GUEST SPEAKER: Community Service Director Kim Boatman introduce our guest speaker, Gem Munro.
Gem Munro has devoted his life and career to improving educational opportunities for disadvantaged people across Canada and abroad.
Pursuit of this objective carried him into residence in troubled communities across most of Canada, before carrying him overseas.
He is presently a Director of Amarok Society, a registered Canadian charity that provides education programmes to the very poor in Bangladesh and Pakistan, and is now beginning an initiative to develop opportunities for Indigenous youth in Canada. Gem is also an author and artist whose current book (which he has here today) is a critically acclaimed novel drawing upon his years of extraordinary experiences with aboriginal communities in Canada. (Sale of his book is a major fundraiser for Amarok Society.) For their work, Gem and his wife, Dr Tanyss Munro, were recipients of Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medals.
Gem and his wife, Tanyss teach extremely poor, uneducated mothers in the world’s worst slums of Bangladesh and Pakistan to become neighbourhood teachers. Gem noted that Bangladesh has the worst school system in the world. They teach these women how to read and write in their own language, and teach them English (necessary for economic advancement) and teach them math and social studies. They also teach them life skills such as health, nutrition, child care and conflict resolution. And we teach them to think, something they’ve never before been encouraged or taught to do.
The mothers, many of whom have never before even held a pencil, attend school every day for 2 hours. Teachers, recruited from poor neighbourhoods and trained by Amarok Society, use accelerated learning methods (using songs, drama, games).
Here is a link to a slideshow on the program.
Neighbourhood premises are used as schools. The mothers are then trained to become teachers of their own and their neighbours’ children, developing some of the learning materials themselves for use with the children.
The small schools, when not being used for mothers’ classes, are used by the women to discuss issues of importance, as determined by them, and as a place for cottage-industry enterprises to increase family income.
Working from the centre of the family out, using their own accelerated learning methods, is a highly effective – and cost-effective – approach. Mothers come to understand and value education – learn how to create a positive learning environment for children, and they come to make better decisions in many areas for their families. Mothers report that they can now make better sense of their world and have become more highly valued within their own homes and in their community as they disprove old, backward attitudes about the limitations and suitable role of women.
Their Schools’ ‘Four Rs’: Reading, ‘Riting, ‘Rithmetic and Rights.
And with 12 years into the program, it is working.
He showed us an example of a mother, who taught her daughter, who, on her own, decided to teach 3 and 4 years olds and also her grandfather. Gem noted that the natural state of the human mind is NOT ignorance, it is the desire to learn.
The improvements in the women’s abilities and circumstance dramatically improve every aspect of slum life overall.
Gem said that it is Rotarians who promote peace through education and love as one of the keys to literacy in the world.
He said that each school that he sets up in Bangladesh costs $10,000 per year to operate which results in hundreds of students learning for the first time, each and every year.
Gem then talked briefly about doing the same, for the last 12 years in the indigenous communities here in Canada. He has an indigenous son and has seen first hand the improvements. He said that we cannot wait for the government to help, we must help NOW.
Canada faces its own education crisis, which is also overlooked, and which also must be addressed through a spirit of innovation – one in which youth themselves must become catalysts of sustainable change in their lives.
Through their work in First Nations education, Amarok Society founders, Dr. Tanyss and Gem Munro have witnessed the serious educational disadvantages afforded to our Indigenous youth right here at home, with significant repercussions to the lives of these youth. Education deficits have a ripple effect to other areas, as evidenced by the gap between Indigenous populations and the average Canadian populations in health, income, justice, and social issues. There is likewise a serious gap between the equality we Canadians say we stand for, and the reality of life for most Indigenous youth.
Canada’s Inconsistent Identity
We Canadians pride ourselves on being a racially tolerant country. And we are – for the most part. We condemned South Africa for their treatment of the black population and shake our heads at the racial problems in the United States – where a black person there is 6 times more likely to be incarcerated than a non-black person. But the real facts in Canada tell another story and would surprise many of us.
Today, fewer than 40% of First Nation youth graduate with a high school diploma. In fact, these youth have a greater likelihood of going to prison than graduating from high school. The suicide re for Indigenous Canadians is one of the highest in the world at 5 to 7 times higher than for the non-Indigenous population.
What Can Be Done?
We need to create an educational opportunity that inspires and supports leadership, rather than ignoring and squandering its potential; one where Indigenous youth can express their creativity and passions, explore their culture and history, and strengthen their responsibility for their own lives and for improving the word around them.
That’s a tall order for any youth, but it’s in the history of Indigenous youth to naturally express their leadership in this way.
Raising the Bar for Indigenous Education
Amarok Society’s founders, Dr. Tanyss and Gem Munro, have a history of turning around highly troubled schools in northern First Nation education systems by empowering the youth to be catalysts of positive change. Their methodology draws upon Indigenous traditions, history, and culture to create transformative change in students’ lives.
Amarok Society is working toward establishing a Leadership Academy for Indigenous youth that they would attend for one month. Amarok Society also works in partnership with Unstoppable Conversations, an Alberta based organization to offer leadership workshops for youth.
Through a uniquely impactful learning experience they come to take responsibility for their lives, express their natural capacity to lead, build trust, and align others to a common future that makes a difference. Through 3-day workshops or 1-month retreats for groups of 30+, youth engage in rich conversations through unique methodology woven with Indigenous history and tradition.
Through their work in First Nations education, Amarok Society founders, Dr. Tanyss and Gem Munro have witnessed the serious educational. Amarok partners for this work with Unstoppable Conversations, an organization with a history of making a profound difference with Indigenous leaders across Canada using discovery-based learning with discussion through unique methodology to create transformative change. Together, their work unlocks long-standing impasses through conversation-based workshops in a relatively short period of time. Amarok Society Indigenous leaves youth leaders with an unprecedented capacity to alter their lives and the lives of those around them.
Gem was thanked by Past President Tim Dwyre.
Meeting Adjourned by President Ted Morrison
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