Bryan Patten provided an update on Suas’ work with Community and Government Schools in Kenya and reflected on how the national level crisis has had an impact on both public and private schools. He also reflected on the approaches which DFID and USAID are taking to address the issues of corruption within the national level programme.

The Centre for Global Development through Education Programme for Teacher Educator Exchange Planning Day took place on Friday the 19th of March in preparation for the upcoming trips in April. The group consisted of the team of teacher educators from CGDE partner HEI’s (north and south of Ireland) undertaking the Teacher Educator Exchange Programme in both Uganda and Lesotho.

Drawing upon the writings of the well known Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, Dr Thomas Grenham described and explored critically how some of his concepts of education were adapted and applied to the Turkana situation of North-West Kenya. Freire frequently spoke and wrote about the concept of literacy in education defining it as going beyond the mere skills of mechanical reading, writing, and numeracy.

Christian Aid has in the main not become involved in the formal education sector. Instead, Christian Aid and its partners have consistently tried to address the need for education for those outside the school system, excluded due to poverty, marginalisation, gender inequity, age, etc. The talk explored this non-formal sector, and in particular focused on the case of the Sierra Leone programme at present.

The Teacher Education, Management and Professionalisation Reform Summit took place at the Serena Hotel in Kigali, Rwanda, on Monday the 8th and Tuesday the 9th of March 2010, and Dr Rosarii Griffin, Director of CGDE, was invited as one of the international keynote speakers.

Irish Aid highlighted the importance of education for women and girls on the 8th March this year to mark International Woman’s Day. The Education for All (EFA) 2010 Global Monitoring Report (GMR) with a focus on Reaching the Marginalised was launched by Peter Power, T.D. Minister of State for Overseas Development, and hosted at the Limerick headquarters of Irish Aid.

The UNESCO/UKFIET Colloquium on the Global Monitoring Report of 2010: “Reaching the Marginalised” took place on the 8th of March 2010 in London and was attended by Dr James Urwick on behalf of CGDE.

Fairtrade, a social, economic and civic empowerment movement, has grown from strength to strength in recent years, both nationally [...]

The theory and principles of Development are the basis on which First World educators approach Third World interventions. However, for smaller NGOs in particular, there is often a different dynamic.

Projects established in Cape Town by Protea Education Development Project have state-of-the-art computer technology at their core. The project include additional support services, such as school feeding programmes, health and intensive ICT programmes.