Stopping the Violence

Stopping the Violence Project Report – December 2012

Holiday Cards –

Give the gift of giving - Make a donation as a gift for the holidays: you can print or email a card from Global Giving! Check it out, go to:

https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/stop-the-violence-east-timor/

Click on “gift or in honor of” just under the large orange donate button and you can then enter the name and email address of the person you want to receive the gift or to give the gift in memory of, then you can choose the type of card you want to email or print! :)

Project Update -

Over the past few months, the Stopping the Violence project team at Ba Futuru has been busy undertaking a number of Child Protection and Positive Discipline trainings with high school teachers and government teacher trainers, as well as receiving intensive training from an international child behavioural specialist to expand and enhance the team’s work. 

Ba Futuru has now trained a total of 119 teachers and teacher trainers in Child Protection and Positive Discipline since June this year, and has begun monthly meetings with a group of these teachers to support one another as they implement positive discipline strategies in the classroom, and share experiences and ideas throughout this process.  The trainings have been held with three high schools from Dili district, and teacher trainers from the National Institute for Teacher & Educator Training (INFORDEPE), under the Ministry of Education, who between them represented seven of Timor-Leste’s thirteen districts.

In July, an American consultant Jenna Rudo-Stern worked with the Peace Schools team for three weeks on developing new training materials and positive discipline strategies that focus on positive behaviour reinforcement. The central tenet of this training was that preventing negative behaviour and reinforcing positive behaviour is more effective than punishing negative behaviour. Jenna also ran a one-day training for all Ba Futuru staff on positive behaviour reinforcement. The Peace Schools team learnt a lot from Jenna and have now begun implementing the new materials and sharing the new ideas with training participants.

Evaluation results show that the teacher trainings done over the year were very successful in effectively sharing new information and teaching methods with the participants. For example, before the trainings only 14% of the participants could identify three signs of trauma and abuse in children; however, after the training, 71% of participants were able to do this.

One teacher shared his own story of change in a monthly meeting:  “Some of my fellow teachers were surprised by what I was doing, and said to me at the end of my class, ‘Why are your teaching methods not like they were before? Now you are animating the class, which is very different!’ I encourage my fellow teachers by telling them: ‘The methods I was using were from the training with Ba Futuru, and I learnt many other things from the training, too.  Sure, before I used to hit the students a lot, and be angry and yell at them, but it’s not too late for all of us to practice new methods with our students, even though we need a long time to make real change’.”

The generous support of individual donors via Global Giving has meant that the Peace Schools project has vital support to expand and improve its work with teachers around Timor-Leste, thereby contributing to stopping the use of violence against children.

Thank you for your support!

Links:

• Holiday gift donation
• Ba Futuru's website