Small steps to a better world for kids
October 2, 2008
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Terrence Belford
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Twice a year, four Ontario teachers meet with the director of professional affairs at the Ontario Teachers' Federation office in Toronto to make small gifts that have a big impact in developing nations such as Sierra Leone, India, South Africa and Costa Rica.
Last year that group of five – the OTF's International Assistance Committee – gave away $72,000 in amounts as small as a few hundred dollars at a time.
But for children in 95 Third World villages, it made the difference between attending school and facing a future with little or no education.
"It always amazes me how just a small grant can make such a major difference in young lives," says Johan Vink, a retired North York middle school teacher who was a member of the grant committee for almost 15 years.
"They might ask for $300 to build a fence around the school, not so much to keep animals out but to keep the chickens they raise in, to ensure the children get at least one meal a day.
"In real terms, those chickens are their version of our school breakfast programs."
As committee member Bill Doyle explains, the committee is a reflection of a solid core value of the teaching profession – an accepted obligation to help support the education of young people anywhere and everywhere.
"I think all the teachers' associations have one form of assistance program or another," says Doyle, a retired Toronto Catholic high school teacher. "It is just something we all strongly believe in as a profession."
The International Assistance Fund is in its 37th year. Each year, the OTF directs a percentage of its membership fees from teachers to the program – ranging from 0.8 to 1.8 per cent of all fees, depending on the federation's own yearly budget.
With limited resources, the committee tries to stretch the impact of its grants by giving small amounts to many, rather than larger amounts to one or two recipients, says committee member Fatma Ibrahim, an elementary school teacher at Bala Avenue Community School.
"Our mandate is that all projects must, in some way, be education-related," she says. "But that covers a very wide spectrum. One cause that I championed was an application from a school in South Africa that needed money to buy artificial limbs for amputee children.
"They applied under our transportation category. There was some discussion as to whether artificial limbs came within our guidelines, but I pointed out that, without them, how could they transport themselves to school?" The grant was approved.
Applications are made by non-government aid agencies, religious groups and even by the heads of villages. Word of the OTF and its grants program seems to be passed from recipient to recipient, says Doyle. "A priest in India who got a grant for an orphanage might suggest to another priest in a different part of the country to try applying to us."
Ibrahim says many applications come from South Africa.
"The government has told villages they can't provide money for their schools, and suggested coming to groups like ours," she says. "I think they even passed on the OTF's address."
When he was still teaching, Vink found another way to benefit from the program.
He regularly brought the grant applications to his classroom, showed 10 of them at a time to his students and told them there was just $300 in the grants pot. He then challenged them to decide which projects would get $100 each.
"It really opened their minds," he says. "There were quite heated debates about which projects were most important."
He also feels those debates had a lasting effect on his students.
"I know that many of them have gone on to make careers in charitable organizations and with international relief agencies," he says. "I think our work with the International Assistance Committee helped them decide that was their calling."
Toronto Star