By Veronica Persson
7 September 2011
A visit to the land of Simba
On August 7th, the Make the Link Climate exChange team met in the “land of simba” – Kenya. Simba in Swahili means lion, but most of you probably learned this by getting to know Mustafa’s son Simba, the star in Disney’s “The Lion King”.
Lions are a source of income for Kenya thanks to protected national reserves. In fact, tourists from all over the world come and bring in an approximate 620 million pounds each year. For this reason, it is distressing to read that Kenya’s lions could disappear within the next ten years.
According to an article in the new scientist, 100 lions are disappearing from Kenya each year. The major reason is the destruction of their habitat, but drought has also been a contributing factor. Kenya is experiencing a severe drought and this is leading to rural people going into “wildlife areas in search of grazing and water supplies for their herds of livestock”. The increase of severe drought is linked to climate change. I am writing about lions because their disappearance has something to do with what our project is about because in the next ten years the young people we are working with will inherit our world and will have to solve one of our greatest challenges ahead: climate change.
Make the Link – Climate exChange is all about young people’s increased awareness and understanding of the global dimensions of climate change. During one week in Kisumu, Kenya’s third biggest city, our representatives from Kenya, Malawi, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and the UK met to discuss how we take the programme forward and keep on inspiring teachers and young people on let’s be honest a quite dry topic.
The highlight of the meeting was a surprise visit to three schools in Kisumu, where we met with Peter, the head teacher of Obola Primary school, Richard doing a water and sanitation project at Nyabera primary school and Florence and Atieno from Nyamgun Primary school. It was so inspiring to see that our African partner schools have both solar panels, green houses and are using the power of the sun to keep students healthy. Encouraging teachers and students to adapt to climate change will be very important in East Africa, because the drought is not something happening 10 years down the line, it is happening now. Make the Link – Climate exChange wants to bring this reality back to Europe in order to ensure that in the jungle the mighty jungle the lions will still sleep tomorrow tonight… if we continue our work on halting climate change…
Blog posted on the Make the Link - Climate exChange website
By globalcitizenship
20 February 2008
Meeting with Kofi Mawuli Klu 4.pm at the Carib Youth Centre, Camberwell on Wednesday 21 November 2007 Citizenship Initiatives The aim of the meeting was to discuss issues and developments following on from the Cross Community Forum held at Kingston University on July 12 2007 Action points emanating from the discussion between Urszula Basini and Kofi MawuluKlu.
- Black Boys into Primary Education.
There are very few young men from the African-Caribbean Community attending the Initial teacher raining course at the School of Education at Kingston University. This is reciprocated in the country. This is an area of concern as many young boys from the African Diaspora are not in touch with positive black role models either in the family life not at school resulting in underachievement. These young people need support to actively engage with society and to actively engage in educational opportunities in secondary and higher education levels. The youth community would welcome some learning programmes (short courses) on Global Citizenship, with visits to the School of Education to attend some lectures with a view to what the School of Education has to offer. This would lead onto encouragement to join undergraduate courses in Initial Teacher Education in order to become primary school teachers. Members of the School of Education staff (e.g. UB) would visit local schools in Camberwell, Brixton, Stockwell, Balham etc to talk to sixth formers about the possibilities of teaching in primary schools as a career. New graduates could be encouraged to devote some of their early years of work to teaching in primary schools. 2 International Linking of Wineba School of Education, Ghana with KUSEWineba School of Education is a recently formed SOE in Ghana. A member of the cross community dialogue meeting that were held at Kingston University has been appointed as the administrator of the new school of education and is keen to develop links with Kingston University with a view to developing Global Citizenship Courses. It is also an opportunity for student exchange. KUSE has a successful exchange system with Uganda, RSA and Kerala, India. As this is a growth area, Ghana would be a welcome venue.. UB waiting for contact with Ghana to further develop this link. 3 Community Co-educators scheme.This scheme looks at education of adults in the community to support their children in classrooms both at primary and secondary levels. Parents in the community would like more involvement in their children’s schooling; they would like to help the children with home work. They would like to attend some courses to gain qualifications in order to do this. KUSE might be able to provide such credit bearing courses that could accumulate to further qualifications such as degrees. This would be positive way into encouraging the African Carribbean community into Higher Education. UB to talk to CEWC and CPD to ascertain poaaibilities 4 Research into developing Global Citizenship Education in a village school in Ghana.. This proposal is made by Kofi Mawuli Klu as a suggestion for a Masters in Education Programme at the School of Education. UB to find out the possibilities and fees for this. Urszula Basini 21November 2007. Camberwell
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