Virginia Albert, the EI Caribbean Regional Coordinator, spoke to us recently about the 2008 activities of the Caribbean unions under the EI EFAIDS Programme.
1. How is the EFAIDS Programme evolving in the Caribbean?
From my perspective as Regional Coordinator for the Caribbean I have noticed that the EFAIDS Programme has gained some momentum, in that the teacher unions have embraced the whole idea, the whole concept. When we started the Programme we focused on HIV/AIDS and on training, but we have shifted our focus to include all five EFAIDS working areas, and unions are actually engaging in more diverse activities, which would include EFA issues as well as HIV and AIDS. The EFAIDS Programme is not limited to teachers and students, the teachers are involved in community activities so they expand their activities beyond the classroom, and this gives us a greater impact than we anticipated.
2. Highlight some of the successes of the Caribbean unions involved in the EI EFAIDS Programme?
The union in Suriname, Bond van Leraren (BvL) treated this as a big project for them and negotiated with the government of Suriname, so the Ministry of Education actually released 5 teachers on a full time basis to work specifically on EFAIDS Programme. They engage in training of teachers, training for students, they are doing publicity, EFAIDS type activities. Because of the limited resources they had, they sought and received support from the business community. As well as making the delivery of the programme more dynamic, this support improved the functioning of the union as an organisation.
BvL has invested in the translation of the material in the Surinamese language and into Dutch so they can reach a wider audience. They have also made the Programme fit with the local context. They looked at the issue of student drop-out in schools and developed their own DVD. They invited in persons living with HIV and AIDS to speak to the students and teachers so they begin to understand and identify with People Living With HIV and AIDS. BvL is a very small union with very limited resources but they are able to achieve a great deal with their proactive approach.
The other major success story is Jamaica. The Jamaica Teachers’ Union (JTU) is by Caribbean standards large, with about 22,000 members. The union embraced the whole concept and has expanded it into a big programme that covers several districts in Jamaica. What was interesting was they used the cascade model to do the training component but they introduced a special technique by using the ‘Study Circle Approach’, which is very flexible, very cost-effective and it can reach a very wide cross section of teachers. This technique is one we are trying to get most of the teacher unions in the Caribbean to adopt.
3. What sort of cooperation takes place between unions in the Caribbean region?
Recently we have had a lot of South-South Cooperation. The Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) that was very successful in the delivery of the training went over to conduct training for the BvL in Suriname. This really motivated the union in Suriname and produced the great results in 2008. JTU in Jamaica went to Guyana to share their Study Circle technique with GTU; because Guyana is a very large area that kind of technique works to reach a large group at the minimal cost. So JTU was able to share their technique with GTU, and GTU shared their technique with BvL. Also through the regional network, the Caribbean Union of Teachers, all the unions in the Caribbean meet on a regular basis where they share experiences - they share and they support each other.