Poverty

My first conversation partner is Michael Hibbeln. He is the early childhood and elementary school principal of the American School of Milan, Italy. I have had one Skype call with him already. We were not able to connect this week but it is my hope that we will be able to communicate for future conversations. This is what we talked about in our first conversation. He is originally from Michigan. He and his wife have lived abroad and were interested in living in another country again. He applied to different schools and was hired by the ASM. It is a school of nearly 900 students beginning at age 3 and going up through high school. Children graduating from ASM will receive an American style High School Diploma. We spoke for a few minutes about their early childhood program. He said that there are three classrooms with 17 students. There is one teacher and a teacher assistant. AMS is an accredited school. They are an English emersion school. There are 52 different nationalities. Most of the families have at least one family member that speaks some amount of English. They do have translators. I told him the issues and trends that we will be studying in this course and he said that he would be able to assist me with these topics. We had a call confirmed for this week regarding issues of poverty but he was unable to keep our appointment time. I look forward to future phone conversations and learning more about his school in Italy. I hope to gain more insight into issues and trends in early childhood in Italy.

My next conversation partner is Gem Munro. The principal of the school I visited this week gave me his information. She met Mr. Munro when he spoke at a Rotary Club meeting in December here in Orlando, Florida. He is the founder of an organization called the Amarok Society. This organization has a unique way of going into the poorest most poverty stricken areas of the world and providing education. They are building schools but these schools are not filled with children. The schools are filled with mothers. The idea is to teach mothers to teach their own children and at least five other children in their community. We have only been in contact through email as he is in Bangladesh for the next few months. He wrote back immediately to say that he would be glad to answer any questions but his access to email is sporadic. I am waiting for his reply. In the meantime, I went on the website. The Amarok society offers a wonderful program that seems to have great results. The Amarok Society works in the poorest of slum communities. They teach very poor mothers who do not have enough money to send their children to school. They teach the mothers to read and to write in their language, math and also English. The mothers learn basis life skills about health, nutrition, child care and child development. The results are that these mothers, fathers and communities are gaining a respect for education. They are teaching children that would not otherwise have an opportunity to learn anything.

The insight that I have gained is a whole new way to look at educating and empowering a community. These families are in such poverty, they are too poor to attend any kind of school at all. This program gives families the opportunity to gain some knowledge and learn basic skills to help their families thrive in these dire circumstances. This style of education is one that I never expected. You would expect to see organizations building schools and filling them with trained educators to teach children. Mr. Munro goes to these remote slums with his family, trains teachers and teaches the mothers. The mothers are required to attend school for two hours every day and then the mothers go home and hold school in their own homes teaching the children what they learned that day. I am so surprised that the founder of this organization emailed me directly after my initial email. He has written a book called South Asian Adventures with the Active Poor. I plan on reading the book. For more information, I am including the link to their website http://amaroksociety.org/wordpress/