School-2-School, Understanding Through Exchange

Dear Friends,

I’d like to thank you for your continuing support of America’s Unofficial Ambassadors and the School-2-School initiative in particular. As we wind down towards the end of the year, we wanted to share these pictures and update you with exciting news.

First the pictures – they are from Ms. Andi Webb’s volunteer service in Indonesia this past summer. If you remember, Andi is an instructional coach at the Alderman Road elementary school in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Her students spent a semester Skypeing with students in Aceh, Indonesia earlier this year and for two weeks, Andi volunteered at the Sukma Bangsa school in the village of Pidie in Aceh. She taught English and did some training with the staff at Sukma Bangsa, a school that was set up for the victims of the tsunami almost 10 years ago. A picture is worth 1000 words, and as you can see, the volunteer mission was as meaningful as the virtual exchange during the year.

Second, our exciting news is that we’ve decided to implement a second year of this partnership between Alderman Road and Sukma Bangsa. The schools have a plan to engage in different virtual trainings, cultural performances, and classroom discussions, and Andi will travel to Indonesia again, this time during the school year, to conduct teacher trainings and to teach English. I want to remind you that we never would have been able to create this partnership if it weren’t for your support of our Global Giving campaign in September of 2013 when we raised more than $7000 from more than 200 donors. Thank you!

This second year of partnership between the two schools is a component of an expanded 2015 School-2-School program. We are thrilled to announce two new partnerships between “Title I” schools in Washington DC and partner schools in rural Bangladesh and in Ramallah. The Cardozo Academy has already begun its new partnership with The Carter Academy in the village of Islamabad, exchanging videos with each other on a bi-weekly basis, and middle school students at the Wheatley Education Campus and The Arab Evangelical Episcopal School will begin their partnership soon after the New Year.

As you weigh the causes you want to support at the end of this year and the changes that we hope to see in 2015, I hope you will consider continuing your support to School-2-School. Each of these partnerships cost between $7,000 to $10,000 to build and implement. Given the number of children who are impacted here in the United States as well as in the West Bank, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, that is such an incredible difference to make for a relatively small sum.

All of our investments add up!  Thank you again for the support and all the best for the holidays and 2015 –

Ben Orbach

Director, America’s Unofficial Ambassadors

BenjaminO@creativelearning.org