Our model for a Green School that helps empower the poor

We feel that our model for education as something new to offer in that in incorporates the best practice from similar projects whilst having a thoroughly unique angle.

We have researched extensively into the provision of Green Schools across the globe and have discovered that despite the fact the in our opinion 'green is the new gold' and has enormous potential for sustainable economic development there are very few purpose built 'green' schools anywhere in either the 'developed' or 'developing world.' We are convinced that our model is one that can be replicated throughout Africa and can lead to the empower of communities that are currently marginalised. We would argue that there are opportunities for Africa to lead the way globally in terms of green living and that this can be a key to development.

Social Justice and Human Dignity

The Ctholic Church gets a bad press these days and is often dismissed as irrelevant by many in the 'West'. However, the Church does some tremendous work in the promotion of social justice and human dignity in the world.

Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga is the leader of the Catholic Church in Honduras and a leading proponent of Social Justice. He is a modern day hero!

Here are some quotes from a recent Tablet article that I found absolutely inspirational: (www.thetablet.co.uk/articles/12086/)

On the $700 billion bail out of Wall Street:
"Seventy billion?” incredulous at the figure, then he realises his error. "No, seven hundred billion!" President of Caritas Internationalis, the Vatican-based umbrella organisation for Catholic charities in 162 nations, Rodríguez shakes his head and says: "I am very sad that the riches of this country [the United States] are being used to save big corporations who we don't know are honest or corrupt."
He repeats the astonishing sum: "Seven hundred billion. Can you imagine that money, and only because people are not able to run their corporations in the right way. How come it is always the money of the poor that is lost? How come the money of the rich is always saved? I'm not blaming or accusing, just putting the facts on the table. When it comes to alleviating poverty, there are no resources. But when it comes to saving the rich, there are always resources."

On Third World and First World:
"We need to be able to imagine ourselves not in a Third World and a First World but in one world in which our duties to the poor are shared. We need to imagine a world in which the needless deaths of nearly 10 million children a year are an abomination that cannot be tolerated,"

On Liberation Theology:
"few people will talk about liberation theology these days". He himself is not so reticent. Rodríguez recalled a conference on the Church's social teaching two years ago in Mexico where Fr Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian theologian considered a founder of liberation theology, was asked if the movement was dead. "I don't know if it is dead. I was not invited to the funeral," the cardinal says Gutiérrez quipped before adding: "Eighty per cent of liberation theology is the option for the poor, and this is alive." Cardinal Rodríguez himself seconds that view, and it is one he always preaches at the Vatican, where he says officials "don't know the reality on the ground". That reality, he says, is one of the markers differentiating the Church in the underdeveloped South from that of the industrialised North.

On Development:
"Development is the new name for peace," Paul VI declared more than 40 years ago in his great social justice encyclical, Populorum Progressio, and Cardinal Rodríguez sees the same challenge today. Yet this is not a question of a one-way sacrifice, North to South, he says, rather it is about rectifying an imbalance across the board. He points to labour being concentrated in the South and capital in the North. He contrasts residents in the southern hemisphere being held back by the basics they cannot afford, while those in the North seek luxuries they cannot afford, and adds: "When you do not have limits, you always need more. So you get this vicious cycle that leads the economy to this crisis."
"Let's think of goals that are not economic," says Rodríguez. "It is a big mistake to reduce life to the economic sphere. There is no time for writing, thinking, reflecting - using your brain to be more, not to have more."
"There should be limits. This is wisdom."

Living Simply, West Papua & ZIS

In recent times I have been reflecting a great deal on the themes of living simply and of sustainable development. Yesterday at the J & P day Serile from West Papua gave an amazing account of fishing in his country. He told us that in West Papua there is a consensus among the people that when one goes fishing one only uses a simple fishing line. He said that fishing nets were available in West Papua but in order to ensure that people only fished to an extent whereby they could feed their own family all agreed to only fish in order to feed themselves and their families. If only this philosophy could be adopted across the world. Imagine a world where people only sort enough?!? There is so much that the world can learn from its poorest and most marginalised people. And yet it's the 'Western' countries that are called 'developed!'

This is this sort of community that we seek to create at the Zambezi International School. We envisage a school where all live in solidarity, with one another and the wider community. We envisage a school which is self sufficient and at one with its environment. We envisage a school which sustainable in its mission to empower its students and the people of its wider community through a range of outreach projects.

Back to Africa

I'm heading back to Africa for the first time in over a year this summer. I can't wait! My wife, son and I are flying into Jozie before heading up through Bots and in Zed. We may venture into Zims but that will depend on the 'situation.' I would like to see how things have changed in the three years since I was last there. I know it'll be heartwrenching and I'll hear dreadful stories about peopleI've known well. The trouble is that when we used to travel to Bulawayo regualrly we had a bakkie but this time we will be relying on buses and lifts from friends. If we do go the Bulawayo then we have to have maize meal, sugar, cooking oil, salt etc. The people need these commodoties more than anything.

Everywhere we go I will be armed with my camera. I want to take hundreds of pics to publish with the stories that go with them. One of my regrets about my time living in Bots is that I never took enough photos. I will take photos of development as well as poverty; of people happy and prosperous as well as poor and repressed. The negative images of Africa that the Western media peddles sicken me. Of course there is poverty, sickness and repression across the continent but this is the only image of Africa most Europeans/North Americans have. I love showing my students at school pictures of modern Johannesburg and asking them where in the world do they think this city might be? New York, Chicago, Rome or Berlin are common responses. When I tell them that it's Johannesburg in South Africa their jaws drop!