Consultant attends launch of ASPNet in St. Kitts & Nevis

Basseterre, St. Kitts (October 19, 2004): The UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network involves schools affiliated to UNESCO throughout the world, which includes most territories of the English-speaking Caribbean.

This is according to Consultant Sandra Gift who arrived in the Federation to attend the official launch of the UNESCO Associated School Project Network (ASPNet) which was held yesterday.

During a St. Kitts and Nevis Information Service interview, Ms. Gift explained that ASPNet has the objective of promoting the ideals of UNESCO. She said that an essential ideal of UNESCO is promoting peace through education, science, culture, and communication so that men, women and children will attain values to ward off the desire for another world war.

The consultant said that in 2003 ASPNet celebrated its 50th Anniversary and during its existence achieved several success stories. One such success is the Caribbean Sea Project which functions as sister to the Baltic Sea Project.

Ms. Gift said that student and teacher activities include field trips and beach clean-ups that were integrated into social studies programmes. She said 13 countries in the Caribbean Sea became involved and there were two or three regional encounters around that theme.

The former ASPNet Regional Coordinator said the project teaches young people the value of the sea, its resources, threats to it as well as the lifestyles and culture of the people living in the territories of the Caribbean Sea. She said that in 1998, during the ASPNet project's regional meeting in Tobago, teachers and students of Tobago expressed concern about coastal zone erosion and management which consequently gave rise to the "Sand Watch" project. The consultant emphasised that ideas such as "Sand Watch" come from the ground up rather than top - down.

The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Education Project is another ASPNet project that arouses that passion of Ms. Gift. She explained that previously students were mainly taught the history of the slave trade and so the general thinking is in terms of the "slave." She explained that there is now a paradigm shift in that it has been realized that no one is born a slave and so ASPNet is promoting the concept that there is instead, the "enslaved." Slavery, Ms. Gift noted, was not a natural condition.

Ms. Gift, who is also the Head of the Quality Assurance Unit at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, outlined some of the areas that St. Kitts and Nevis identified as priority on the local curriculum. These included helping young people to function in the global village, exposing them to new information and communication technologies, promoting a culture of peace in order for students to appreciate diversity, and difference and understand and appreciate these differences rather than simply being passively tolerant.

Looking at the identified curriculum areas, Ms. Gift said that there are several areas where ASPNet can greatly contribute and promote the delivery of quality formal and non-formal education to St. Kitts and Nevis.

St. Kitts and Nevis Information Service 20th October 2004