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Welsh education team wins praise from Prince Charles – in Zanzibar
A Carmarthen based award-winning Welsh education team has won praise from Prince Charles during his visit to Zanzibar.
Sazani Associates is busy setting up its latest community development programme on the island. Sazani Director Mark Proctor met with the Prince during a reception at the House of Wonders in Zanzibar Town.
“The Prince was very interested to hear about a Carmarthen based not-for-profit company that has built important links between 20 schools in south Wales and Zanzibar,” said Mark.
Mark explained that Sazani has set up education and learning projects with local partners and the Government of Zanzibar to create sustainable businesses around food for the last seven years.
“Now, with new funding from Comic Relief and DFiD, we are building on this unique relationship to create long term projects which will give some of the poorest people in the world a sustainable future,” said Mark, who joined British Honorary Consul in Zanzibar, Welshman Carl Salisbury at the reception on Tuesday 8 November 2011 hosted by the Government of Zanzibar.
Award-winning Welsh business has sights set on creating new sustainable enterprises in Caribbean
A Welsh business which is already helping some of the poorest people in the world set up and run their own successful sustainable enterprises could be expanding in the Caribbean.
Award-winning Sazani Associates, a not-for-profit company and recent winner of a prestigious European Award, has just established new links with Antigua and Barbuda, Honduras and Belize.
Sazani director Mark Proctor met with the High Commissioner for Belize, Kamela Palmer, and ambassadors from Honduras, Antigua and Barbuda in Cardiff at a meeting organised by the Welsh Government’s international affairs department.
“This was a tremendous opportunity to explore expanding our work in the Caribbean and to look at ways of forging closer links between these three small countries and Wales”, said Mr Proctor.
The company is now in direct communication with the three embassies in London, with the aim of building stronger links and new opportunities in each of the countries.
Wales Education Project is World Class
Sazani Associates has scooped a prestigious European Award.
Carmarthen based Sazani Associates’ “Education for Rural Livelihoods and Food Sovereignty” (ERLAFS) project has been chosen as one of the three World Aware Education Awards laureates by the North South Centre (NSC) of the Council of Europe (CoE).
The 3 year project has been funded by the EU and DFID (UKAID).
An international jury weighed numerous applications from Afghanistan, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Tanzania, Timor, Uganda, United-Kingdom, USA, and large international organisations before deciding.
Cathryn MacCallum, Director said, “it is a great honour for Sazani Associates to be recognised by the Council of Europe and to accept this laureate on behalf of ERLAFS. Although we designed and lead ERLAFS, credit must go to our partners and the schools we work with in Wales and Zanzibar. Without their hard and the support of the Zanzibar Ministry of Education and Wales LEA’s this project would not have happened.”
Cathryn, a holder of a Wales Green Hero Award in 2009, for Sazani’s work in International Sustainable Development.
Welsh schools link with Zanzibar
An award-winning, Welsh-led education project is helping teachers learn more about ways to help some of the poorest youngsters in the world beat the poverty trap.
A group of south Wales schools established special links with schools across Zanzibar, with more than 80 teachers taking part in the ground-breaking programme that focuses on the rights of people to have access to sustainably-produced food.
At the final conference of the Education for Rural Livelihoods and Food Sovereignty (ERLAFS) project in Aberdare, they each identified how their joint working can continue to help both countries meet the Millennium Development Goals.
“This five-year programme has given teachers from both regions a real insight into the challenges and opportunities of different teaching methods,” said Marilyn James, Education Director of Sazani Associates.
“We have learned much from each other: children in both sets of schools now have a much wider outlook, and our partners in Zanzibar have benefited from new teaching techniques”, she added.
Chair of UNESCO Wales and chief executive of the General Teaching Council Wales, Gary Brace, told the conference at the Dare Valley Centre that the project proved the value of global linking.
“This work can help us achieve Millennium Development Goals such as inclusive education approaches to marginalised groups, thereby providing universal primary education”, he told representative teachers of 20 south Wales and Zanzibar schools.
The project team is currently working together to develop methods of continuing the global linking project post-funding, building on the strong links that have been established for further mutual benefits.
The ERLAFS project won a prestigious European World Aware Education Award and triumphed over more than 30 other projects from Afghanistan to Armenia and Nigeria to Pakistan, with Carmarthen-based Sazani Associates chosen as one of three awards laureates by the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe.
International partners meet in the Rhondda
A conference held recently at the Rhondda Heritage Park was an opportunity for delegates from international partners of the Workers’ Education Association (WEA) and Sazani Associates to review their progress in the teaching of global active citizenship and food sovereignty. The event, coordinated by the WEA and international NGO Sazani Associates, featured talks on the importance of ecologically responsible development and sustainable livelihood strategies and also gave delegates the opportunity to take part in workshops and demonstrations of the teaching toolkits developed over the last year, including instruction on pod casting and radio production. It represented an ideal opportunity for Welsh partners to feedback to their international counterparts, while promoting the principles of global citizenship and shared responsibility.
The meeting, attended by delegates from organizations from across Europe and the Global South, was part of an ongoing project, coordinated in Wales by the WEA and Sazani Associates, to improve curricula in both primary and adult learning and in rural development- giving context to global issues and raising awareness of the importance of rural livelihoods and sustainable development on a global scale.
The two day conference featured activities which aimed to consolidate the projects training toolkit and ‘edukit’, such as pod casting and radio editing as well as instruction on good sustainability practises with an emphasis upon the importance of capital assets in achieving well rounded and sustainable development.
Talks from European delegates brought all of the partner organizations up to date with the project’s achievements while an address from Assembly member Leanne Wood reminded everybody of the context of self sufficiency within which the conference was held. Her talk emphasised the importance of rural livelihoods and local production and cited Cuba’s allotment scheme in the wake of their ‘peak oil’ crisis as an example of sustainable land reform.