Two videos on EI's Tsunami Rehabilitation Programme in Indonesia and Sri Lanka were launched today in Berlin at the global teacher union federation's fifth World Congress.
Entitled "After the Tsunami – Sri Lanka" and "After the Tsunami – Student Tour in Aceh", the videos highlight the progress and developments of the joint programme of EI and Oxfam Netherlands (NOVIB).
The programme was launched in January 2005 to restore education to the areas affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. In each country, it not only aims to rebuild a number of schools destroyed by the disaster, but also refurbish the new schools with furniture and equipment, provide in-service teacher training, give trauma counselling courses to returning teachers and provide scholarships to affected pupils.
So far, the project in Indonesia has been fully completed: 28 schools have been rebuilt and refurbished, 1000 teachers have received training in the new national curricula, 338 teachers have received trauma counselling training and 3481 pupils are now benefiting from the scholarships.
The programme is partially funded by the generous donations of EI member organisations around the world to the EI Solidarity Fund immediately after the disaster struck in late December in 2004.
"It is important that one watches the video to learn about the difficulties that the local communities still face, physically, emotionally and financially," commented EI Coordinator of the Tsunami Rehabilitation Programme in Aceh Indonesia.
"I am very happy to be able to be involved in the project, and the videos will show you a glimpse of the sort of obstacles we had to overcome every single day in order to restore education back to the areas."
The videos were produced by EI member organisations, the Centre Syndical de Quebec (Canada) and the National Educators’ Association (USA).
To view the videos, please click on the images below.