Education Sri Lanka Project #38157

Train 155 Youth to Teach 2325 Sri Lankan Children

by Tea Leaf Trust

Train 155 Youth to Teach 2325 Sri Lankan Children

Project Report | Aug 30, 2019
Update on our Community English Programme

By Tim Pare | Co-Founder/Director

Our students, now trained to teach Basic English

Hello,

It is lovely to have the opportunity to update you through this platform, and once again to thank you for your support.

In the last three months things have gradually returned to normal in the tea plantations in Sri Lanka - normal within very strange times. The last year has seen an unconstitutional coup (Oct - Dec 2018), terrible terrorist attacks (April 2019) and the rise and threat of Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism (since 2012, but accelerated since the attacks on April 21st).

As you may have read in the last report, the attacks and resulting communal violence have led to the government and zonal education departments stopping all external engagement with schools. This means that we are yet to be allowed into schools to run our programme. However, we have made some excellent progress:

1) We have trained 200 young people in how to teach Basic English to young children from their communities

2) 160 of these passed their basic teaching assessment first time

3) 40 of these passed the assessment after further lessons and practice

4) Teaching pairs have been created with the top 100 from assessment being paired with the lower 100 to form a nice balance

5) We are in continuing discussions with the Zonal Education Directors in the areas where we work and are hopeful that we can start to run classes from September 4th 2019

6) Groups have students have developed excellent street dramas around ethnic cohesion and the celebration of diversity to be performed in community locations this term (this is not in the original project but has been added to utilise the time when we would have been teaching the programme)

7) We are organising four days of children's activities in October to teach the children who have missed out on classes and expect over 2,000 children to benefit from some basic English lessons and health and nutrition information

8) We sent 76 students from the tea estates with staff to a peaceful protest in Colombo voicing the need for peace and reconciliation

We continue to work to deliver the project that you have supported - the above points 6, 7 and 8 have not utilised any of this funding, but have made sure that the students have been learning leadership and teaching skills in whatever ways we can teach them, at the same time as supporting peace within the country and young children learning English.

Thanks again and do get in touch with any concerns or comments, or if you would like to volunteer or support us in a different way.

With very best wishes,

Tim, Yas and All at Tea Leaf Trust

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Jun 6, 2019
Update on our work and the situation in Sri Lanka

By Tim Pare | Director

Our young, diverse staff team and volunteer

Dear All,

Thank you for your support for our work to train young people to enable them to teach children in their communities. This report is to update you on the progress we have made in starting the project, and also to give you an update on the security situation in the country, how that is impacting on delivery and what we are doing to ensure we create change.

On Easter Sunday, homegrown Islamist extremists detonated eight bombs targeting Christians in churches and tourists in luxury hotels. The government response was poor to non-existent and that has allowed the growing wave of Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism to exert its influence. The communal violence has led to curfews due to attacks on mosques and Muslim businesses in certain regions and more widespread individual acts of harassment and assault of individual Muslims.

The overall situation has been intensified by a terrorist 'safe house' with blueprints of 30 local government schools being found within 5km of one of our centres. This has led to increased security and our Zonal Education Director asking us to postpone the start of our Community English Programme until further notice. We believe this to be at least until September 2019.

We are using this delay to embed peace and reconciliation activities in the Community English Programme. This programme was going to start with 15 minutes of general ice-breaker activities and end with 15 minutes of fun games. Instead, we are going to deliver short, fun sessions on diversity and ethnic cohesion in these moments. We are doing this in response to the communal tensions that gain hold easily and quickly in a country where children of different ethnicities are educated separately. This results in 70% of Sri Lankan youth not having a friend outside of their ethnic group.

This is a terrible situation that the country is still coming to terms with, and one that has delayed the start of our programme. However, it has given us the time and space to tailor our programme so that whilst children are learning vital English, they are also developing a greater understanding of how diversity is something to be proud of and celebrate.

The overall aims and outcomes will remain the same and we will soon start the training of our main diploma students in how to teach Basic English to kids. We will though, gain a greater impact by focusing the available 'downtime' and create games and activities that bring a greater understanding of others. We are doing this because we believe that real-life experiences have the ability to overcome inherited prejudices.

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Mar 12, 2019
Community English Programme

By Tim Pare | Founder Tea Leaf Trust

Hello,

Thanks for supporting us, being interested in what we do and what progress we have made on this project.

This fundraiser is to train 155 students of our main diploma to teach 2,325 children Basic English for free. Although it has not started yet at our centre in Nuwara Eliya, in the heart of the Sri Lanka tea plantations - we have been running it at our first centre in Maskeliya.

Each year in Maskeliya, in term one (January to March), we train our 18 to 24 year old students how to manage a classroom, encourage and motivate children as well as keep their attention as well as how to deliver amazing, interactive and fun lessons.

Then, in terms two and three (May to July and September to December), our school closes on Wednesday afternoons and all of our students, managed by the 2nd year advanced diploma, head out to remote schools in their communities to teach Basic English for two hours.

In this way, in Maskeliya, every week we work at 31 tea estate government schools to teach over 2,300 children.

For the children, it is a great boost to their confidence in the vital subject.

For the students, who feel worthless when they join us as they have not achieved their parents' dream of going to University, they begin to understand their worth and as teachers experience a new level of respect in their community.

For schools, they get extra support in a subject where they have a chronic lack of skills. Only 2 out of 25 English Teacher can actually speak English.

I will keep this page updated for this specific project, but wanted to write about the success we have already had with this project at a different centre - it really is win-win development.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for supporting.

With best wishes,

Tim

Attachments:

Our Annual Report for 2018 (PDF)

3 Attachments

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