Presentation College Bray – Anti-slavery campaign

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As news of the terrible tragedy in Bangladesh reaches us we pay attention for a few minutes to the dreadful work and living conditions of so many people in developing countries. We think for a while about how we can influence companies’ ethics. Perhaps even for a while some improvements are made… but the dust settles, literally, and we go back to buying our bargains and ignoring the real costs inflicted by our consumer society. Then the conditions in which others are forced to live fade from our minds. Modern day slavery is one, among many, of the issues that exercise the minds of students in schools throughout the country when they engage with Development Education projects in their schools.

Students in Presentation College Bray are among those taking up these difficult themes in their school and doing some pretty impressive work as a result.  Elaine Brennan, a graduate of the Education Department NUI Maynooth, is currently teaching there and contacted me recently about the project she participated in this year with the boys and their Art teacher, Clifton Rooney.

The students have combined their skills in Art and English to create a mural in their school and to write a writing a poingnant and heart felt essay about modern day slavery with a view to raising awareness about this issue in their school and across a network of schools. The essay was published on the  Development Education.ie website and has also appeared on  SpunOut.ie

It is clear that these boys have an interest in making things change, and not just for a while. The initiative in Presentation College Bray is sustained over the course of the year and is repeated each year with different groups and on different themes. Clifton has also written a reflection on the project and its impact on him and on the students.

I wanted to post this to say that hearing from Elaine has prompted me to try to find out more about the ways schools are “doing Dev Ed”, how they are engaging with issues of global social justice and human rights and more importantly how they work out ways to address these issues.

I am aware that many schools do many interesting things but too often this is not widely known. Too often also teachers are castigated in various ways by various pundits while those of us familiar with schools know the reality to be quite different especially when it comes to supporting young people to explore ideas and action they feel passionate about.

Let me know if you are in a school where there are interesting Development Education projects taking place. They don’t have to be elaborate and they don’t have to already have been publicised on the internet. As a start I would like to use this Dev Ed week blog to showcase such projects, to publicise what you are doing and to consider the ways we may be able to work toegther to make sure what is happening is communicated more widely: especially to student teachers!

The Education Department is also willing and able to support schools in this work and we have a number of ideas about how to supoprt your efforts.

Contact me soon: ideally before the end of May 2013.

Book Launch by Peadar King

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what_in_the_worldWe are delighted to announce the publication of Peadar King’s new book based on stories gathered in the course of creating the highly acclaimed documentary series What in the World?. The sixth series was broadcast on RTE last November and as you know it aimed to raise greater public awareness on a range of global development and human rights issues.

The book promises to be as insightful at capturing the human consequences of global economic inequalities as was the series.

There are a number of forthcoming launches that you may like to put in your diary:

Saturday 2 March Temple Gate Hotel, Ennis (as part of the Ennis bookclub festival) with Denis Halliday, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations at 6 p.m.

Monday 4 March in the staff common room University College Cork with Pat Breen T.D. Chairperson Joint Oireachtas Committee for Foreign Affairs, Fachtna O’Driscoll SMA and Nick Chisolm, Centre for Global Development, UCC. at 5 p.m.

Friday 8 March in the Irish Aid Centre, O’Connell Street Dublin with Joe Costello T.D. Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade with responsibility for Trade and Development Steve Carson, RTE and Eugene Quinn, PSEU in the Irish Aid Centre at 5.30 p.m.

The book is available in Eason’s book shops and should also be soon available in the NUIM campus bookshop. It can also be purchased directly from The Liffey Press. Peadar has told us that NUIM students would be very welcome to come any one of these events.

Do note that they will be providing light refreshments so if you are planning to attend you should let the organisers know in advance (so they have some indication of numbers). You can contact Liffey Press on: theliffeypress@gmail.com 

Maynooth hosts YST winners

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YSTedThe winners of the YST competition , the three girls we met via video-conference during Dev Ed week from Kibosho Girls’ School near Kilimanjaro,  came to Ireland/Maynooth last week to attend and present their project at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition. They were honoured at a formal reception in Renehan Hall and had something of a whirlwind tour including appearances on RTE radion and television! See their full interview with Emma O’Kelly.

The Education Department had the privilege of working with them on creating a ‘virtual poster’ of their winning project. It gives a flavour of their project certainly but also worth noting that they had no time to plan or rehearse this narrative and the landscape was created in 30 mins after only a one hour introductory session in how to use this software. It represents pretty impressive work for youngsters who do not have the same access to computers of the typical Irish teen!

You can find out all about their adventures in Ireland on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ystanzania and/or on Twitter @ystanzania

What is Dev Ed? #whatisdeved

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IDEA (the Irish Development Education Association) is inviting people to participate in a new campaign that aims to raise awareness of and support for Development Education. It’s a simple 6-week campaign that aims to engage the public in a conversation about what DE is and why it is needed. It has been developed and coordinated by a task group of IDEA members.

On Monday, 5th Nov, they will launch a specially created YouTube video. Check them out facebook, Twitter (@IDEAIreland/#whatisdeved) and on their website.

Over the next 6 weeks they hope to share the video widely and use it to prompt conversation online about what DE is and why it is needed. The campaign finishes with a small event in the second week of December.

So what do you think it is?

Maynooth students meet the first Tanzanian Young Scientists

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On Wednesday morning a group of Maynooth PDE student teachers sat in the Education Lecture Theatre waiting patiently as we grappled to get an agreeable sound and video link over a mobile phone from the Aga Khan Diamond Jubilee Hall in Dar es Salaam. The event: the inaugural Young Scientist Tanzania (YST) exhibition, where the judging of the projects was taking place.

Our host, to introduce us to the students and some colleagues there, was Director of YST, Kamagishu Gozibert. Formerly a PhD student and lecturer in the Anthropology Department in NUIM, Kamagishu reminisced a little about the Education Lecture Theatre and his time in NUI Maynooth. His humour and enthusiasm made him the ideal host.

We had the opportunity to talk to students whose projects ranged from ecology, chemistry and social topics and though we spoke with only a handful of students the buzz in the hall from the other 50 or so projects was coming through loud and (well,  fairly!) clear. What was crystal clear, however, was how passionately the students felt about their work and how impressed the judges were by this: among them Dr. Noel Murphy, Head of Immunology in the Science Faculty in NUIM and Michael Doorly,  Director of Development Education Concern Worldwide whom we also spoke to.

As Kamagishu held the brief interviews with the students and as our Irish colleagues there spoke, the significance of the event began to emerge, many students having travelled thousands of kilometres to attend (up to 26 hours’ bus journeys in some cases!). The quality of the work and the intense pride the students had in their achievements was also patently evident, even over the jerky and muffled sounds of the video connection.

At the end of the session Joe Clowry informed us that just that morning he’d picked Tony Scott up from the airport.  Retired professor of Physics in UCD, Dr.  Scott was one of the original co-founders, 49 years ago, of the Young Scientist Exhibition in Ireland.

On this visit to Tanzania he has met the students in Dar es Salaam and has visited schools as part of his trip.

Maynooth PDE students will be interested to know that the girls who very aptly said we were ‘highly invited’ to Kilimanjaro (Project title: Industrial fertilisers and increased nitrites in water) are Tanzania’s first Young Scientists! We look forward to welcoming you ‘up here in Ireland’ in January 2013!

More photos from the YST 2012 event.