the Bourg Madame High School Solidarity Club in the South West of France.

• The members of the Club come from several high schools in the city of Yaounde.

Ayifli Fred Kodzo

As the Country Coordinator for RESPECT Ghana I believe that issues of refugees everywhere need our urgent attention but should we always wait to see our brothers and sisters, mothers and children become refugees before we start showing our love and concern? Are we as a people and global citizens well informed about issues of refugees and on the rights entitled to refugees for international protection under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol? How about the rights of refugees, enshrined in the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights which gives the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution?.

The fundamental truth is that whether we like it or not, we are all global citizens and in today’s globalized world, we cannot escape the fact that actions taken in the Europe and North America, Asia and all over the world do have reverberations in Ghana, and in a similar vein, war in Africa affects Europe and North America as well. We can no longer afford to ignore our common humanity or focus our vision narrowly on our own interests, our own people or our own problems. This is the true meaning of globalization. The world’s problems, and the world’s successes, today belong to all of us. We are responsible for each other, and we must RESPECT one another.

This essentially is the motivation behind my duty as the Country Coordinator for RESPECT Ghana, I see this role as an opportunity to also reach out and promote the goals of human rights and world peace. I am optimistic that with my team members and with your help and ideas we can raise awareness about refugee issues through our ever widening networks and affiliations. There is an urgent need to make the world a better place devoid of wars, disputes and terrorist attacks. Please do not hesitate but subscribe with us and let us push our vision forward with your wonderful ideas and solutions to make the world a better place for all.

Adjei Alex has been coordinating various activities for RESPECT Guinea. Recently, he was appointed as Principal for Nelson Mandela International School.

He has shown tremendous enthusiasm in working with RESPECT International. He hopes that RESPECT will start receiving more letters for the students of his school.

RESPECT recently received a package containing letters from refugees students in Liberia. Once they are sorted, the letters will be sent to non-refugee students to be answered.

by Maria Brundin

Sports can change lives – that is the main idea of Africa Change International (ACI), a Ghana-based non-governmental organization (NGO) working to improve the life of children through sports.

By offering children the opportunity to play sports, such as athletics, basketball, hockey and swimming, ACI’s aim is to keep children from dropping out of school.

Its training requires the children to attend school and teaches them about health. This not only raises the educational level but also gives children the opportunity to get scholarships for higher education and skills required to earn them a livelihood.

Peter Osei, Executive Director of ACI, talks about the many advantages of sports. Being an active participant develops children’s self-esteem and activates them, preventing them from roaming the streets.

“[Sports] will make them spend less time in sedentary pursuits such as violence, crime and other the social vices,” Mr. Osei says.

For the moment, 400 children aged 10 to11 are participating in the ACI programs. The children attend school in the morning, come to the ACI’s computer laboratory for the ICT Training and take their sports classes in the afternoon.

Sports have the ability to unite people, regardless of race, language and politics. They teach participants respect and teamwork. They are also one of the few arenas where everyone plays on equal terms. Where skills, not background, determine success.

In the future ACI hopes to build an extensive sports academy and recruit children who are underprivileged or living on the streets. ACI also wishes to expand beyond the borders of Ghana to other African countries.

ACI looks “to employ training skills in sports, computer literacy and education to espouse equity in social policies that address livelihood opportunities for socially excluded children and young people.

“We want to help them succeed in future even without the existence of ACI.”

Respect International

The following letter was submitted to RESPECT International from the principal of the Calvary Baptist Church School in Monrovia, Liberia, seeking help to rebuild its system.

To Whom It May Concern

The Calvary Baptist Church School System was established in 1964 by a group of Mid-Baptist Missionaries from the United States of America, who two years earlier established the Calvary Baptist Church.

The purpose of establishing the school was threefold:

1. To provide kids with a strong foundation in reading, writing, and speaking.
2. To impact sound Biblical training as a basis upon which spiritual and moral foundation of kids can be built.
3. To cater to the educational needs of the Children of church members.

Liberian School System

RESPECT International continues to dedicate all the resources possible to improve the education of refugee students.  In order to help more people there is a need for more resources.  To find out ways in which you can help please visit our website.  http://www.respectrefugees.org/

Description:

• Fr. Gale Secondary School (Itula) is a day mixed school. It is young and starting in 2002 with S1 and S2. Next year it will reach S3. The school comprises of both nationals and refugee students. The total number of students is 242.
• The subjects taught are Mathematics, English, Physical Chemistry, Biology, Agriculture, Accounting, Political Education, Geography, History, Christian Religion Education, office practice and commerce.

Comments:

This is a very good program, it at least rectifies our worst condition of learning; but the most important thing is to sponsor students and provide equipments.

RESPECT International is a refugee education soposorship program, helping to provide free education for refugees who have had their education disrupted by war and violence.  For further information on the great work RESPECT does please visit our website.