News

On Thursday 26 June 2008 at 19 hours AfricAvenir will host a discussion forum at the Werkstatt der Kulturen in Berlin-Neukölln (Seminarraum). Brian Ramadiro, Deputy Director of the Nelson Mandela Institute for Education and Rural Development will discuss the specific educational challenges in rural communities in South Africa.

Brian Ramadiro holds a Masters in Education Management. He is actively involved in rural youth mobilisation and cooperative development work. Mr Ramadiro has previously worked as a Project Manager for the Education Rights Project at the University of the Witwatersrand. Recognised at the end of 2005 as the most important scholar-activist in the area of educational rights, he joined the Nelson Mandela Institute in late 2005 and is studying for his Doctorate in the area of language in Education. Brian Ramadiro has also translated “The Communist Manifesto” by Marx/Engels into Zulu.

Mr Ramadiro will raise issues that in his view lie at the bottom of persistent and widespread failure among poor and ‘rural’ Black students in South Africa. He will refer to and reflect on ongoing practical initiatives he is engaged in that aim to influence the debate about quality and the quality of rural education. The practical initiatives include programmes that involve primary school children, university students and in-service teachers.

“As a country with such deep patterns of oppression and poverty, it is our destiny to create a more just world. Our history suggests that it is time for us to reclaim our right to think. It is a time that we reassert our responsibility to act. Our belief is that people are at the centre of change. Otherwise what would be the substance of democracy?”

In the discussion we will also tackle the following questions:

• How can we create what the Nelson Mandela Institute calls “vibrant rural communities united by a spirit of learning, where community members become the creators of our best common future, liberated from the social limits of our past”?
• What does “quality education” mean in rural areas and can it be the same than in an urban setting?
• And who sets the norms?

Nelson Mandela Institute for Education and Rural Development
12 years into our democracy we are deepening our appreciation for the staying power of the injustices of our past. We see the continuation of an economy that deeply divides, and a society that does not open pathways for most young people to create better lives. Both globally and locally we witness wealth and poverty growing side by side while a sense of deep responsibility is largely drowned out by more individualistic notions of success and security.

The Institute is born in this moment, and to confront this moment. Its largest mandate is to re-engender social hope around the transformation of rural education, and therefore our commitment to a more just world.

The work of the Institute is founded on four principles emerging from the life of Mr. Mandela, and is embedded within the Constitution. They establish the heart of the organisation and are essentially ‘guiding stars’. If we look up and do not see them in the sky, we are off course. These principles are the following:

• Ubuntu, Radical Humanism, the Human Source…
• Democracy, Participation, Mobilisation…
• Decolonising Knowledge, Distributing Voice…
• Liberation, Consciousness, Learning…

Ort/Venue:
Werkstatt der Kulturen
Wissmannstraße 32
12049 Berlin
Tel. 60 97 70-0
Fax 60 97 70-13
Werkstatt.Kulturen(at)t-online.de
www.werkstatt-der-kulturen.de

Verkehrsverbindungen/Public Transport:
U-Bhf. Hermannplatz U7, U8, Bus M29, M41, 171, 194, 344
Parken auf dem Parkplatz der “Neuen Welt” an der Hasenheide.

Posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 10:16 am and is filed under AfricAvenir International, Dialogue forum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.