Mon, 18 Oct 2010

Friends of Waldorf Education crisis intervention in Kyrgyzstan – Follow up deployment in Gaza

KARLSRUHE (NNA) – The emergency education crisis intervention team of the international Waldorf organisation Friends of Waldorf Education is preparing for deployment in Kyrgyzstan from 27 November to 12 December at the request of the Kyrgyz Union of Educational Institutions, the Friends announced in a press release on Friday.

Serious political and ethnic conflicts occurred in the central Asian republic in the spring and summer of this year involving ethnic Kyrgyz and the Uzbek ethnic minority, which could harden further as a result of the horrific violence at the time.

According to the Friends, the Kyrgyz Union of Educational Institutions has been caring for traumatised children and adolescents in the southern city of Osh and its surrounding areas since June. It is also providing psychological support to teachers and offering training in extending educational support methods. However, the Union was not qualified to deal with the most serious cases of trauma and how to handle them, the Waldorf organisation said.

The 10-member team of the Friends of Waldorf Education will focus its work on three areas: the psycho-social stabilisation of the heavily traumatised children, helping teachers to manage their own traumatic experiences, and extending the range of educational methods to re-establish trust, as teachers have to deal with enormous ethnic tensions within their classes.

The consequences resulting from the political and ethnic upheavals which shook Kyryzstan from April to June this year are enormous, the Friends say. Many children in the south of the country were heavily traumatised as a result of their direct confrontation with unimaginable violence. Their trust in the people around them had been destroyed.

The ethnic conflict and violence reached its peak in and around the city of Osh from 10 to 18 June.

It is estimated that about 2000 adults and children lost their lives in the violence between the Kyrgyz and the Uzbek minority in southern Kyrgyzstan. Many people were forced to witness the murder of relatives and friends or themselves became victims of the senseless violence.

Since the political conflict between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks had turned into an ethnic one, which had claimed numerous victims, the restoration of trust in one’s fellow human being and ways of creating a positive future would be an important area of the work of the Friends’ team, the press release emphasised.

The crisis team urgently needs financial support to undertake its task. The deployment will cost about 20,000 euros (£17,500, US$27,700) despite team members working on a volunteer basis. The Friends are therefore urgently looking for donations to fund the crisis work in Kyrgyzstan.

The emergency education team will also return to the Gaza Strip from 23 October to 6 November in a further mission funded by the German foreign office. It will hold courses for up to 100 specialists from the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children, the Gaza Mental Health Community as well as the Al-Quattan Center for the Child. In addition, it will evaluate and supervise the work in the child protection centre for the children from Al-Zeitoun.

The organisation Friends of Waldorf Education has promoted Waldorf education worldwide and freedom within the education system since 1971. Since 2006 the association has been involved in the field of emergency education. So far the Friends have worked with psycho-traumatised children and adolescents affected by war and natural disasters in Lebanon (2006), China (2008), Gaza (February and July 2009, July 2010), Indonesia (November 2009) and Haiti (February, May and September 2010).

END/nna/cva

Link: www.freunde-waldorf.de/en/

Donations for emergency education: www.freunde-waldorf.de/en/emergency-pedagogy.html

Donation information in general: www.freunde-waldorf.de/en/donate-help/donation-accounts.html

Item: 101018-01EN Date: 18 October 2010

Copyright 2010 News Network Anthroposophy Limited. All rights reserved. See: www.nna-news.org/copyright/

More NNA reports at: www.nna-news.org/en/