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.

RESPECT Uganda is working towards the achievement of the objectives of RESPECT through following ways:

1. Identifying the various refugee communities existing in Uganda.
2. Making sure people in Uganda understand RESPECT.
3. Widen membership of the RESPECT community in Uganda.
4. Encourage the spirit of teamwork and hard work among RESPECT members.
5. Ensure RESPECT benefits are realized to develop refugee communities.
6. Encourage refugees to express their views so they can be channeled through RESPECT.
7. Encourage the spirit of volunteerism among members to help refugees.
8. To create links with RESPECT branches worldwide.

In order to achieve these goals, RESPECT Uganda is open to the world community for new people with new ideas that will help RESPECT move forward.

RESPECT ACDA
(Agoro Community Development Association, Kitgum, Uganda)

In West Africa people are facing high unemployment and a high cost of living.  This has led to civil unrest and protests.  In Sierra Leone there are many challenges facing a government that is trying to rebuild the economy.  In addition to this many refugees from Liberia are living in Sierra Leone due to conflict in Liberia.  This has caused tensions between the Liberians and Sierra Leonians.

The refugees have expressed the desire for education and training.  Given these opportunities the refugees are better able to help themselves and have futures outside of the refugee camps.  RESPECT International is one non-profit organisation that is providing the refugees education free of charge.  Volunteers in Sierra Leone provide a link between refugee students and tutors living in many countries around the world.  The tutors send course work and assignments to the volunteers who make sure the students receive it.  Then they email back the completed assignments to the tutors who then mark them and offer encouragement.

This system gives the refugees hope and lets them know that the outside world has not forgotten about them.  The learn not only their course work but that they are entitled to the future they choose despite being caught up in violence and civil disputes and their past.

Please Visit Our Website.

Children’s Welfare Primary School

This school was established in 1998.  During this time war in Sierra Leone meant that many children had their homes burned down and their parents killed.  The school has branches in Freetown and in the Provinces: one at Rokel in Kambia district and the other at Sanda Magbolothoh in post Loko district.  In total there are 870 pupils.  we offer classes 1-6 the following subjects: math, language arts, physical health education, social studies, religions moral education, science, agricultural science, creative practical arts, poetry, literature and drama, home economics. Students attended the national primary school examnation (N.P.S.E) 2002, and 2003 school year and have done very well.

Request:

• Our request is (1) building structure, sitting accomodation, teaching aids and learning materials such as text and exercise books, chalks, rulers, pen/pencils, erasers, used clothes, shoes, food, school van, vehicle for the school going childern, football kits, and computers. Incentives for teachers as these schools have a total of 15 teachers and they are all volunteer teachers.

Oru Refugee Camp. Oru, Ogun State, Nigeria.  2008 figures show that over 3000 people live in Oru Refugee Camp.  These people are originally from many countries on Africa: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Central Africa Republic, Congo, Erytrea, Côte-d’Ivoire, Togo, and more.

Some of these people have lived there for twenty years, children born in this time have known no other home.  integration into Nigerian society has proved difficult leaving the refugees feeling ostracised and persecuted.

The camp clinic closed in 2005 and since then health in the camp has dramatically deteriorated.  Without contraception HIV/AIDS has spread and many more children are born into the abject poverty.  Without a regular income many daughters are forced into prostitution to bring home money for food for their parents and siblings.

Education and training is a fundamental need to allow the refugees to make choices about their future and let them earn an independent living.  This is why the work of RESPECT International is so crucial in this and many other refugee camps.  These camps are supposed to be temporary homes for refugees and offer little or no facilities for people.  But if given no other alternative the people are stuck there and the camps will only get bigger thereby increasing the scale of an already serious problem.

Poster Contest

RESPECT (Refugee Education Sponsorship Program – Enhancing Communities Together) is hosting an international poster contest! Students from all parts of the world, Azerbaijan to Canada, Japan to Zimbabwe, will be using their creativity and artistic talent to further RESPECT’s mission of promoting awareness of refugee issues among non-refugee students.

Contest Theme

We begin the poster contest by having students worldwide brainstorm the theme. Once the theme is decided, students create drawings or paintings based on the theme. Send your suggestions to: postercontest@respectrefugees.org.

Winning Entries

Winners will be selected in several age categories among refugee and non-refugee students, as well has categories for computer generated posters. Last year’s contest had thirty participants, from China, Thailand and USA. We selected a winners in the following categories.

• Non-refugee 6-9 years-old
• Non-refugee 10-11 years-old
• Non-refugee 12-13 years-old
• Non-refugee 14-18 years-old

As in years past, this year we are looking forward to selecting winners from among entries sent in by refugee students.

You can view last year’s contest winners at http://respectrefugees.org/ecards/index09.shtml.

For all the information on this contest please click here.

“Children live in slums here because their parents or guardians have little to no money for education, clothing, shoes, housing, medicine and food. They are surrounded by so many hardships, frustrations, and a lack of basic care because their loved ones have died, were lost in the war or have contracted AIDS,” Oscar Benjamin.

Growing up and experiencing the trouble in Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) Oscar Benjamin, at seven years old, had a dream of helping the children affected by the violence.  That dream became reality in 2006 in the form of Eye to Eye Child Care (EECC): a community based, child welfare organization that helps children in Uvira and Fizi in the DR Congo get off the streets, out of the slums, and into school.  EECC is a childrens home which provides shelter, protection, food and education.

“One thousand children live on the streets in these two towns alone (Uvira and Fizi). They make a living doing odd jobs and they are promised money for school and then forced into labor or sex and taken out of the country to Burundi, and Rwanda,” he said.

EECC is also working with the government DR Congo to find ways of taking the children off the streets and into a place of safety and back into education.  More importantly they are working towards campaigns which protect children from being taken advantage of.  It is common for adults to promise to feed street children or pay for education but instead the children then become victims of sexual and physical abuse.  Children are also taken away to Burundi or Rwanda, for example, and used for child labour.  In addition to this, drug and alcohol are ever present dangers on the streets hich the children use as escape mechanisms.

One of the important jobs when moving forward is for the EECC to give the children hope for the future.  One of the ways in which he is achieving this is through RESPECT International’s Global Letter Exchange Program.  Refugee students, under the age of 18, write letters to non-refugee students.  “This gives the children the feeling that an opportunity lies ahead of them. It gives them something to look forward to,” he said.  More than 30 children from the EECC will participate in the program.

“I am surrounded by children who have reached a point of vulnerability where they can’t handle life anymore. Children like myself who had dreams, ambitions and goals but who are surrounded by so many hardships, frustrations, and a lack of basic care because their loved ones have died, are lost in war or have contracted AIDS,” Benjamin said.  The Letter Exchange gives the children something to look forward to and Benjamin said it might give the children of the EECC “a feeling of being valued somewhere in someone else’s life.”

http://www.respectrefugees.org/

Read more in our ezine.