August 2002
Rebuilding Educational Systems in Places of
Crisis
The new book, Helping Children Outgrow War,
features case studies from war-torn regions
Violence occurs quickly, at the slash of a
machete or the twitch of a trigger finger. Healing and rebuilding,
on the other hand, are slow work. Authentic participation is slow
work, especially with children. Rebuilding a sense of confidence
and trust in others is slow work. Engagement with overwhelming memory
is slow work. Rebuilding the ecology of learning must go gently
. . . day rises slowly from night.
—From Helping Children Outgrow
War
 In
the last decade, international donor agencies and policymakers
have devoted increasing resources to a new field of research focused
on post-conflict education. Much of the research has grown out
of field work in Africa, where armed conflict has risen steadily
in the past several years. One year ago, USAID's Africa Bureau
commissioned a background paper to collect case studies and synthesize
success stories of educational reconstruction following armed conflicts.
The paper has now grown into a book titled Helping
Children Outgrow War, written by Vachel Miller and colleagues
at the Center for International Education, University of Massachusetts,
and edited by EDC's Ash Hartwell.
The book is built around case studies of both formal and informal
educational programs developed in the midst or the aftermath of
conflict and crisis. Miller and his co-authors discuss the case
studies in terms of a four-stage model of recovery developed by
other researchers in the field: emergency, recovery, rehabilitation,
and reconstruction. "In the emergency phase, basic social services
have ceased functioning, and communities may require external assistance
for survival," the authors write. "In the recovery and
reconstruction phases, a provisional government resumes functioning,
and social services, such as schooling, are beginning to return
to 'normal' operation."
While these stages refer to the level of social and governmental
services, the book emphasizes the need to view the recovery process
on an individual level. In fact, one feature that characterizes
the profiled programs is that they treat "basic psychological
needs as a design tool." In other words, each program attended
to such questions as these:
- How can an intervention create a sense of security for members
of a community?
- How can policy dialogue build connection and a sense of belonging
among participants
- How do educational activities affirm the identity of learners?
- How do educational activities enable learners to sharpen their
comprehension of reality?
The relationship between psychological healing and post-conflict
education is the focal point of The Butterfly Garden, an educational
program for children in Sri Lanka's Eastern Province, featured as
a case study in Helping Children Outgrow War.
In 1994, when researchers from the Canadian Health Reach project
began to investigate the psychological impact of war on the health
and well-being of children in Sri Lanka, the country was reeling
from nearly 17 years of internal armed conflict. In the Batticaloa
region of the country, for example, children often experienced household
displacement, orphanhood, refugee migration, and extreme poverty.
That year, project staff undertook a survey of several hundred children
in Batticaloa and other war-torn areas of the country, sending survey
teams of trained local women into Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim communities
to interview children.
At the same time that the researchers were studying the effects
of war on Sri Lanka's children, they also began to imagine what
a space for healing might look like. One year after the project's
initial funding ended, a transitional committee of local Health
Reach team members worked with Canadian colleagues to develop a
peace garden for the children of Batticaloa.
What follows is an excerpt from Helping Children Outgrow War,
describing the Butterfly Garden and the impact it has had on its
community:
|
For five years the Butterfly Garden has provided after-school
and weekend creative play programming to over 600 schoolchildren
from 20 communities around Batticaloa representing local ethnic
groups (ethnic Tamil and Muslim). Schoolteachers are introduced
to the Butterfly Garden in presentations at school. Children
with difficulties are selected to attend weekly for a nine-month
program; on a given day 50 children attend from two-to-four
villages of different ethnicity. The program offers a rich
choice of play and art activities (claywork, drama, storytelling,
music, arts and crafts) and is facilitated by a dozen staff
animators, local men and women from the different ethnic groups.
Training is by apprenticeship and skills development through
hands-on experience, attention to one's own personal healing
work, on-site mentoring, and workshops arranged for visiting
Sri Lankan and international resource people.
The Butterfly Garden invariably opens the children to new
experiences: formative relationships with the animators, befriending
children from other villages, exploring the garden and its
resident creatures, and discovering the energetic and imaginative
world of childhood. The animators and the program's process
respectfully uphold the child's creative spirit and inherent
goodness, modeling non-violent behaviour and alternative ways
to resolve conflict and deal with disturbing emotional issues.
Children with personal distress are invited to take part in
a stream of reflective and expressive activities called the
Amma Appa ("Mother-Father" in Tamil) Journey developed
at the site, which includes culturally indigenous rituals
to honour deep feelings and promote healing and reconciliation.
Through this, children experience healing insights into their
lives and selves and their connection with others, past and
present.
The program evolves responsively to the developmental maturity
and creative growth of the children who come to consider the
Garden as part of their world, real and imaginary. The program
endeavours to accompany the children through their years to
young adulthood by providing follow-up session cycles as well
as planning days of performance and play in exchanging villages.
At the community level, the program explores ways that the
children's experience and the positive results witnessed by
their teachers and families may foster community reconciliation.
Program cycles close with a grand environmental opera inspired
by the children's invention. Ongoing collaboration with schools
and dialogue with village leaders is encouraged. A pragmatic
outreach program has emerged, based on the strengths of the
Butterfly Garden's work with children and opportunities for
greater presence in the villages. . .
What is evolving in the Butterfly Garden is a culturally
appropriate approach to healing and community growing out
of the creative spirit inherent in children, a quality universal
to all children, expressed through play, that may be as sacred
and affirming as religious ritual is for adults. This might
be seen as a form of lay spirituality that all people of good
will may endorse, a secular morality respecting the value
of children alongside the religions. It has been important
to articulate this and to communicate these principles to
all parties, inside and outside Batticaloa.
|
type full url here
©2002 Education Development
Center, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|
 |
"The book emphasizes the need to view the recovery
process on an individual level."
| For more information:
Helping Children Outgrow
War is published by USAID's Africa
Bureau Information Center. The full text of the book is posted
on their
Web site. |
|
