Education for Social Justice Program (ESJP) activities in the countries of ISSA Council Members

Bosnia and Herzegovina

The ESJ team in Bosnia and Herzegovina is working on developing a module for an advanced Step by Step training which integrates transformative dialogue and an ethnographic approach. They hope to empower teachers in the use of Standard 7. They plan to train 800 teachers before June 2008.

Uzbekistan

The Uzbek SbS team has been conducting ESJ trainings in Fergana and Buhara as part of the EIDHR-funded project. The training is supplemented by ongoing work with teachers about changing their environments (gathering photos, illustrations, books created by parents which include history of names, etc.) Teachers have opened a competition on the most interesting book “About me,” with the goal of demonstrating cultural diversity through the name of a child. A whole host of other activities have also been planned.

Serbia

CIP has undergone an external evaluation for their project “Equal Chances in Secondary Schooling” (funded by Pestalozzi Children's Foundation and Fund for an Open Society Serbia). During the project, CIP conducted ESJ trainings for secondary school professors and NGO Roma Activists. These participants then went on to conduct workshops for their own students in “mixed pairs” (professor and Roma activist.) The evaluation documented extremely positive feedback from participants, who stated that the relationship among children is changing, and that compared to when the children entered the first grade in September, the children are almost unrecognizable — they are more aware of each other and care more for each other.

The evaluation revealed that the children participating in the training were truly thrilled with the methodology used. They feel that they hardly communicated with their teachers before, but now they are active participants in their own learning process and much more comfortable with differences and their own identities. Professors and teachers involved in the project have introduced many new activities, including ESJ posters and peer education.

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