ss43

Living Together Helping Each Other
ISSN1599-4880No.43Summer/Autumn2015

03
SPECIAL COLUMN
Summer / Autumn 2015
Y
oung people are full of energy,
potential, and creativity—three
characteristics that can transform
the world into a better place.
This past April, I was overwhelmed
by the passion and commitment of the
youth who participated in the Global
Youth Advocacy Workshop on Global
Citizenship Education (GCED) organised
by APCEIU. I could feel their enthusiasm
while listening to their impressive speeches
advocating global citizenship.
During the Workshop, young partic-
ipants pledged to think, act and share
as global citizens. Having lived in this
interconnected and interdependent world
since they were little, young people were
very receptive to the concept of global
citizenship. The younger generation has
already experienced rapid technological
advancements and proactively assimilated
new technology into their lives, commu-
nicating with friends from across the
globe. Given proper guidance, the youth
will continue to lead the way in shaping a
peaceful, just, and sustainable world.
In this Summer/Autumn issue, Sang-
Saeng takes a closer look at our younger
generation. Highlighting the innovative
energy of the youth, the articles in this
edition explore ways to empower and
support them so that their voices may be
heard loud and clear. Furthermore, the
articles ahead introduce various efforts
to involve the youth in policy-making
processes, giving them the opportunity to
speak out. Finally, this edition sheds light
on a number of initiatives led by the youth
in the Asia-Pacific region.
Coinciding with this issue’s theme,
APCEIU has just entered the period
of youth. According to the UN and
UNESCO, youth is defined as persons
between the ages of 15 and 24 years, and
APCEIU celebrated its 15th anniversary
on August 25, 2015. As I remarked in the
first part of the message, I firmly believe
that as a youth, APCEIU carries enormous
potential, energy and innovative power
to lead the way in transforming the
world into a better place for all to live by
fostering global citizenship in our younger
generation.
Utak Chung
Director
03 Director’sMessage
04 SpecialColumn
Education and the
Sustainable
Development Goals
24 SpecialReport
Happy Schools: Student
Perspectives on the Key
to Learner Wellbeing
28 BestPractices
28 Passing on Wisdom
through Storytelling in
Thailand
32 It Takes a Village to
Raise a Child
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sangsaeng
Publisher: Utak Chung Editor-in-Chief: Kwanghyun Kim
Editor: Sunmi Ji Copy Editor: Yoav Cerralbo Advisory
Committee: Christie Shin (Fashion Institute of Technology),
Christopher Castle (UNESCO), David Atchoarena (UNESCO),
Konai Helu Thaman (University of South Pacific), Namji
Steinemann (East-West Center), Virginia A. Miralao (UNESCO
National Commission of the Philippines)
Designed by: Seoul Selection Printed by: Pyung Hwa Dang
Cover Photo: Youth participants of the Global Youth Advocacy
Workshop ©APCEIU
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36 Letter
A Helping Hand Goes
a Long Way in Fostering
Global Citizenship in Young
People
38 Interview
Connecting Youth with
GCED
41 PeaceinMyMemory
Education Builds Peace
45 UnderstandingtheAsia-
PacificRegion
An Expedition to the
Traditional Peranakan
Culture
48 APCEIUinAction
SangSaeng (상생) is published three times a year by the Asia-Pacific Centre of
Education for International Understanding (APCEIU) under the auspices of UNESCO.
No.43 Summer / Autumn 2015
SangSaeng (상생), a Korean word with Chinese roots,
is composed of two characters: Sang (相), meaning
“mutual”(each other) and Saeng (生), meaning “life.” Put
together, they mean “living together,” “helping each other,”
which is our vision for the Asia-Pacific region. SangSaeng
(相生) aims to be a forum for constructive discussion of
issues, methods and experiences in the area of Education
for International Understanding. SangSaeng also seeks to
promote Global Citizenship Education, which is one of the
three priorities of Global Education First Initiative launched by
the United Nations in 2012.
Signed articles express the opinions of the authors and do
not necessarily represent the opinions of APCEIU.
FOCUS
YOUTH AS AGENTS OF CHANGE
8 The Planet Does Not Need More Successful People
13 A Better Future in Our Young Hands
16 A Youth Movement Towards Hope and Reconciliation
20 No More Youth Washing
Director’s Message
DIRECTOR’S
MESSAGE
Mr Utak Chung giving a presentation during
the parallel group session at the World
Education Forum 2015
©UNESCO/SungmanLee
SangSaeng is printed on recycled paper.

0504 SangSaeng
SPECIAL COLUMN
Education and the Sustainable Development Goals
No More Business as Usual
EDUCATION AND
THE SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT GOALS:
I
n most advanced and emerging
economies of the world, people grow
up with the expectation that they
will be educated, and that education
will be the essential engine driving
their own personal development. This
understanding, that life will bring access
to school and, for many, higher levels of
education, is commonplace and universal.
Yet, there are 124 million children
of primary and lower secondary school
age around the world who are not in
school and hundreds of millions more
who are still unable to read or perform
basic math after four years of education.
This is nothing short of a global learning
crisis. For these children, there is no
opportunity to develop their full potential
or use education as a stepping-stone out
of poverty. For their countries, it is an
opportunity squandered.
The Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs), which were announced in 2000
and come to an end in 2015, did a great
service to humanity by setting targets for
access to universal primary education.
As a result, the number of children not
enrolled in primary or lower secondary
dropped by almost 40 per cent. What
the MDGs did not do is set goals on the
quality of teaching or learning, or on
access to school for the poorest, or educa-
tion beyond primary school.
On the Horizon
The new Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs), which are scheduled to be
endorsed in September 2015 by the UN
General Assembly after several years of
debate and negotiation, have set far more
ambitious education goals for 2030, as
they should. The 4th Goal of the SDGs
commits UN Member States to “Ensure
inclusive and equitable quality education,
and promote lifelong learning opportuni-
ties for all.” What this means in practice
is a commitment to provide, at the very
least, quality pre-primary, primary and
lower secondary education to every child
by 2030.
This goal will not be realised by
applying business as usual procedures.
According to the Global Monitoring
Report published in 2015, UNESCO
estimates that at current rates of change,
it will take almost a century (until 2111)
before all children in sub-Saharan Africa
complete lower secondary school. That
means we would fail to meet the 4th Goal
of SDGs by more than 80 years, with the
poorest girls being the very last to gain
even a basic level of education.
As Chair of the Global Partnership
for Education, I am determined to slash
that 100-year time horizon and persuade
as many partners as I can, including those
located in the Asia-Pacific region, to join
us in addressing the task ahead.
Although the challenge is great, there
is increasing recognition that develop-
ment relies on education. I do not need
to remind the readers of SangSaeng of
the critical role that education plays in
advancing economic growth.
Ms Julia Gillard among students
By Julia Gillard
(Chair of the Global Partnership for Education’s Board of Directors,
Former Prime Minister of Australia)
©JohnTass-Parker

SangSaeng
SPECIAL COLUMN
Summer / Autumn 2015 0706
For instance, the Republic of Korea’s
enormous commitment and investment
in the education of successive generations
of children is responsible for Korea’s
outstanding economic success. This is a
good and familiar example to us all. On a
global level, we cannot achieve our vision
of a prosperous, healthy, and peaceful
world without education.
Importance of Education
Education underpins all other develop-
ment and is essential to achieving all of
the SDGs from health to reducing poverty
to combatting climate change. Every year
of learning leads to measurable increases
in earnings across all economic sectors. It
helps to break the cycle of poverty, reduce
hunger and promotes gender inequality.
The education of girls is of the highest
importance. Educated girls start their
families later, and have better knowledge
of nutrition and hygiene, dramatically
improving infant health, reducing risk
of maternal mortality and ultimately
reducing family size and population
growth. If we are trying to build a sustain-
able future for humanity, we cannot do it
without investing in education for all our
children.
As well as the recognition of the
importance of education for development,
there is also a growing capability by the
global community to respond—including
through the Global Partnership for Educa-
tion international organisation.
The Global Partnership organisation
galvanises global and national support for
education. It currently partners with 60
developing countries, applying a coun-
try-led approach to education planning,
funding and coordination, bringing
governments, donors, civil society,
teachers, the private sector and multilat-
eral organisations to the table.
In the last few years, the Global
Partnership has emerged as a significant
source of funding for basic education in
partner countries, and will play a central
role in the implementation of the new
education goal. It has been praised by
the UN as a progressive, forward looking
model and was recognised at a series of
high-level meetings including the World
Education Forum in Korea, the Oslo
Summit on Education for Development,
and the Financing For Development
Conference (FFD3) in Addis Ababa for its
unique coordination and financing role.
Prioritising Needs
In order to meet the challenge of the 4th
Goal of the SDGs, the Global Partner-
ship, under the leadership of CEO Alice
Albright, has also implemented significant
reforms to grow capability. Among
them is the introduction of a funding
model which prioritises the needs of the
poorest and most vulnerable children
and which links 30 per cent of funding to
agreed benchmarks of progress in equity,
learning outcomes, and efficiency. While
it is early days, the new funding model
is already delivering anecdotal evidence
from partners of improved transparency
around policy development and allocation
of resources for the most needy.
Financing for education also cannot
rely on business as usual methods to
achieve the new global education goal.
UNESCO estimates that, in order to
provide a full course of education to every
child by 2030, an annual financing gap
of some $39 billion will need to be filled,
on top of current national and donor
funding.
A number of tracks need to be pursued
to boost available resources for education.
The first is to reverse the slide in tradi-
tional donor funding and to increase their
allocations to education, which is slowly
starting to happen.
The second step will be to find new
donors and partners to invest in educa-
tion. Here the sector has an extremely able
champion in the UN Special Envoy for
Global Education, Gordon Brown, who
has been appointed Chair of a new Inter-
national Commission on the Financing of
Global Education Opportunities.
The Commission, due to report in
September 2016, is charged with invigo-
rating the case for investment in education
in order to reverse current underfunding,
improve the effective use of resources, and
look at a wide range of funding sources
from domestic resource mobilisation to
strategic and catalytic use of donor funds,
partnerships, innovative finance and the
private sector. The Commission’s report
will provide a blueprint to significantly
accelerate funding for education, and
the Global Partnership very much looks
forward to its recommendations.
Our third major challenge is to
provide education to an estimated 30
million children and young people
affected by conflict and humanitarian
crises. Over the past several months,
the plight of hundreds of thousands of
refugees fleeing conflict and terror in the
Middle East and Africa has seized the
attention of the world.
A Way Forward for the SDGs
This humanitarian crisis encompasses an
education crisis as well for the children
swept up in these tragic events. Globally,
an estimated 65 million children are
directly affected by emergencies and
protracted crises—putting them at risk of
missing years of education.
The financing gap to ensure that these
children get an education is estimated
at $4.8 billion per year. A Champions’
Group on Education in Emergencies and
Protracted Crises has brought together
the Global Partnership for Education,
UNICEF, UNHCR and many other
donors and development actors to address
this financing gap by creating a
dedicated fund
and platform to better support education
during conflict and crisis.
Taking all of this into account, to
achieve the 4th Goal of the SDGs and
address the needs of children affected by
conflict and crisis, we need to make the
Global Partnership truly global, with the
help of new donors to increase resources
for education and broaden the partner-
ship for change.
Aside from new sources of substantial
funding, what can be done to create global
goods platforms for educational inputs
such as books, technology, teaching
materials and assessment mechanisms, so
that we bring the efficiencies of scale to
support country-led education planning
and implementation?
How can we work better across sectors
—for example by implementing inte-
grated health and education programmes
for girls, which we know will also deliver
benefits to their children and future
generations?
As daunting as the challenges may
seem, they will be overcome if we are
determined to work together for change.
©UN/WilliamBly
©GPE/AlexandraHumme
Ms Julia Gillard speaking to children
in their classroom
Ms Julia Gillard on panel about equity
at the Oslo Summit on Education
Ms Julia Gillard delivering a speech on
ensuring access to quality education
through integrated national policies,
cooperation and partnerships at
the High Level Political Forum on
Sustainable Development
Education and the Sustainable Development Goals
©JohnTass-Parker

SangSaeng Summer / Autumn 2015 09
The Planet Does Not Need More Successful People
By Nalini Singh
(Facilitator, Generation Waking Up, New Zealand)
naprasingh@gmail.com
08
©JulieZhu
FOCUS
W
e measure a nation’s
health by its output.
We measure individual
success by status, net
worth and income. However, as envi-
ronmental scientist David Orr writes, the
planet does not need more “successful
people.” It desperately needs more peace-
makers, healers, storytellers, restorers and
lovers of every kind. It needs people who
live well in their places. It needs people of
moral courage willing to join the fight to
make the world habitable and humane.
Plus, these qualities have little to do with
success as we have defined it.
I have had the privilege of seeing first-
hand the work of youth climate action
groups such as New Zealand’s Generation
Zero (20,000 members) and been struck
by the vast chasm between public rhetoric
—that is to say, the sensationalisation
of this country as clean and green—and
political inaction on such urgent issues as
climate change in favour of more privati-
sation, liberalisation and globalisation.
This is just one example of our polit-
ical system failing to be deeply present to
the needs of its people.
Moreover, despite decades of research
in creative process, psychological devel-
opment and action-learning, as well as
the recent impetus for Global Citizenship
Education (GCED) by the UN and related
bodies, our education systems worldwide
are no different. We are taught to operate
at the lowest of listening for much of the
time—downloading. Memorise and regur-
gitate and we are guaranteed good marks,
akin to replaying the same tape over
and over in a dark room on a projector,
windows closed, blinds shut.
I remember an educator who spoke at
the International Conference on Thinking
2013: “At our school, we teach nothing
“Stop measuring
days by degree
of productivity
and start
experiencing
them by degree
of presence.”
-Alan Watts
Beyond Education-As-Usual
DOES NOT
NEED
THEPLANET
MORESUCCESSFULPEOPLE
Participatory learning in co-created spaces requiring
deep listening during the P3 Foundation World
Changers Conference 2013

FOCUS
googleable.”
Open access information means
there is little need nowadays to memo-
rise, something no doubt the recent
OpenCon conference-goers in Brussels
would agree. Accordingly, I struggle to
find resonance with the “put more girls
in schools” rhetoric when the system of
education implemented in most cases is
similarly compartmentalised, divisive,
memorisation- and grade-based, and
employability-focused, hence only serving
to perpetuate our interrelated global crises
through entrenching their very cause:
the illusion of separation. The corollary
to this is that the Global Education First
Initiative’s (GEFI) first and second prior-
ities, namely, “every child in school” and
“quality learning” must be combined with
the third GCED for a profound shift in
Education-As-Usual.
What gives me hope is that
everywhere we look, youth
are waking up and co-creating
their own learning beyond
the classroom, spearheading
social movements and coun-
tering the dominant paradigm
of “economic growth at all costs”
with a fervour and tenacity like no
other generation before.
Presencing and Theory U
Real change happens not when we are
replicating failing patterns of the past,
but when we are able to sense and actu-
alise the “emerging future”—and hence
“emerging self” or who we really are—
according to Otto Scharmer, whose last
During the Youth Climate Summit, New Zealand
The power of play and games
facilitates "presencing" during
the Generation Waking Up
Training, USA
The power of games and play in
participatory learning
MOOC (Massive Online Open Course)
from MIT saw over 10,000 participants
worldwide. To do that, he calls for an
“open mind,” “open heart” and “open
will,” which is also the theme of my recent
discourse at the UN Youth Congress for
500 change-agents in Latin America and
the Caribbean.
“Open mind” means turning off
the projector, going to the window and
opening the blinds. It means noticing
differences. This is, however, still the work
of the rational mind. It is about critiquing,
judging, thinking, disconfirming and
labelling. It is about learning to know,
under UNESCO’s pillars of learning. It is
useful, on some level, but not enough.
“Open heart” is empathy, standing in
another’s shoes. It is about discussion, not
debate. It is about suspending judgment,
recognising that “I think, therefore I
am not here.”—thought often impedes
flow of emotion. It is the language of the
heart, yet we rarely learn it at school.
Meanwhile, both neuroscience and
psychology indicate that we make
decisions based far more on
emotion than logic. Perhaps
that is because emotions
point to our values and what
matters to us. Therefore, it
is no wonder that organ-
isations such as ManKind
Project and Pachamama
Alliance spend countless
hours allowing participants to
unlearn repression—for example,
stop being a child, grow up, do not
cry, do not be a sissy—and honour
their pain years later.
This level of consciousness—“open
heart”—most closely dovetails with
UNESCO’s Learning to Live Together
initiative. I recently led a week-long
transformative workshop series on the
global movement Generation Waking Up
(GenUp) at Orientation Aotearoa (OA),
a year-long programme for youth in New
Zealand who wish to change the world,
and I can certainly affirm the value of
such emotive work.
GenUp treats four critical questions:
“who are we,” “where are we,” “what has
to change” and “what do we do now”
through Scharmer’s U process of open
mind, heart and will, and uses peer-
to-peer sharing, small and large group
sharing, theatre, music, art, dance, story-
telling, games and multimedia to ignite
passion and purpose on socio-environ-
mental issues. Workshops are anywhere
from three hours to seven immersive days.
I have been blessed and amazed to
witness this group of OA youth sharing so
profoundly that there were tears, shouting,
screaming, laughter, love, dancing, singing
and even individuals running out of the
room—perhaps something few teachers
will encounter in such a cathartic and
healing manner.
Accordingly, the power of youth-led
participation for social change is not
merely something tangible in the external
world but also in the internal realm of
values, emotions and sensibility. Our
power comes from our openness and the
capacity to feel unabashed, unapologetic
and vivid.
Meanwhile, “open will” is about
letting go, “presencing,” and letting come.
“Presencing” (a mix of being present and
sensing) is where the magic happens—
the moment in conversation where we
notice an authentic shift in our sense of
self. It is the art of generative dialogue or
transformative stillness yet so few of our
NGOs and enterprises act from this place.
It concerns opening the intention and
aligning it with the attention—a subtle
and sophisticated mix of learning to be
and learning to do. Yet the vast majority
of our education—as well as youth work
in NGOs—is externally-focused, both in
content or process as well as in assess-
ment, and there is a constant sense of
winning and losing.
GCED, Youth Movements as the
Infinite Game
I admire the work of Niki Harré at the
University of Auckland researching the
“Infinite Game,” which is where I see the
future of GCED. While finite games are
about winning and losing, exclusivity, set
rules, replicating winning strategies of the
past, sameness, and hold at stake things of
finite or extrinsic value, the infinite game
concerns play, unyielding inclusivity,
shifting horizons, awe, the “emerging
future,” diversity, creativity and aims to keep
in play things of infinite (intrinsic) value.
For instance, at 40-year old Sudbury
©POWERSHIFTNZ-PACIFIC
The Planet Does Not Need More Successful People
©HanniHanson
©JulieZhu

SangSaeng Summer / Autumn 2015
FOCUS
1312
Ancient Wisdom in Asian Traditional Houses
Valley High School, there are no classes,
grades, exams, timetables, homework,
teachers, curriculum or uniforms.
Learning is co-created, autonomous,
reflexive and spontaneous. Moreover, it is
transdisciplinary, participatory, inter-sub-
jective and deeply transformative, as
opposed to transmissive, mechanistic and
prescriptive. It is about trust, not fear; love,
not control. It serves an infinite purpose,
which the finite games of power, prestige,
productivity and economic gain can never
hope to capture. Learning here—as well
as in the workshops we lead at GenUp—is
about life, play and presence.
Yet we cannot be present if we are
trying, because there is the thought of
trying, in the same way that we cannot fall
asleep if we are trying. As facilitators and
young change agents, we cannot force,
enforce or coerce change: we can only
facilitate a space where self-transforma-
tion can occur.
I have immense hope that education
will be able to do this one day and I believe
it can also impressively transform how
youth NGOs function: to be less transmis-
sive and more transformative; less about
facts and more about stories; less about
meeting goals and more about inspiring
resonance.
So as we move to renew our commit-
ments to wellbeing—individually and
collectively in the Sustainable Develop-
ment Goals and Post-2015 Development
Agenda—We might ask ourselves not how
much I got done today, but how present I
was today.
Looming deadlines, pressures of
a 40-hour work-week and how far
away it seems from holidays—past and
upcoming—may make us feel we do not
have time to be present, let alone incorpo-
rate this in any meaningful way into our
work in GCED or youth movements. But
as the late Marshall Rosenberg, founder of
Non-Violent Communication, said: “Your
presence is the most precious gift you can
give to another.”
The present is a gift. That is why it is
called the present.
We might ask
ourselves not how
much I got done
today, but how
present I was today.
Generation Waking Up NZ Leadership Training 2013
By Kesz Valdez
(Founder, Championing Community Children (C3), Philippines)
iamkesz@gmail.com
ABetterFutureinOur
YOUNG
HANDS
©C3
©ChristopherBean

FOCUS
1514
W
hen I was four years old, I
lived on the streets of Cavite
City in the Philippines.
I grew up on a dumpsite
where nothing was clean, and every day
I would look for plastic bottles and other
garbage to sell, to use, and to eat. A simple
daily wish I had was for people to throw
away garbage so that I could collect and
buy flip-flops to protect my feet, some
toys to play with and of course lots of
food.
At that time, I did not know anything
about general hygiene. I used to drink
water from potholes in the streets and
sewage canals, eat spoiled food, sleep
inside vacated tombs to escape beatings
from my own parents, and like my friends,
allow flies to fester on my wounds. I did
not know these acts were harmful to me,
making me ill.
According to UNICEF estimates,
there are approximately 250,000 chil-
dren living on the streets, and about 3.7
million children work to either support
themselves or their families, making their
lives incredibly difficult and removing any
hope for a better future.
Most of these children are boys aged 7
to 16 years, and about 75 per cent of them
still return home to families after working
or begging on the streets. While on the
streets, these children are exposed to very
harsh and dangerous elements. They
suffer from hunger, cold, sickness, abuse
and exploitation.
At an age when children should be in
school learning essential knowledge and
skills, street children like my former self
are made to learn hard lessons of survival
on the streets.
A Spark That Transforms
But I digress; the turning point in my life
was when I suffered severe burns. One
evening, I was accidently pushed into a
pile of burning tires and suffered burns
all over my body. It was like a baptism
of fire, for that was also the day I met my
lifesaver, the man who took me in and
changed my life. My Tatz, Mr Harnin
educated me and taught me principles,
which he still reminds me of to this day:
whenever I see a need, I must stand up
and have courage. After meeting Mr
Harnin, I wanted to be a flame that would
warm cold hearts, a flame that would shed
light to the path of the lost, a flame that
would spark hope, lighting an entire sea
of darkness and desperation.
That is why, when I was eight years
old, I formed the group C3, Championing
Community Children. I mobilised 15
young volunteers, and together, we
trained and continue to train children
from different backgrounds including
street children and youth to be leaders in
their own communities. We teach them
about nutrition, hygiene and children’s
rights as well as coach them in gardening
so they can grow their own food. In this
regard, we support and empower thou-
sands of children every year.
In time, these children clearly changed
the way they looked and behaved. Today,
they are more confident because of the
knowledge and attention they receive.
They eat healthier and more diverse foods,
and even their parents now understand
the importance of a better, healthier life.
Not just children, but whole families learn
from our trainings.
Young Game Changers
Through the work we do, I was recognised
and awarded the International Children’s
Peace Prize in 2012. The prize was
presented to me by Nobel Peace Laureate
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an icon for
change, and it gave me the opportunity to
spread my story to millions of people.
However, for me, health, a safe home
and education are the keys to success. Our
health is our wealth. Being healthy will
enable us to play, think clearly, get up and
go to school and love the people
around us in so many ways.
That is the first step in
advocating for change.
Every day, I work
with people as young
as 14 years old
who voluntarily
contribute to our
community and
support street chil-
dren. I see it every
day; young people
have the power to
change the world. We can
My message to
you, to the people
in power, and to
youth all around the
world is that age,
the status in your
life, and whether you
are rich or poor, do
not keep you from
making a difference
in your community.
A Better Future in Our Young Hands
strengthen our communities and be game
changers—be it through aiming to realise
children’s rights for everyone around
the globe, working with global leaders,
helping shape policies, expanding our
community work, or speaking up about
burning issues such as the rights of street
children and youth.
A changed mind and a changed heart
can help change this world, so I, with life
and my mentor Mr Harnin’s teachings
and principles as building blocks that led
me to act and collaborate, as a changed
person from a former street child to a
supporter for peace and children’s rights,
I advocate before you. My message to you,
to the people in power, and to youth all
around the world is that age, the status
in your life, and whether you are rich
or poor, do not keep you from making
a difference in your community. Young
people have the power to transform the
world.
Kesz Valdez treating a child's wound
C3 outreaching to
children on being
healthy and wealthy
©C3
©C3

FOCUS
By Shruhti Waduacharige
(Volunteer, Sri Lanka Unites, Sri Lanka)
M.Waduacharige@gordon.eduTOWARDSHOPEANDRECONCILIATION
A Youth Movement Towards Hope and ReconciliationFOCUS
Summer / Autumn 2015 1716
©RanshaniNagahawatte

S
ri Lanka Unites (SLU) is a
youth campaign for hope
and reconciliation across the
nation. Our members consist of
young people between the ages of 15 and
19, and we have more than 10,000 student
members across the nation. All the
members, volunteers and staff are below
the age of 35.
We truly believe that our youth move-
ment can produce positive outcomes.
With youth comes passion, commitment
and more importantly, a less tainted
worldview, the opposite of which some-
times the older generation still holds. By
harnessing these, we are able to encourage
young people to step out of the entrap-
ments of inherited prejudices and stereo-
types. We provide them with a platform to
think critically for themselves outside of
their parents’ influences, create a space for
dialogue and offer various opportunities
to put their thoughts into action.
Our goal is to advance the shared
vision of a united Sri Lanka. The journey
is long and arduous, especially upon the
realisation that we may not see tangible
results in our own time, but we are certain
that if we move towards this goal as one
united force, then future generations will
benefit from it. As we accelerate towards
our purpose, we seek to inspire hope in
the hearts of the young, the kind of hope
that has escaped the grasp of many of the
older generation.
A survey conducted by SLU shows
that 70 per cent of youth have not met
someone outside of their ethnicity. At our
annual Future Leaders Conference, we
bring student leaders together from every
district of Sri Lanka, representing each
ethnicity, religion and socioeconomic
background in Sri Lanka.
Eye Opener
The conference plays an important role as
an initial foundation inspiring hope and
mutual understanding among the dele-
gates. While spending five days along with
other ethnicities, they can realise that what
they had once been taught to hate others
based on the negative stereotypes and
prejudices of the older generation is false
and that inherited real life experiences
trump inherited prejudices.
The panels, sports activities, creative
tasks and mentorship provided at the
conference allow them to further realise
that there is something inherently wrong
with the negative rhetoric that many of
them had grown up with. However, even
after six consecutive conferences, the need
for hope is evident, and the hope inspired
in the hearts and minds of the students
that leave the conference is tangible.
Along with the Future Leaders
Conference, other programmes that SLU
hosts include: the Champions of Change
project that partners with schools from
different parts of the country to work
together and serve a local community;
Reconciliation Centres in three different
parts of the country that serve three
distinct ethnic communities with infor-
mation technology, English and Business
Entrepreneurship diplomas and provide
space for SLU members to gather; School
Relation Tours that take teams to every
district to conduct large workshops on
youth leadership and reconciliation; seven
diaspora chapters that create an oppor-
tunity for Sri Lankans abroad to be a part
of the process; and many other annual
initiatives focused on reconciliation in Sri
Lanka.
Having been raised by parents of a
mixed marriage and attending a high
school where all ethnicities and religions
were well represented, I was of the impres-
sion that I had all the right qualifications
to be well versed in the processes and
actions that achieve reconciliation.
Little did I realise that my moderate,
well-protected, middle class life was
completely devoid of the harsh realities
of the Sri Lankan Civil War and its
aftermath.
Microcosm of a Nation
It had been a year since the end of the war.
I met young men and women here who
had suffered unimaginable atrocities and
it dawned on me that as privileged as I was
to be able to relate to the two polarised
ethnicities, I still had so much more to
learn and understand about my country
and my people.
Before joining SLU, I viewed my
country with impatient sympathy. I found
it to be a disintegrating nation that had
nothing to offer me; I saw its people as
irresponsible and thoughtless. But, at
the conference, for the first time, I saw a
microcosm of my nation gathered in one
room and felt a surge of empathy; I could
feel the pain and the suffering as if it were
mine. I realised then that regardless of
whether or not my country had anything
to offer me, it was my responsibility to
offer something back.
During that week, five years ago, I
resolved that my life would be committed
to the cause of reconciliation of my nation.
Today, many that I had met at that
conference continue to work hard for the
cause of reconciliation. They are some
of the key volunteers and staff of SLU
today, and one of my teammates from
that conference five years ago is in charge
of the programme for the 7th Future
Leaders’ Conference.
This is a testament of the power of
creating an alternate rhetoric to violence
and hatred and allowing young men and
women to experience for themselves what
a united nation could look like.
Road Ahead
Reconciliation is a long journey and
it is definitely not one that will hand
earth-shattering results. Its effects might be
small and not be able to move mountains,
but collectively, the work of thousands
of youth across the nation will be able to
make that shift one day, a shift from being
Sri Lanka needs
its youth to be the
solution to decades
of violence. The
youth of SLU are
willing to be the
agents of change
in a society that
continuously tells
them their efforts are
futile.
A Youth Movement Towards Hope and Reconciliation
a country marked by violence and intoler-
ance to a country that promotes peace and
leaves no room for prejudice.
Sri Lanka needs its youth to be the
solution to decades of violence. The youth
of SLU are willing to be the agents of
change in a society that continuously tells
them their efforts are futile.
I have seen the power of hope
inspiring the minds of youth; I have seen
former extremists now committing their
lives to the cause of reconciliation because
of the initiatives of SLU. I have seen young
women finally allowed to reach their
potential, and I have seen young men
given the opportunity to expend their
energy in causes that are worthwhile.
The youth of this nation are the
answer to our divisiveness, and at SLU,
we are committed to helping the next
generation build a nation devoid of racial
animosity and violence and filled with
equal opportunities, ethnic harmony and
peaceful coexistence.
FOCUS
Summer / Autumn 2015 19SangSaeng18
©RanshaniNagahawatte
Sri Lanka Unites' Future Leaders Conference
Season 6 in Ampara, Sri Lanka, 2014

By Deepika Joon
(Programme Officer, UNESCO Mahatma
Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace
and Sustainable Development, India)
d.joon@unesco.org
T
his year marks the launch of the
Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs), which were developed
after two years of negotiations
marking numerous consultations and
debates. Calling it the people’s agenda, UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed
the consensus saying “It encompasses a
universal, transformative and integrated
agenda that heralds a historic turning point
for our world.”
Although so far, the SDGs have gotten
the most attention, another major change
happened in 2015: the world experienced
the largest population of youth in history.
Standing at 1.8 billion youth, about a
quarter of the world’s population is now
between the ages of 10 and 24 years old,
a statistic that is unprecedented. A young
person who is 10 years old will be 25 years
by the time the second-generation devel-
opment agenda comes to a conclusion,
and therefore will be a leader in conver-
sations about equality, opportunity and
development.
It is clear that youth are vital to our
future and key contributors to our present.
However, public discourse about youth is
largely dictated by more negative percep-
tions. Youth are often perceived as perpe-
trators of violence and social unrest, asso-
ciated with aggressive and aimless protests,
and as non-contributing consumers of
taxpayer money.
Apart from dealing with this culture
of mistrust, this generation of youth also
suffers from unemployment, underem-
ployment, poor or lack of complete access
to quality education, multiple forms of
discrimination, poverty, poor access to
quality health care services, environmental
degradation, and political and economic
instability. The public’s lack of faith in
youth seems to be reciprocated by the
youth’s disillusionment with current gover-
nance arrangements and political leader-
ship, and they have largely kept away from
taking formal and institutional political
cudgels.
This might partially be because youth
are excluded from policymaking processes.
According to the UN Fact Sheet on youth
participation in political processes, the
average age of parliamentarians is 53 years
old globally. Furthermore, 1.65 per cent of
parliamentarians around the world are in
their 20s and 11.87 per cent are in their 30s.
In most countries, youth are not allowed to
vote until the age of 18, are unable to attend
political hearings and legislative activities
because they are scheduled during school
or college timings, and are not taken seri-
ously when they organise protests or other
means of communicating their agenda.
They are simply not considered pertinent
enough to be making contributions to such
dialogues.
Despite all the challenges, youth have
demonstrated that they cannot be taken for
granted and that their opinions can have a
decisive contribution in the economy and
polity. From the Arab Spring to Occupy
Wall Street, youth have been able to orga-
nise themselves into movements and action
against dictatorship, corrupt governments
and totalitarian leaders.
The youth uprisings of the recent past
and present are not local or regional but
truly international in the appeal, modus
operandi and goals that these movements
seek to achieve. Looking at the agendas, it
is apparent that the youth are disgruntled
with neoliberal capitalist policies and are
making a case for participatory and demo-
cratic, corrupt-free governments.
Being Connected
Another important element of youth
participation in activism, particularly in
the last decade, is social media. The most
fascinating ability of this new tool is that
social media enables ordinary citizens to
connect and organise themselves with little
to no cost, and the world bears witness.
As mentioned in UNESCO’s Rethinking
Education report, almost 90 per cent of
youth worldwide participate in some
form of social media, and many use this
access to contribute to democracy, to
innovate and to explore. This was never
clearer than during the Iranian revolution,
when well-educated youth experiencing
inequality in the local contexts organised
themselves on social media and assembled
to overthrow entrenched power systems, a
pattern that has repeated itself throughout
the Arab Spring and beyond.
Youth have also made significant
contributions in civic and social engage-
ment, further belying the misconception
that youth are apathetic at best and at
worst, problematic.
No More Youth Washing
NoMore
Youth
Washing
FOCUS
Summer / Autumn 2015 21SangSaeng20
A group of students at the first YESPeace Network programme in Malaysia launched by UNESCO MGIEP
©AnamikaGupta/UNESCOMGIEP

FOCUS
The world community warmed up to
tremendous youth response received in
the recent rehabilitation of Nepal in the
aftermath of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake.
Young people led the way in coordinating
aid, volunteered for debris management,
created tools to flash the survivors’ infor-
mation on the Internet, and physically
helped the victims get relief care. The above
examples raise several observations as to
why the world is now acknowledging the
critical—and formerly overlooked—role
being played by youth in development.
The Heart of the Matter
In order to build on the momentum the
youth have created, we need to bring an
end to “youth washing,” a recently coined
term that describes piecemeal efforts to
mainstream youth voices. An example of
this is when participation of youth is limited
to a session or side event in conferences or
gatherings where policies are being framed
and new discourses developed. In these
cases, youth are present in decision-making
but absent in the real sense.
It is time to realise that top-down policy
cannot be relied upon to create the funda-
mental transformations needed to build a
truly shared and common future. Youth
are invisibilised, disenchanted and disen-
franchised. In some ways, though, arguing
that youth have proven themselves and
therefore deserve a voice skirts the main
issue: policy participation is a right, and
youth should be able to exercise it. Based
on their population size alone, youth must
be at the heart of development discourse.
The importance of active youth partic-
ipation in policy processes is supported by
several international instruments.
“Full and effective participation of
youth in the life of society and in decision
making” has been identified as one of 15
priorities by the World Programme of
Action for Youth in 2000, which provides
policy framework and guidelines to nation
©UNE
SCO
Bangkok 2013
states to improve the conditions of youth.
Article 12 of the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child states that, “States Parties
shall assure to the child who is capable of
forming his or her own views the right to
express those views freely in all matters
affecting the child, the views of the child
being given due weight in accordance with
the age and maturity of the child.”
Supporting the Future
The post-2015 development agenda is
a landmark opportunity for the world
community and youth to generate enor-
mous benefits for the present and future of
humankind. With appropriate support to
achieve their potential defined by decisions
rooted in their participation, they can be an
immense source of productivity, innova-
tion and creative dynamism that accelerates
development.
To start with, youth need to be supported
in the healthy transition from adolescence
into adulthood. The human rights of all
adults and fundamental rights of youth as
citizens should be ensured and protected,
and access to productive and decent work
needs to be created and enhanced. Young
people are critical in making the second
generation of development goals successful,
and they need to take on an active role.
This big young cohort is the most
connected, disadvantaged and socially
excluded, yet is still creative, innovative,
and highly aspirational. They can be the
best agents in peace-building and conflict
resolution with the use of newer technol-
ogies. The universal appeal of SDGs not
only means regional representation and
collective responsibility as countries but
also intergenerational responsibilities. The
critical policy choices that the develop-
ment community makes today will have
the biggest impact on sustainable future.
Youth participation will be effective if their
recommendations are respected. Their
participation can be made genuine if youth
is made to understand the consequences of
their contributions.
The UN Secretary-General’s message
for the International Youth Day in 2012
was, “Youth are a transformative force; they
are creative, resourceful and enthusiastic
agents of change, be it in public squares
or cyberspace. From their pivotal role in
efforts to achieve freedom, democracy
and equality, to their global mobilisation
in support of the Rio+20 UN Conference
on Sustainable Development, youth have
energetically demonstrated yet again their
capacity and desire to turn the tide of
history and tackle global challenges.”
Young people are not passive bene-
ficiaries of top-down driven policies but
active contributors in shaping social,
economic and environmental devel-
opment. Governments, policy makers,
political leaders, private sector corporate
organisations, community based organisa-
tions, international development organisa-
tions, youth organisations and youth need
to collectively participate in the process to
empower and enable the youth towards
making the world more peaceful and
sustainable. The youth bulge necessitates
active participation in decision making,
enabling them to make choices for them-
selves, for the realisation of their human
rights and full potential as citizens.
No More Youth Washing
Young people are
critical in making the
second generation of
development goals
successful, and they
need to take on an
active role.
( Summer / Autumn 2015 23SangSaeng22
©UNESCOBangkok2013
©DeepikaJoon/UNESCOMGIEP
Youth attendees at UNESCO Forum on GCED in Bangkok, Thailand, December 2013
Youth delegates participating in activities during the UNESCO Forum on GCED in Bangkok, Thailand, December 2013

FOCUS
2524
SPECIAL REPORT
2524 SangSaeng
Happy Schools
Student Perspectives on the
Key to Learner Wellbeing
By Aliénor Salmon
(Education Policy and Reform Unit, UNESCO Bangkok)
a.salmon@unesco.org
H A P P Y S C H O O L S
Happiness, a word as untamed as
a wild beast, can be confined not to
the boundaries of definition but to infinity
itself. Humankind has a perpetual craving
for happiness. Yet, wanting and waiting
is far more aggravating than making it
happen. That is why we need the Happy
Schools Project. When schools can be
happier, the world can be a better place.
The most important facet to make a
Happy School is the people themselves
and their relationships with each other.
Each school at the Happy Schools Seminar
was, hence, represented by three members
consisting of a student, a teacher and an
administrator. The diversity of happiness,
differing in the eyes of every soul, was
symbolised by hosting schools from five
different countries. In the two days we
allocated ourselves for brainstorming
activities, we exchanged ideas and percep-
tions that can contribute to the Happy
Schools Framework.
Schools can be happy by giving
students a voice, by taking their sugges-
tions seriously and allowing them to
express their opinion, freely and without
boundaries. It is vital for schools to give
their students the opportunity to pursue
their passion, within or outside of the
classroom. Such happiness can be granted
through extracurricular activities, sports
and other vocational programmes.
Movement, as odd as it may sound,
is also another important factor in the
making of Happy Schools. Having space
to walk, talk and play between classes and
laboratories is a subtle factor that does
indeed contribute to the overall happiness
of us all.
©Panu
Hejmadi
PANU HEJMADI
(13 years old, Vidyashilp
Academy, India)
T
he Happy Schools Project,
an initiative that attempts to
promote learner wellbeing
and holistic development
among schools in the Asia-Pacific
region was launched by UNESCO
Bangkok in June 2014. With a focus
on the socio-emotional dimensions of
learning, the concept of Happy Schools
is grounded upon two of the four Pillars
of Learning—Learning to Live Together
and Learning to Be—as outlined in the
landmark 1996 UNESCO publication
Learning: The Treasure Within. At the
same time, it also embraces related
concepts such as positive psychology or
positive education, as well as the wider
movement for increased creativity in
schools.
Among a number of activities, the
Happy Schools Seminar was held in
order to bring school representatives
together from five countries: Bhutan,
India, Republic of Korea, Thailand
and Vietnam. Through engaging and
innovative activities, the Seminar
enabled school representatives to voice
their opinions and ideas of what may
constitute a Happy School in order
to collectively build a Happy Schools
Framework.
How does one define a “Happy
School?” While there can be no single
definition, students from the six
different schools that participated in the
Seminar share their thoughts on what a
Happy School means to them:
HAPPY SCHOOLS:

FOCUS
2726
SPECIAL REPORT
2726 SangSaeng
Happy Schools
The Seminar conducted as
part of the Happy Schools
Project was definitely one to
remember. I was able to collaborate
with teachers, administrators and
other students from schools across Asia.
Defining a Happy School is not easy
because, as we learnt, there are so many
different aspects involved—both physical
and mental. With the perspectives of
multiple schools and many people, it was
so interesting to discuss the similarities
and differences between us.
Now, I believe there are three key
aspects towards making a school as happy
as it can be: physical school environ-
ments, student motivation and a sense
of community that can all lead towards
a Happy School. I do not think there is a
single school that is perfectly happy, and
there is not a sole definition to define a
“Happy School.” It is understood that not
everyone has access to the same facilities,
but an aspiring attitude and a good sense
of community can definitely act as a huge
stepping stone towards building a Happy
School.
As a student from Vietnam, I attended
a seminar on Happy Schools. I think
a Happy School needs to have three
criteria: a comfortable studying environ-
ment, good relationships and a variety of
extra-curricular activities.
The first thing that should be taken
into account is a comfortable studying
environment. This means feeling comfort-
able in the place that is being used for
studying so that students can apply the
knowledge they learnt comfortably in real
life. In my opinion, in addition to having
a broad academic knowledge, a good
teacher needs to be able to make their
students love the act of studying. They
should not make them feel that studying is
a burden. In other words, a good teacher
I think the meaning of a
Happy School involves
many things. A good
rapport between teachers
and students, where there
is love and care, is one of the
important factors to be a Happy
School. I am lucky because I have great
teachers and lovely classmates in my
school. Teachers love us and we respect
them. Whenever I go to school in the
morning, I look forward to seeing them
and to experience a happy new day. The
relationship that students have with each
other, where they can help and share with
one another without bullying, is also valu-
able. I like small-sized schools because
students know each other well and share
many experiences just like a family.
We receive many benefits and support
from our friends, teachers and the educa-
tional board, which helps us a lot because
it eliminates the need for private tutoring.
I think self-study outweighs private
tutoring. I really love after-school classes,
and the Saturday culture study at school
programme—where I am getting certif-
icates in English, Chinese, computers,
Taekkgyeon (a traditional Korean martial
art), and the violin—is ideal because it
is where I can learn various activities
happily, in a safe school, surrounded by
the beauty of nature.
A natural and healthy environment
without pollution and violence is
important too. When I lived in the middle
of the city, I was affected by the pollution
caused by cars and buildings. After
moving to this school, which is located
in the countryside, I could feel that my
physical and mental health has improved
naturally.
Lastly, Happy Schools need quality
support from parents, local communi-
ties, teachers, and especially principals.
Without their support, we cannot be
happy.
©NandiniMitta
l
JOO EUN KIM
(11 years old, Daegu Gachang
Elementary School, Republic of
Korea)
NANDINI MITTAL
(15 years old, NIST Inter-
national School, Thailand)
©UN
ESCO/A.Salmon
Happy Schools
need quality support
from parents, local
communities,
teachers, and
especially principals.
Without their
support, we cannot
be happy.
knows how to inspire satisfaction, passion
and curiosity among students and should
not just be giving a lot of homework
in order to force students to be hard-
working individuals.
Additionally, sometimes students
have to focus so much of their attention
on getting good scores on their assess-
ments or earn degrees that we forget all
the theories we learnt and how to apply
them in daily life. Knowledge application
and soft skills are really important to each
student because those are things that will
be with us for our entire life.
Secondly, there should be good
relationships. Students will be so happy
if their teachers can be their friends,
listening to them and respecting what they
say. Concerning the relationships between
students, there must be no physical or
psychological violence. Last but not least,
a Happy School should have extra-curric-
ular activities that not only help to reduce
stress among students but also improve
their soft skills.
Everyone that is associated
with a school wants to make
their own school a Happy
School, but how can we build
one? I had many discussions about this
with my classmates. What I learnt from
them was that everybody in school can
be happy if there is a positive atmosphere
and a good school environment.
Positive relationships between every
member of the school are a way to fix the
generational gap and to help us under-
stand each other better. Therefore, this
means that we can also fix more problems
in school.
Thinking about school buildings,
classrooms and green spaces are also
critical because they are the places where
everyone teaches, studies and participates
in activities together. If we have a good
environment, with “intelligent class-
rooms,” then students can learn and enjoy
each subject more. From what I learnt in
the Happy Schools Seminar, I will try my
best to make my school a happier school.
It was a miracle for me to
attend the Happy Schools
Seminar in Bangkok. I see it as
the greatest opportunity that I ever
had in my life and I learnt many things
from the seminar.
Firstly, I learnt that for a school to be
a happy place there should be cooperation
among students and between students and
teachers. Without cooperation, nothing
can be achieved successfully and there will
be many problems in the school. I even
learnt that for a school to be a “happy
place,” teachers should make each and
every subject interesting. Through this
effort, enthusiasm in learning automati-
cally comes up and makes students learn
better.
Another thing that greatly contributes
in making schools a happy place is by
keeping the surroundings clean and
beautiful. Moreover, the beauty has to
come from our natural environment so
that schools can be very green which will
in turn make them happy places.
In conclusion, it is my opinion that
even small things matter for a school to be
a happy place. They can be as wonderful as
a big tree growing from a small seed. Every
small thing in school should be related
to happiness. Therefore, if some of these
aspects are present, I think a school can be
a happy place. Moreover, for students to
be happy, schools should not place a great
amount of stress over the students’ studies.
©NashaRodana
nt NASHA RODANANT
(16 years old, Satit Chula
Secondary School, Thailand)
©
UNESCO/A.Salmon
CHIMI YUDEN
(16 years old, Pemagat-
shel Middle Secondary
School, Bhutan)
Within the context of Happy Schools
Project, these student perspectives
provide a glimpse into the outcomes
of Happy Schools Seminar. In addi-
tion to an ongoing desk study and
the Happy Schools Survey, which
collected more than 650 responses,
these outcomes form part of a wider
evidence that was gathered from these
crucial stakeholders in ultimately
drawing up the Happy Schools
Framework. The Framework will
comprise both the criteria for a Happy
School, as well as the strategies, ways
and means to reach the criteria in a
diversity of contexts both at school
and at the policy level.
The Framework to be published
in early 2016 is expected to play a
vital role as an alternative reference
for schools that look beyond strictly
academic outcomes when it comes to
measuring the quality of learning in
schools in the Asia-Pacific region and
beyond.
NGUYEN NGOC VAN THAO
(14 years old, Thuc Nghiem VNIES
Secondary School, Vietnam)
©UNESC
O/A.Salmon

BEST PRACTICES
PASSING ON WISDOM
THROUGH STORYTELLING
IN THAILAND
By Yaprai Satutum
(Researcher, Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre, Thailand)
mmyaprai@gmail.com
Passing on Wisdom through Storytelling in Thailand
W
hen it comes to story-
telling, most people think
about the entertainment
aspect of it. However, the
value of storytelling expands far beyond
the field of entertainment.
From ancient times long passed,
stories have taken on the role of teachers
while instilling members of the commu-
nity with wisdom, moral codes and social
norms in order to enable them to live in
an ethical and appropriate manner. You
can easily find stories conveying messages
to have a good heart and boost philosoph-
ical contemplation.
An example of a collection of stories
with such a philosophical orientation
is that of the Pakagayor tribes (a Karen
ethnic community) in Thailand. Joni
Odochao, a Pakagayor storyteller and
community leader, tells that Pakagayor
storytelling usually focuses on the inter-
connection of all things and how to live
simply and harmoniously with nature.
Stories help communities preserve
their roots by providing interpretations
of historical and cultural origins, identity,
lifestyles, beliefs and ancestral wisdom; in
turn, they offer as much insight into their
own origins as that of other communities,
which may initially seem foreign.
Stories as Seeds for Growth
If we think of seeds as a metaphor for
stories, then such a metaphor refers to
the seminal value of the diversity of the
“story-seeds” and their properties. In this
sense, it is important to plant these seeds
or grow these story trees in the hearts
and minds of people, because it lies at the
heart of the exchange and is the receptacle
of creative nutrients.
This process substantially converges
with Albert Bandura’s social learning
theory that describes learning through
observing and imitating others. In the
context of storytelling, the audience would
imitate the positive aspects of the charac-
ters’ behaviours, and in that connection,
avoid the negative aspects. Stories help
us differentiate between what is right
and wrong by utilizing the characters as
models. The teachings that can be drawn
from stories bestow us with experiences
that we do not need to undergo ourselves
in order to realise the consequences.
Just as seeds grow with the proper
amount of water and sunlight, the story-
telling process should be done under
the appropriate environment as well.
Examples include listening to stories
told by village elders sitting together
with community members or by parents
reading to their children before bedtime.
This is where knowledge, love and connec-
tion are exchanged.
In the past, when storytelling with
actual physical gatherings took place
during festive and agricultural occasions,
people generated moods and emotions as
a collective. This warmly assembled envi-
ronment is conducive to emotional inti-
macy as well as the immediate exchange
of ideas so that a form of community
learning is nurtured and provides an
opportunity to connect people of all ages.
Storytellers as Tree Planters
If seeds are considered a metaphor for
stories, then storytellers and other social
practitioners or distributors of storytelling
media can be considered “tree planters.”
The role of tree planters is paramount,
as they are the ones who select the story-
seeds for the nurturing of their societies.
American storyteller Dr Margaret
Read MacDonald found that stories
that revolve around love and war are
more widely told than stories that imply
messages of compassion and conflict reso-
lution. She believes that the selectiveness
which lies at the heart of using stories will
bring about peace in society. Therefore,
she has been collecting and publishing
stories with contents that encourage
creative problem-solving and contain
moral teachings from Thailand and other
countries.
Just as Dr MacDonald strives to
promote educative stories towards a
Culture of Peace, tree planters should be
able to adapt, interpret and discern which
stories suit which target audiences, occa-
sions and circumstances. For instance, the
Pakagayor tales have been adapted over
time by local storytellers to follow changing
social trends: their story “The Dog and
the Lion” teaches the community about
the dangers of chemical usage, especially
as chemical substances have become an
increasingly common part of agriculture.
Joni Odochao shows the forest management
information of Nong Tao village
©YapraiSatutum

BEST PRACTICES
Nurturing Story Trees in Thailand
Today, there are collectives dedicated to
composting, developing and enriching
fertile soil for the growing of story trees in
Thailand.
The Training Institute for Self-man-
agement and Lanna Wisdom School in
Chiang Mai have established programmes
for youth development by instilling pride
in their tribal culture and history.
Young people are encouraged to
collect folktales that are intimately inter-
woven into the fabric of the local identity.
Children participate in interviews,
recording, documenting, organising data,
illustrating and captioning and even
producing storybooks that are available
for purchase throughout the community.
These programmes reflect the importance
of folk stories as a local curriculum to
teach students knowledge and wisdom
from their own area and help mainstream
children learn about cultural diversity in
Thailand.
At Jomaloluela School, storytelling
is incorporated in classrooms through
different forms of the arts, including stage
plays. The children are able to listen to
stories told by local storytellers and then
encouraged to create storybooks, stage
plays, paper puppetry and other media to
reflect their newly gained insight. Orapin
Kusolroongrat, the teacher and founder of
the programme believes that engaging arts
with folktales not only boosts the students’
confidence and imagination but also helps
them absorb the stories in a unique way.
Rather than placing the importance on
the final products, the goal of the activities
is the growth of the students’ learning
processes.
Storytelling can also be seen at the
university level. At Thonburi University,
Professor Sirikoy Chutataweesawaas runs
a project for senior students to collect
and create cartoon animations of selected
stories from the Karen, with the design
of each cartoon character in consultation
with the local people in terms of culture,
During an interview with teachers and
students from Jomaloluela School
Students of Jomaloluela School perform in a festival of the Chiang Mai Love to Read Project
31
meaning and reality.
On a much wider scale, the faculty
of Humanities and Social Sciences at
Mahasarakam University has organised
the International Storyteller Festival for
several years now. They are currently
expanding the network into one that
encompasses the exchange of ideas,
perspectives and narratives. Dr Wajuppa
Tossa, the founder of the project, believes
that there should be more research studies
showcasing the benefits of Thai folktales
and storytelling in order to promote
related policies and support storytelling
on a national level.
These programmes created by local
schools and public universities represent
the growing importance of folktales and
storytelling in education and learning at
both the primary and tertiary levels of
education.
See the Forest for the Trees
The responses of students who partici-
pated in the storytelling projects are posi-
tive and show moral growth and increased
understanding. The children at Jomalol-
uela School offer substantial insight into
their experiences of listening to stories
from the elderly in their community:
“Listening to stories here inspires us with
ideas we do not get from the computer
screen. We get to learn from the diverse
perspectives of others who have come
together to listen. When asked ‘What is
the word that comes to mind when you
think of the activities told in this folktales
project?’ The most mentioned answers
were ‘enjoyable,’ ‘learned,’ ‘feel warm,’
‘teachable,’ ‘proud,’ and ‘appreciated.’”
Despite all such preservation and
development efforts, the planting of
story trees still faces obstacles that come
with the age of convenient and fast-
paced lifestyles. It now depends upon our
collective efforts to build a storytelling
culture beginning in the family and
extending outwards towards other outlets.
Furthermore, we can donate storybooks to
community libraries or support products
and services related to storytelling.
By nourishing these story trees—by
serving as the hands that keep spin-
ning the tales—we will help to create a
community as well as a wider society that
possesses the many idealistic qualities
formerly dreamed of by our collective
storytelling imaginations.
Folktale books made by local children in Lanna community—the books are for sale at the
Lanna product store of Lanna Wisdom School
Passing on Wisdom through Storytelling in Thailand
Despite all such
preservation and
development efforts,
the planting of story
trees still faces
obstacles that come
with the age of
convenient and fast-
paced lifestyles.
©JomaloluelaSchool
©YapraiSatutum
©YapraiSatutum

BEST PRACTICES
IT TAKES
A VILLAGE
TO RAISE
A C H I L D
By Cheol Yu
(Director, Chungcheongbuk-do
Cheongmyeong Institute for Students,
Republic of Korea)
ycwhn@hanmail.net
It Takes a Village to Raise a Child
T
he Wee Project is an education
system established and oper-
ated by the government of the
Republic of Korea in order to
provide support for students who consider
dropping out of school.
The Wee Project was established
in 2008 with the cooperation of several
schools, offices of education and local
communities. There are many programmes
operating through the Wee Project in
order to prevent school bullying and help
at-risk students who have trouble adjusting
to school life.
Accessibility is Key
The Project is operated at three organi-
sational levels: Wee Class (school), Wee
Centre (regional office of education)
and Wee School (provincial office of
education). The first level, Wee Class, is
located at schools, where students can talk
about their troubles in a safe environment.
Professional counsellors that work in Wee
Classes help students who are struggling
with school life by providing them with
customised services such as personal,
group and experiential counselling.
In an attempt to make them easily acces-
sible to everyone in the community, Wee
Centres are designed as one-stop counselling
Sunlight Meeting
©CCIS

BEST PRACTICES
service centres installed at regional or
metropolitan offices of education. They also
provide diagnosis-counselling-treatment
services for more serious issues that cannot
be resolved at the school level.
The Centres are supported by local
community human resources, physical
resources, and infrastructural departments.
In addition, professional counsellors,
clinical counsellors, and social workers also
work at Wee Centres to provide services
such as diagnoses, counselling and therapy.
To make sure that the Centres are well
connected to the communities they serve,
Wee Schools have become long-term
alternative education boarding institutions
where students can work closely with
professionals to rediscover their dreams
and develop their talents through career
education focused on sensitivity training
and practical education. At the same time,
a team of professional counsellors, clinical
counsellors and social workers work with
teachers to help students keep up with
their regular curriculum.
Wee School for At-Risk Middle
School Students
As South Korea’s first public boarding
alternative education institution, the
Chungbuk Cheongmyeong Institute for
Students (CCIS) is a Wee School for at-risk
middle school students established by the
North Chungcheong Office of Education in
September 2009. Currently, several metro-
politan and provincial offices of education
are setting up similar educational facilities
that are modelled after the CCIS institute.
CCIS operates diverse programmes
with growth communities that support
students who struggle in the Korean
educational system.
Growth, Sharing, Consideration
CCIS students participate in a programme
called Sunlight Meetings every morning.
This is a special time set aside for students
to recite personal development goals and
share stories, sketches, songs and other
projects that they prepare each day.
Students take regular curriculum
classes during the day, but unlike tradi-
tional classes, these classes are usually
conducted on a one-on-one basis due to
the fact that there is not an overflow of
students at the institute. Students partic-
ipate in various therapeutic and special
education programmes after their regular
classes and do so with the aim of spending
their afternoons and evenings partaking
in physical activities, club activities and
Starlight Meetings, where students can
talk about their day with their homeroom
teacher and housemaster. They also enjoy
Crisis Treatment
Programme
Self-Development
Programme
Sharing and Hope
Programme
Peaceful
Personality Building
Programme
Crisis Solution
Programme
Interpersonal
Relationship Resto-
ration Programme
Physical education class
various field trips to museums and arts/
crafts villages.
Among a variety of CCIS education
programmes, the music band activity,
which is in line with the Student-Teacher
Sensitivity Exploration programme, is
drawing much attention. After students
participate in musical activities, their
general attitudes, emotional expressions,
and behaviours are enhanced and become
brighter. To highlight the improvements
the students are making in their musical
abilities, CCIS runs several concerts with
the aim of helping students gain self-confi-
dence and become more positive.
There are also several vocational career
experiential programmes available such as
barista and baking classes to help students
consider possible future career paths.
Onto the Next Road
CCIS students typically return to their
regular schools after staying at the Institute
for either six months or one year. In order
to have a smooth transition back into their
former lives before joining CCIS, students
are given the chance to visit their schools
with parents a number of times during
their stay at the Institute.
Even after leaving the Institute, CCIS
regularly follows up with the students
through phone counselling, in-person
counselling visits and support systems.
Through a series of processes, students
are able to overcome personal difficulties,
return to school and successfully lead their
own lives.
It Takes a Village to Raise a Child
Multicultural class
©CCIS
©CCIS
“I STARTED TO HAVE HOPE FOR
THE FUTURE”
“At first, I did not like my school teacher
and mother for sending me here. I got angry
a lot and did not go back home for days at
a time. It felt like there was no one around
me who cared about what I thought or how
I felt. But during my stay at the institute,
I could receive the attention and help I
needed from the teachers. So I tried my
best to change my character. Soon I will go
back to school after finishing my term here.
My new goal of becoming a kindergarten
teacher motivates me to become a better
student so I can enter high school, which
will bring me one step closer to achieving
my dreams.” - One of the CCIS students
PROGRAMMES
In addition to the above programmes, CCIS runs a multicultural preparatory school
programme that helps the growing number of multicultural students who might have
trouble adjusting to learning the Korean language and fitting into Korean society.
Further Action Required
In order to aid at-risk adolescents more
effectively, efforts should be made not
only by educational institutes but also by
families and community members.
First, families should be happy to
resolve the problems of at-risk youth. To
this end, parents need to take a stand, and
society needs to have a system that prop-
erly supports parental education so that
they can take care of their children prop-
erly. Much of the failure in educational
structures to properly serve youth stems
from the lack of resolution in working
through parental problems. In addition,
community members should endeavour
to build a village where children can
dream and parents can raise their children
well.
Various levels of schools, educational
administrations and local communities
should intervene together. For example,
schools, educational administrations, and
local communities must set up proper
support systems using the CCIS philos-
ophy that states that: at-risk students
are not completely devoid of potential
but are simply going through a difficult
period in their lives. This kind of system
must operate so that at-risk youths’ and
parents’ efforts can be brought to fruition.
It takes a village to raise a child well, and
CCIS will ceaselessly continue to develop
and run more educational programmes
with local communities and related
organisations.

LETTER A Helping Hand Goes a Long Way in Fostering Global Citizenship in Young People
By I Wayan Alit Sudarsana
(President, Little Circle Foundation, Indonesia)
w.sudarsana@gmail.com
A HELPING HAND
GOES A LONG WAY
IN FOSTERING
GLOBAL
CITIZENSHIP IN
YOUNG PEOPLE
Through the Workshop,
I have learnt how critical
it is for young people,
especially young and
potential leaders, to know
more about the world
and to be connected with
other young leaders from
other countries.
Dear APCEIU,
It has been a while since our last meeting in Busan, Korea,
but thanks to the internet and social media, I can still keep
in touch with you while also gathering information about
your fantastic endeavours in helping to advance education.
First of all, let me thank you again for the opportunity to
participate in the life-changing Youth Advocacy Workshop
on GCED. The Workshop has enriched my understanding
about the importance of global citizenship and came at
a time in my professional career when I embarked on
expanding my work to ultimately create a bigger and better
impact on our society’s young minds.
Through the Workshop, I have learnt how critical it is
for young people, especially young and potential leaders, to
know more about the world and to be connected with other
young leaders from other countries. I believe this is important
in order to bridge differences and build tolerances so that our
young leaders can eventually build a harmonious world.
Moreover, this has given me many insights. Looking
back at history, I examined why our world leaders some-
times find it challenging to build a consensus. Maybe the
reason for this has to do with their different backgrounds
and perspectives. If so, I understand why they find it very
hard to accommodate and understand other people’s points
of views.
This is why I believe that this kind of Workshop is
a vital tool to harness cooperation and understanding
between youth with the hope that one day they will grow
to become world leaders (and I have no doubt they will).
When that day comes, the young participants that attended
the Workshop will already have a better understanding
of the mechanisms behind the creation and development
of true cooperation while also having the insight into
knowing how to foster international relations towards the
goal of building a better world.
Today, personally, I am in the process of applying what
I have learnt from the Workshop. Along with my staff
and volunteers, my organisation, Little Circle Foundation
(LCF) is committed to improving the quality of general
and legal education while empowering people and bridging
differences in Indonesia. We teach elementary to senior
high school students along with the day-to-day running
of several programmes to encourage young people to take
part in the betterment of Indonesia and the world. LCF
also received funding from the United States government
to hold a Youth Camp on Climate Change to raise aware-
ness about climate change, promote civic engagement for
students, and increase the capacity for future leaders to
solve environmental issues in their community.
As we now are a new family full of young and talented
leaders, I look forward to our collaborative work to help
shape a better tomorrow.
Your friend,
Alit
Kepada APCEIU,
Sudah lama sejak pertemuan terakhir kita di Busan, Korea, namun
berkat internet dan media sosial, saya masih bisa tetap berhubungan
dengan Anda, dan mengetahui tentang usaha fantastis Anda dalam
membantu memajukan pendidikan.
Pertama-tama, izinkan saya berterima kasih lagi untuk kesempatan
untuk berpartisipasi dalam Lokakarya yang telah mengubah hidup
saya. Lokakarya Advokasi Pemuda di GCED telah memperkaya pema-
haman saya tentang pentingnya kewarganegaraan global dan hal ini
tentunya sangat penting bagi karir profesional saya ketika saya memulai
memperluas pekerjaan saya untuk akhirnya membuat dampak yang
lebih besar dan lebih baik pada anak-anak muda di masyarakat.
Melalui Workshop ini, saya juga belajar bagaimana pentingnya
untuk orang-orang muda, terutama para pemimpin muda yang poten-
sial, untuk mengetahui lebih banyak tentang dunia dan terhubung
dengan para pemimpin muda lainnya dari negara lain. Saya percaya
ini penting untuk menjembatani perbedaan dan membangun toleransi
sehingga pemimpin muda kita akhirnya dapat membangun dunia yang
harmonis.
Selain itu, kesempatan ini telah memberi saya beberapa wawasan;
melihat kembali sejarah, saya mulai paham mengapa para pemimpin
dunia kita kadang-kadang merasa sulit untuk membangun konsensus.
Salah satu alannya mungkin ada hubungannya dengan latar belakang
dan perspektif yang berbeda. Jika demikian, saya mengerti mengapa
mereka merasa sangat sulit untuk mengakomodasi dan memahami
sudut pandang yang mungkin dimiliki oleh orang lain.
Inilah mengapa saya percaya bahwa jenis lokakarya seperti ini
merupakan sebuah alat yang sangat penting untuk memanfaatkan
kerjasama dan pengertian antara pemuda dengan harapan bahwa suatu
hari, beberapa dari mereka akan tumbuh menjadi pemimpin dunia (dan
saya tidak ragu akan hal ini). Ketika hari itu tiba, para peserta muda
yang menghadiri Lokakarya sudah akan memiliki pemahaman yang
lebih baik tentang mekanisme di balik penciptaan dan pengembangan
kerjasama yang baik selain juga memiliki wawasan untuk mengetahui
bagaimana membina hubungan internasional dengan tujuan memba-
ngun dunia yang lebih baik.
Hari ini, secara pribadi, saya dalam proses menerapkan apa yang
telah saya pelajari dari Workshop ini. Bersama dengan staf dan relawan,
organisasi saya, Little Circle Foundation (LCF) berkomitmen untuk
meningkatkan kualitas pendidikan umum dan hukum, memberday-
akan masyarakat dan menjembatani perbedaan di Indonesia. Kami
mengadakan pengajara bagi siswi/a SD-SMA sembari melaksanakan
beberapa program yang bertujuan untuk mendorong anak muda untuk
mengambil bagian dalam perbaikan Indonesia dan dunia. Selain itu,
LCF juga menerima dana dari pemerintah Amerika Serikat untuk
mengadakan Camp Pemuda dengan tema Perubahan Iklim untuk
meningkatkan kesadaran tentang perubahan iklim dan meningkatkan
kapasitas mereka sebagai pemimpin masa depan dalam memecahkan
isu-isu lingkungan di komunitas mereka.
Terakhir, izinkan saya menyampaikan bahwa sekarang kita adalah
sebuah keluarga baru penuh akan pemimpin muda dan berbakat, saya
menunggu hal hal yang dapat kita kerjakan bersama yang mudah-mu-
dahan dapat membantu membangun esok yang lebih baik.
Teman mu,
Alit

Connecting Youth with GCEDINTERVIEW
©Elsevier
Dr Chi regularly works with students across the world.
An Interview with
Dr Youngsuk Chi
(Chairman, Elsevier;
Former President of
International Publishers
Association, USA)
ys@elsevier.com
Global Citizenship Education (GCED) has been
drawing enormous attention across the globe.
Included in the Incheon Declaration, the
outcome of the World Education Forum 2015,
GCED is also recognised as one of the ways to
achieve the post-2015 development agenda. As
a leading international businessman who has
worked with countless culturally diverse nation-
states, what is your definition of a GCED?
For me, GCED at its core is about understanding and appreciating
the importance of context. Although it seems like a simple word at first
glance, context can encompass all the diverse factors—whether social,
cultural, political, historical, or geographical—that motivate how people
behave and think across different cultures. Students must be challenged
to expand their horizons beyond their local communities and
take on the responsibility to learn as much as possible
about the contextual factors affecting the world
around them. Helping our youth to develop this
wider, more international awareness will enable
them to build trust with their peers across cultures
and continents. And my hope is that they can
use this trust to learn how to collaborate
effectively with each other and be prepared
to tackle the world’s most complex chal-
lenges together. This ultimate vision
is admittedly quite ambitious.
But to get us moving in the
right direction, I believe that
the first step is to challenge our
students to think more criti-
cally and contextually about
the world around them.
Q1.
Elsevier is a leading publishing company
that provides various scientific, technical,
and medical resources to scholars all over
the world. In this vastly globalising and
interconnected world, how has Elsevier
adapted its resources and strategies?
Elsevier has expanded beyond the traditional roles of publishers
and become a leading provider of digital technologies and
analytical solutions. We still perform our core duties of curating
and disseminating the highest quality research content through
our journals and books, but recent technological advances have
empowered us to create innovative platforms and solutions that
leverage that same content to deliver direct and meaningful
insights that save researchers time and prevent them from
making errors. For example, we have created a tool
that mines our global database of publications to
help government leaders benchmark their nation’s
scientific achievements against their global
peers. This, in turn, helps key decision-makers
understand where their country stands within the
global research landscape. While online solutions
like this may seem ages removed from the days of
manually editing manuscripts, we as publishers
are still pursuing the same ultimate goal—
namely, to help our authors, readers, and
researchers get to the right information, at
the right time, in the right context.
Q2.
This edition of SangSaeng focuses on the
issues of youth. What do you think is the
role of youth in the global context? How can
youth be agents of change for a better world?
Young people can and should be at the forefront of global
change by getting their voices heard and speaking up for the
ideals they believe in. Since young people have had less time
to be conditioned by traditional ways of doing things, they are
more ready to challenge the status quo and campaign for new
ideas. We have seen how they can successfully spur interna-
tional awareness about major political and social issues—like
climate change or human rights—through Facebook posts,
Twitter hashtags, and YouTube videos. No matter the outlet,
it is important that young people continue to express their
opinions and that established leaders be attentive to what they
are saying. Through this open dialogue, we as a society can
keep evolving to meet the challenges of the future head on.
And if those leaders do not respond, then I encourage young
people to try out their ideas themselves—go start a company,
launch a petition, and, most importantly, take the risks that
others may not be willing to take.
Q3.
What can the media and technology industry
provide as support to empower youth?
How can youth take advantage of these
resources?
The media and technology industry should strive to ensure that
youth have access to the highest quality information whenever
and wherever they need it. Providing this access means making
both hardware (like smartphones and tablets) and software
(like search engines and apps) easy to use, affordable, and
engaging. This access to information can empower youth
across geographic regions and socioeconomic backgrounds
by supplementing their education and helping them to stay
connected to the latest news and online dialogues. With this
in mind, we in the media and technology industry must also
continue to proactively engage youth to make sure our new
technologies are providing them with the tools they need to
grapple with issues of global concern. From there, it is the
responsibility of young people themselves to take advantage
of these resources by actively engaging with each other and
collaborating via online platforms. And I am convinced that
the more they interact and exchange ideas, the more likely they
are to find innovative solutions that will have huge impacts
across the world.
Q4.
On a panel at the World Education
Forum 2015
©UNESCO/SungmanLee
CONNECTING
WITHGCED
YOUTH

INTERVIEW
40 SangSaeng
INTERVIEW
Dr Youngsuk ‘YS’ Chi is a leader in the media-tech industry. As Chairman of Elsevier, he works directly with govern-
ments, customers and industry associations worldwide. In his role as Director of Corporate Affairs and Asia Strategy
for RELX Group, he is responsible for government affairs, corporate communications, and corporate responsibility for
Elsevier’s parent company. Chi recently completed four years of service as the President of the International Publishers
Association, a global organisation that represents the interests of more than 50 publishing industry association
members from around the world, and will serve as the Past President for the coming two years. Chi is based in London
and New York but travels extensively to meet with scientific research communities and government bodies worldwide.
For the readers of SangSaeng, could you
recommend a book that inspires you to be a
global citizen?
Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat was hugely inspiring for me
when it came out in 2005 and has continued to remain relevant
ten years later. In his book, Friedman describes how globalisation
and rapid technological changes have levelled the economic
playing field so that new businesses and emerging countries can
compete more effectively. But what makes this book so memo-
rable for me is how Friedman weaves in his personal travels and
cultural encounters in India, China, and elsewhere to transform
his conceptual argument into grounded and compelling story-
telling. Those types of insights—the ones gained by seeing the
world first hand—are essential for fostering global citizenship and
are precisely what I would like our young people to experience for
themselves as they grow up in our increasingly globalised world.
Q5.
Please share your insights on the future of
education as a pioneer who is carving a new
way of education.
First, we need to focus on teaching our young people the
foundational skills they need in order to think efficiently and
analytically. This means ensuring they have mastered the basics
of reading, writing, speaking, and presenting skills together with
computing and analytical skills that are essential to making sense
of information and developing good judgment. Only once they
have developed these fundamental skills can young people then
seek to develop expertise in a niche where they can excel. What
areas of expertise are most important to society in the future will
continue to evolve in response to the world’s changing needs. But
by focusing first on the fundamentals of strong thinking, we as
a society can ensure that younger generations are adaptable and
ready to tackle any obstacles they may face down the road.
Q6.
©Elsevier
©Elsevier
Dr Chi devotes many hours of his personal time
to mentoring young people and sharing his life
experiences with them.
Dr Chi travels around the world two-thirds
of the year, meeting with government and
academic leaders. Here, he is in conversation
with Thailand’s Princess Maha Chakri Sirind-
horn at the 2015 International Publishers
Association Congress in Bangkok.
By Nyan Kyal Say
(Animator, JOOSK, Myanmar)
nyankyalsay@gmail.com
Animation to Promote
the Right to Education
EDUCATION
BUILDS
PEACE
©APCEIU

SangSaeng42
Education Builds PeacePEACE IN MY MEMORY
I
am Nyan Kyal Say. It is my pen name. My real name is Naing
Kaung Nyan, and I am currently a medical student at the
University of Medicine (2) in Yangon, Myanmar. As a hobby, I
also draw cartoons, illustrations, logos and animations.
I began to draw and practice making animations when I was 10
years old, but I took a break from creating animations when I was
16. This year, however, I returned to creating animations in order
to participate in the Human Rights Human Dignity International
Film Festival 2015, where my contribution won the March 13
Award.
The title of the animation is I Wanna Go to School, and it
reached many people in Myanmar as well as abroad.
The animation is about a brother and sister who dream of going
to school together, but instead of having their dreams fulfilled, the
duo constantly try to escape obstacles that impede their attempt.
Poverty, child labour, child abuse, gender inequality, child soldier
and human trafficking—all present in the animation—are all obsta-
cles that block their chance to a proper education.
Even though it is a short and simple creation, in three minutes,
I tried to point out the main difficulties and problems that children
in Myanmar face today in regards to achieving an education. I
also attempted to shed light on several issues in terms of children’s
rights in Myanmar.
Power of Education
The reason I focused on the issue of education in this animation
is that I firmly believe that education is the foundation on which
peace can be built. Education is one of the most fundamental
and powerful factors for every person’s life and one of the most
important aspects to the success of a country.
For instance, some children in Myanmar have difficulty
attending school due to poverty. Poverty leads children to work
fulltime jobs instead of going to school. This takes them away from
achieving their goal of getting an education, and a lack of educa-
tion gives them less chance to escape the shackles of poverty. This
uneducated and impoverished state spurs many child labourers,
abuse and human trafficking and dips them deeper and deeper into
a bottomless pit of poverty and despair where education is a far off
notion that is unreachable.
This problem is not only present in Myanmar. According to
the EFA Global Monitoring Report by UNESCO, there are still 58
million children out of school. If we include young adolescents, the
number increases to 124 million.
Education transforms lives. First of all, education helps reduce
poverty. However, there are several obstacles which prevent people
from benefiting from the positive effects of a good education. As
the uneducated and poor generation bears a new generation, so
does the cycle of poverty continue; though the parents wish their
children to attend school, they cannot afford it and end up forcing
their children to help them in work. What is equally heartbreaking
is that this vicious cycle does not have an immediate or easy
solution.
In addition, education combats disease because it helps people
have a sense of hygiene and general health knowledge to build a
healthy diet. There are an alarming number of children who die due
to a lack of basic sanitation knowledge. Moreover, all kinds of social
problems such as poverty, child labour, child abuse, child soldiers,
and human trafficking are closely connected and can be improved
through the power of education. Education can build peace.
Momentum
I created this animation to raise the awareness of these problems
because many people do not know about them; therefore, this
simple animation is aimed at improving the public awareness of
the plight of these poor youngsters who only want to go to school
so that they can climb out of this vicious cycle.
I do not have to look far to find such problems. In my own
neighbourhood, I see young children working as maids, carrying
heavy baskets taller than themselves. Whenever I eat my breakfast
at a teashop, I see many children working as waiters, and many
poor orphans and child refugees. These things surrounding me
pushed me to create this short animation.
While working on this animation, I tried to make the length of
the film as short as possible so that people can watch it easily and in
a short amount of time. I also used no voices because I wanted every
person, no matter where they are from, to be able to watch and
understand this movie. In doing so, I tried to deliver the message to
the viewers not only via their brain but also via their heart.
Summer/Autumn 2015 43
1
3
5
I would be so glad
if my animation
touches people’s
hearts and
brains and raises
awareness on the
issues of education
and children’s rights.
Out-of-school children of primary school age, world and
selected regions, 1990–2012 and 2015 (projection)
Sources: UIS database; Bruneforth (2015)
4
2
6
©NyanKyalSay

PEACE IN MY MEMORY An Expedition to the Traditional Peranakan Culture
A Call for Action
Even though I put many messages in this three-minute animation,
the key message I want to convey should clearly stand out above
the rest.
You can find the main essence I am eager to deliver in the final
scene, where I ended this animation with an open-ended message.
Here, I attempted to make the viewers come to the conclusion that
the ending of the story is up to us.
We should take action rather than blame others over these
challenges. They are our societal problems for us as a people to
help solve. We have to do something and that can include even
the smallest of everyday actions, keeping in mind that children
deserve a better world.
In conclusion, I would be so glad if my animation touches
people’s hearts and brains and raises awareness on the issues of
education and children’s rights. I will keep trying to make more
animations which aim at changing people’s minds and ways of
thinking in order to build a more peaceful world.
8
10
11
12
7
9
W
ho are the Peranakans?
The word Peranakan
comes from the word
anak, which means child
in Malay. This can also be loosely trans-
lated as local-born. This culture was born
out of the intermarriages between traders
from China, the Indian subcontinent
and the local women in Southeast Asia.
The Southeast Asian region has always
been a place where people from different
cultures met through trade. With these
interactions, a unique material culture
was born. This article will focus on the
Straits Chinese.
The Peranakan culture is said to
be very colourful and this is reflected
in its material culture. There are many
motifs that are important to the Straits
Chinese. The Peranakan Museum focuses
on different aspects of the lives of the
Straits Chinese, such as weddings, births,
growing up as young Peranakan, food,
dining, funerals and religion. Young
Singaporeans have the opportunity to
experience various aspects of this living
culture through these programmes. Due
to the inherent nature of the culture,
which is based on the interaction between
cultures, the programmes also encourage
young students to see how people of
different cultures can exchange ideas and
live harmoniously.
By Melissa Viswani
(Museum Educator, Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore)
melissa_viswani@nhb.gov.sg
AN EXPEDITION TO THE TRADITIONAL
PERANAKAN CULTURE
©NyanKyalSay
©PeranakanMuseum,Singapore

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