When I was invited by Allen Witten and Mari Sekine to join iEARN Girl Rising Community I loved the idea. Our world can be a very unfair place especially if you were born a GIRL! On top of victims of poverty, violence, slavery and all sorts of statistics to show the proportions of such injustice are WOMEN! This community alerts and also takes action to denounce and fight this situation.
Education is the most powerful resource to change this reality. According to Ismar Soares in his educommunication research the young participants of these projects express the desire to find in the cultural production through the use of ICT the possibilities of transformation of local reality. They open to a critical understanding of social reality and raise their interest in participating in the construction of a more just society, confirming their vocation for the democracy.
Considering the importance of education and students engagement in collaborative projects a few iEARN members decided to create iEARN Girl Rising Community to help their students exchange on this matter. Students investigate the site, watch the video, produce collaborative work to raise awareness in their communities as well as to exchange with other countries and I was invited to join them. However, as a retired teacher it is not easy for me to engage students in a school project, this is why I decided to share the information with teachers who might be interested in joining Allen and Mari and their students. I hope you appreciate the site https://www.girlrising.com/ , click on “for educators”, then “curriculum and tools”.. You can also e-mail Allen Witten on certainpeace@hotmail.com if you're interested in participating.
From my friend Ashraf Noorani:
'Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things they are transformed.'
Global Collaboration for Sustainable Development is the theme for the annual iEARN Conference this year. The 2018 International Conference and Youth Summit coincides with the 30th Anniversary of iEARN, which started in 1988 with the first project collaborations between schools in New York and schools in Moscow. The iEARN annual conference is an important, in-person gathering to celebrate ongoing virtual work and has been hosted by a different country each year since 1994. The event will reinforce communications and develop partnerships between educators and youth locally, regionally, and globally, and will provide an opportunity for educators and youth to share successful classroom project examples and develop new collaborative project ideas. In addition to educator and youth led workshops, the event also features cultural excursions, culture nights, and keynotes by leaders working in the fields of global education and virtual exchange. Take a look at the conference site http://iearn2018.org
iEARN is represented in Brazil by the NGO Educadores Globais http://educadoresglobais.org.br/ which has been promoting public schools participation since 2007. All iEARN projects are created and proposed by the participating schools. There are currently three projects from Brazilian schools in this platform: Hands For Peace, created by teacher Almerinda Garibaldi, the president of iEARN Brasil; Hip Hop on The Spot, created by teacher Rose Rocha, arts teacher and rapper and International Youth Press, created and implemented in all municipal schools from São Paulo by teacher Carlos Lima. You can check these and many other projects and join them in the site www.iearn.org
For more information visit our FB https://www.facebook.com/eduglobais/ or get in touch by email educadoresglobais@gmail.com
