和平组织和雇主在叙利亚推教育项目

Peacemakers, Employers Come Together for Education 和平组织和雇主在叙利亚推教育项目

For VOA Learning English, this is the Education Report.

Imagine you are a high school student in Lebanon. A new girl in your neighborhood has just arrived from Syria. You don’t have classes with her. But after school you see kids calling her names and bullying¹ her. 

Now imagine you are that Syrian refugee. Your family just escaped from the Islamic State militants³. Since school is crowded, you go to school in the afternoon and Lebanese children go in the morning. They call you “stupid” because you have not studied French. Sometimes you get so angry that you want to fight with them. Your parents say you should make friends.

But how?

This is the problem many nonprofits and international educators want to solve, including Search for Common Ground. Helping⁴ different cultures live, work and learn together is their goal.

Elisa Dari is the country director for Search for Common Ground in Lebanon. She says the Rainbow of Hope project, now in its second year, is giving English lessons to more than 600 children daily in Lebanon after school.

Dari says that, “In Syria, it can become very difficult for the Syrian children to enter a Lebanese school, so there is often a separation between the two.”

Most Lebanese children learn Arabic and French. Most Syrian children learn Arabic. Some learn a bit of English, too.   

“But also, outside of school, there is little opportunity for Syrian and Lebanese children to play together, and to be children together, so to speak, so we wanted to provide that space for the children of these communities.” 

Half the children in the program are Syrian, and the other half are Lebanese. Some are Palestinian. At these classes, Syrian children, ages 6 to 11, meet Lebanese children. On weekends, they play games and have fun. They make friends and learn to accept people who are different.

Youth find common goals in the arts

Search for Common Ground also has a program for older youth in Lebanon. It is called Better Together.

The program brings young people ages 15–25 together in a summer camp. The youth live together and try different arts for a week. Then they choose to produce a play, a video create music or make a comic book. They explore the arts and learn life skills in workshops. At the end of the camp, they tour their communities to bring their message to a wider audience.

 “So [The program is about] the breaking down of stereotypes⁵, learning how to deal with conflict in a constructive⁷ manner, and dealing⁸ with the tensions, coping with the very difficult environment in which these children live.”

Eventually, Dari says, the young people are able to “deal with the conflict and the tensions in a constructive and collaborative manner, rather than with hatred⁹, and stereotypes and adversarial approaches.”

International education and peacebuilding

NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, recently sponsored an event for nonprofits and educators in Washington D.C. The event marked the 16th annual International Education Week. It is called “The Role of International Education in Peacebuilding.” World Learning and Alliance for Peace Building are among the participants at the event.

Melanie Greenberg is head of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. She says, “We all have the power to create peace. I feel it is our responsibility as senior peace builders to give students the tools to harness civil society energy and become leaders themselves.”

Greenberg adds that students can learn these four “basic building blocks” in order to build peace:

Understand culture and difference.

Learn to listen to other points of view.

Act in your own community to make a small change.

Connect the local to the global.

Like Search for Common Ground, World Learning works with Syrian refugees in Lebanon. The organization helps schools in 300 communities handle nearly 2 million Syrian refugees. They prepare teachers to help students deal with painful memories.

Employers value intercultural understanding

Beyond peace, businesses also want people with cross-cultural skills in a global economy. These include critical thinking, cross-cultural communication and collaboration¹⁰ skills.

For students and others who cannot travel to another country to learn cross-cultural skills, Search for Common Ground organizes online conversations, called “virtual exchanges.”

The virtual exchanges are like a video call online. A trained leader guides the conversations of young people from 27 countries. Many come from the U.S. or Western Europe. The others are from Muslim-majority countries like Egypt, Qatar, Yemen, Chad and Indonesia.

Funding from governments and nonprofits will pay for more than 1 million of these virtual exchanges in the next five years.

Shamil Idriss is president of Search for Common Ground. He says it is good that international education is also supported by businesses.

 “Those attitudes, skills and relationships that are important for peace building also happen to be some of the most critical skills, attitudes, and relationships for employability in today’s world.”

Words in This Story

bully² – v. to frighten, hurt, or threaten a smaller or weaker person

stereotype⁶ – n. an often unfair and untrue belief that many people have about all people or things with a particular characteristic

adversarial – adj. involving conflict or opposition¹¹; hostile

intercultural – adj. something that occurs between people of different cultures including different religious groups or people of different national origins

alliance – n. a union between people, groups, countries, or a relationship in which people agree to work together

harness – v. to use (something) for a particular purpose

cross-cultural – adj. relating to or involving two or more different cultures or countries

collaborate¹² – v. to work with another person or group in order to achieve or do something

stupid - adj. showing a lack of ability to learn and understand things

bit - n. a small piece of something; something small or unimportant

comic - adj. of or relating to humor; causing laughter

constructive - adj. helping to develop or improve something

conversations - n. discussions

funding - n. available money; money that is used for a special purpose

1 bullying   

v.恐吓，威逼( bully的现在分词 )；豪；跋扈

参考例句：

• Many cases of bullying go unreported . 很多恐吓案件都没有人告发。
• All cases of bullying will be severely dealt with. 所有以大欺小的情况都将受到严肃处理。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 bully   

n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮

参考例句：

• A bully is always a coward.暴汉常是懦夫。
• The boy gave the bully a pelt on the back with a pebble.那男孩用石子掷击小流氓的背脊。

3 militants   

激进分子，好斗分子( militant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The militants have been sporadically fighting the government for years. 几年来，反叛分子一直对政府实施零星的战斗。
• Despite the onslaught, Palestinian militants managed to fire off rockets. 尽管如此，巴勒斯坦的激进分子仍然发射导弹。

4 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

5 stereotypes   

n.老套，模式化的见解，有老一套固定想法的人( stereotype的名词复数 )v.把…模式化，使成陈规( stereotype的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Such jokes tend to reinforce racial stereotypes. 这样的笑话容易渲染种族偏见。
• It makes me sick to read over such stereotypes devoid of content. 这种空洞无物的八股调，我看了就讨厌。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

6 stereotype   

n.固定的形象，陈规，老套，旧框框

参考例句：

• He's my stereotype of a schoolteacher.他是我心目中的典型教师。
• There's always been a stereotype about successful businessmen.人们对于成功商人一直都有一种固定印象。

7 constructive   

adj.建设的，建设性的

参考例句：

• We welcome constructive criticism.我们乐意接受有建设性的批评。
• He is beginning to deal with his anger in a constructive way.他开始用建设性的方法处理自己的怒气。

8 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

9 hatred   

n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨

参考例句：

• He looked at me with hatred in his eyes.他以憎恨的眼光望着我。
• The old man was seized with burning hatred for the fascists.老人对法西斯主义者充满了仇恨。

10 collaboration   

n.合作，协作；勾结

参考例句：

• The two companies are working in close collaboration each other.这两家公司密切合作。
• He was shot for collaboration with the enemy.他因通敌而被枪毙了。

11 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

12 collaborate   

vi.协作，合作；协调

参考例句：

• The work gets done more quickly when we collaborate.我们一旦合作，工作做起来就更快了。
• I would ask you to collaborate with us in this work.我们愿意请你们在这项工作中和我们合作。