Out of School
Start date: Jan 1, 2015,
End date: Dec 31, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
CADFA’s work brings young people from Britain and Palestine together in order to promote human rights. Over the past few years, Camden Abu Dis Friendship Association has worked together with Dar Assadaqa, Abu Dis, to help build links between schools in Britain and Palestine and to help the schools maintain their links. During this time, we have shown that this work is a fertile way of exploring human rights and challenging discrimination and including disaffected young people. The Out of School project (January 2015 to January 2016) will enable teachers from both countries to work together on ways to spread and strengthen this initiative.
The project will have three phases. The first, a mobility action in April 2015, will focus on learning and planning. Fourteen teachers from the UK will travel to Palestine, where they will train together with twenty teachers from Palestine. They will learn about each other’s countries, lives and work as teachers and the situation of schools and young people there. They will explore school/ youth twinning links and the ways in which they can enable young people to learn about each other’s lives and challenge discrimination. Based on this, they will work together to make materials and build a series of small linked projects that to spread and strengthen the links between their schools.
The second phase will put these plans into action in the two countries. During summer term 2015, the teachers will run these small projects in their schools, remaining in touch with each other by email and Skype.
The third phase will be another mobility action in September 2015, which will provide an opportunity for review and dissemination. Fourteen teachers from Palestine will travel to the UK for further work with twenty UK teachers. There will be a core group of people involved in the first exchange, but an opportunity for new people to be involved in order to spread awareness of the work.
This stage will extend the cross-cultural learning and discussion about school/ youth twinning links that were started in the previous phases. Teachers who have run projects in the summer will present their outcomes for review by the group. Participants will make action plans for their schools and areas of work for the following year. Then together they will concentrate on disseminating their work to other teachers. They will prepare materials for a final conference to which other teachers and youth workers will be invited.
The Out of School project will have short- and longer-term learning outcomes for the participants themselves, their school students (including young people who have been disaffected from school), their colleagues and teachers/ youth workers in other organisations. It will strengthen the twinning links between Camden and Abu Dis and other places in the UK and Palestine, widening cultural knowledge and interest in anti-discrimination and human rights.