Date: July 18, 2005
http://www.childcareexchange.com
Everyone a Changemaker, Part Two
"The job of a social entrepreneur is to recognize when a part of society is not working and to solve the problem by changing the system, spreading solutions, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps. Social entrepreneurs are not content to give a fish or to teach how to fish. They will not rtest until they have revolutionized the fishing inductry. Identifying and solving large-scale social problems requires social entrepreneurs because only entrepreneurs have the committed vision and inexhaustible determination to persist until they have transformed an entire system. the scholar comes to rest when he expresses an idea. The professional succeeds when she solves a client's problem. The manager calls it quits when he has enabled his organization to succeed. Social entrepreneurs can only come to rest when their vidion has become the new pattern all across society."
Brayton. B. (2005, Spring). Everyone a Changemaker. Peer Review, 7, 3, Pp. 8-11.
September 13, 2004
ExchangeEveryDay
Issue: 1076
http://www.childcareexchange.com
"To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows." - Jean Anouilh in Antigone
A MESSAGE FROM BELFAST TO BESLAN
Siobhan Fitzpatrick, executive director of NIPPA in Belfast, Northern Ireland shares this message:
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
More anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned"
The Second Coming (WB Yeats 1928)
The 1st September for all us is normally a day of new beginnings - the summer over, schools re-opening and children starting out on the new journey of formal education. For all of us, parents, teachers, adults and children the 1st September will never be the same again after the terrible tragedy of Belsan, Southern Russia. We watched with horror, not believing that a school community could be brutalised in such a tragic fashion. We were horrified by the fear, pain, grief and trauma evident in everyone who had been caught up in the horror of the school siege.
We in the early years community in Northern Ireland knew a little of the sorrow our friends and colleagues in this small Russian town were experiencing. We are moving slowly from our indent past where children. families, communities have all been affected by violence, where school children have been used as a pawn in sectarianism and cultural conflict.
Beslan and other horrific incidences of violence which are occurring with such a sickening regularity make the Working Forum Belfast Conference, Building Bridges - Healing Community through Early Childhood Education even more relevant. The World Forum Foundation and NIPPA - The Early Years Organisation will redouble our efforts to ensure that the conference will help us learn and share powerful lessons on peace making and peace building and through our effort with the very young build a more peaceful, inclusive world.
To learn more about Working Forum Belfast, go to http://mail.ccie.com/go/eed/0399
September 8, 2004
The North American Reggio Emilia Alliance joins with Reggio Children in expressing our grief for the children, families, and educators of Russia whose lives were tragically ended at the hands of terrorists. May each of us strengthen our resolve as advocates of children’s rights. Our deepest sympathies are expressed to the people of Russia.
-- The NAREA Guiding Board
SCUOLE E NIDI D’INFANZIA
Istituzione del
Comune di Reggio Emilia
BESLAN
-- September
3, 2004
The world will never be ready for the birth and the death of a child.
-- Wislawa Szymborska
In Ossezia, Beslan, an unbelievable violence crashed down on children, parents and teachers on the first day of school.
No words can explain the horror of what has happened in Beslan.
No motivations, no reasons can justify it.
When the school, instead of being a place of study and play, turns into a place of violence and death, when terror and fanaticism don’t stop even in front of helpless children, young boys and girls, then it becomes impossible to tolerate the feeling of powerlessness and anger that takes everyone who doesn’t want to give up to the increasing power of hate and the defeat of reason.
In front of this further atrocious wound for the humanity all, that has not been able to respect child’s life inviolability, more than once declaimed, we call for everybody’s heart and reason, so that hate and revenge will not feed other blood.
We call for everybody’s heart and reason so that the spiral of terrorism and violence stops and it becomes possible to find new and brave ways, different from war and retaliation, to develop the wish of justice and of a civil common life.
Every day, in our work as educators, neither submission, nor habit but a deeper engagement in educating children to respect themselves and others, to freedom, solidarity and critical spirit.
In the school we operate to give voice and hope to dialogue and to listening, so that men and women of any religion from all over the world, can encounter and build together a path towards peace and solidarity.
Also:
Silent torchlight procession for the children in Beslan
The Municipal Adiministration of Reggio Emilia promotes the organization of a tochlight procession, tonight Tuesday September the 7th, in order to express the deep sorrow and solidarity of the city to the children and to all the victims of the Beslan tragedy.
The meeting is in Piazza Prampolini at 9.00 pm, where the procession will begin. It will silently proceed with torchlights, without slogans or signs, throughout the streets of the historical city centre.
This is an initiative which aims to remember all the victims of the terrorism and to deny any kind of violence and integralism, as in occasion of September 11 and the tragic moments in the Middle East.
For this reason, the Municipal Administration invites all the citizens, the associations, the political parties, the Trade Unions in Reggio to participate in the torchlight procession to underline, together, that the dialogue between different cultures and religions is possible and to reaffirm the incessant effort to confirm the universal values of peace, democracy and freedom.
