UPCOMING INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOPS
There are still a few spots left for our unique workshop in Dharamsala, India this October. Come join us at the foothills of the Himalayas as we help the incredible students at the Tibetan Children’s Village create and share digital stories.  The students are incredibly excited for us to come and participate in their school’s anniversary celebration, where the Dalai Lama almost always stops to make an appearance and watch the students exhibit their musical, athletic, artistic, and even photographic skills. The workshop will be from October 14-25; for more details, please see our website at http://www.bridgesweb.org/NewFiles/workshopschedule.html

South African students in Seattle. author Mark Mathabane and educator, Denzel Witbooi.

Worlds Apart, HeARTS Together: Connecting Students from South Africa with their Peers in Seattle
The school lunchroom is a notoriously complex landscape through which social, emotional, and personal territories were subtly, elusively, and often fiercely negotiated on a daily basis. Thus, it is not only fitting but significant that after experiencing a cross cultural exchange with South African students, more than one of the Seattle-area students cited “eating lunch with the students” as their favorite memory from the experience. After all, what better way to encourage cross cultural understanding than to let students sit down face to face and share their lives?  

At Bridges, we are primarily concerned with connecting students who cannot physically sit around a common lunch table and share their lives. Once a year, however, we are lucky enough to augment this work by facilitating a face to face exchange. This year, we brought six students from Hector Peterson Middle School and their deputy principal to the Seattle area for three weeks of face to face interaction and dialogue as part of our second Worlds Apart, HeARTS Together Project. 

Mathabane discussed his personal story of triumph over adversity growing up in the townships of South Africa.He advocated for programs such as Bridges, arguing that if you have someone, even in a distant land, who cares that you are around, you will value your life more than if you feel alone. He urged the students to learn new languages and ways of life, arguing that, “You cannot lead unless you understand the world in which you live.”  This assembly and the other activities were designed to address issues of cross cultural understanding, reconciliation and forgiveness. 

Nathaniel Jones, a student from Washington Middle School explained, “Before the students came, I thought South Africa was just a third world country. I didn’t know about apartheid. They are really different than what I thought. They’re happy all the time. The students have pushed us to be a little more feeling for South Africa.”  When asked to describe what she enjoyed the most, another Washington Middle School student said, “The serious cultural exchange. We’ve realized that yes we’re from different countries but we’re very much alike.”  When asked what they would do to improve upon the program next year, the most common response was to have more activities where students could get to know each other better.

After the students return home to South Africa, they will continue to create digital stories from photographs and audio that will be shared with other students around the world through the Bridges website. Our vision is that through viewing digital stories and being able to directly communicate the students will develop a sense of cross-cultural understanding and empathy. Mark Mathabane echoed this sentiment as he addressed an assembly full of teens from Washington Middle School, Lakeside and Seattle Girls’ School. “These bridges aim to foster our common humanity. Bridges advocates us to be better human beings. That should be the end of all learning.”

With the continued support of organizations such as Getty Images, who lends office space to Bridges, as well as Adobe and Microsoft who lend software and computers, we hope to continue furthering the cause of global education and citizenship to enrich the lives and connections of future generations. Photography and photographic tools—even the simple ones that we might take for granted—help us create the connection that can change our world.

Steve and Lowell at the opening ceremony for Bridge's South African site.

VOLUNTEERS APPRECIATED
by Greg Tuke
When Bridges begins a project, usually the first people working with the partner school are Bridges staff members. This was not so in the case of Hector Peterson school just outside Capetown, South Africa. Shortly after International Programs Manager Lori Markowitz visited South Africa and formed a partnership with this school, Steve Aaneson and Lowell Deo traveled to the site, bringing Bridges cameras and an armful of friendship to help forge the partnership.  Graciously welcoming Steve and Leo, Deputy Principal Denzyl Witbooi introduced them to students and teachers and made them feel at home. Lowell had previously worked with Bridges in 2006, creating a video program that was aired on a local public access channel covering our blossoming South Africa partnership. Lowell and Steve brought back stories and wonderful photos of the school community to share with the partner classrooms in Seattle and were instrumental in developing this new partnership.  They also provided generous material support, including encyclopedia software to help students here and in South Africa. We are tremendously grateful for their energy and support – Thanks, Steve and Lowell!

Top - Lucille Windy from Rocky Boy, Montana is one of the women featured in Phil's new book.
Middle - Bridge's students at the Tibetan Children's Village.
Bottom - Student and mentor at Coe Elementary School in Seattle, WA

NOTES FROM PHIL
by Phil Borges
After spending three years documenting women in the developing world who were lifting themselves out of poverty and repressive circumstances and transforming their communities in the process, I came away with a stark realization: huge transformations can be accomplished with relatively minimal input. The spark that allowed an illiterate woman in a slum in Bangladesh to purchase 10 houses, build a school, drill a well, become mayor and start a successful program to end domestic violence was a $40 micro finance loan. A young woman in Ethiopia brought an end to the centuries old practice of female genital cutting in her community simply by filming a cutting ceremony and showing it to the male leaders who made all the decisions in the community yet were not allowed to attend the female only right of passage ceremony.  The men were shocked when they saw how brutal the procedure was and voted to end it.

Last week I was talking with a few of the Bridges 4^th grade students at Coe Elementary school about their partner students at the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala.  They told me the Tibetan students were refugees from Tibet and didn’t live with their parents and that they lived together in group homes where they had to do the cooking and cleaning and many of the older students had to take care of the younger students. One of the boys said, “When I get mad at my parents I think wouldn’t it be great to live without parents, but then I stop and think—all the cooking and cleaning!”  The girls said “They have all this responsibility and they are taught to care for others at such a young age!”  I just sat and listened as the conversation got rolling and was surprised as it turned to how the Tibetan kids actually had an advantage because they learn responsibility and caring at such a young age!  They mentioned how the Tibetan students’ religion of compassion is so important to them.

Kids talking about having responsibilities as an advantage!  Kids in awe of caring and compassion! I thought to myself how much I sell kids short and how much their conversation reaffirmed what we at Bridges have seen over and over again. Just the simple act of letting kids from different backgrounds interact can bring about such expanded self awareness and perspective.  

I don’t know what the students I met with on this day will do with this new perspective. Will they be the person who leads a business in such a way that best takes advantage of the diverse staff talent and finds a cure for a terrible disease?  Will they be the one that dreams, and then builds a new school in Afghanistan where none existed before? All I know is that these students’ lives have been nudged just a little and forever changed for the better, by this simple exchange across two very different cultures. 

Students from South Africa and Seattle had the opportunity to learn from each other.

FACE TO FACE
With Taleia Thurman and Susie Neilson, two Seattle student who hosted South African students

"Being able to host one of the foreign exchange students was an extremely rewarding experience. I must  admit I was a little nervous but not for myself of course, well maybe a little. I kept thinking oh what if she doesn’t like my friends, or me or what if our house wasn’t what she was expecting. All of these thoughts were running through my head that when she finally got here I was spending every second making sure everything was perfect that I probably freaked the poor girl out the first couple days. After we but mainly I got over the initial shock we were both able to gain a lot of knowledge about each other’s culture and in turn were able to grow a great deal as people."

Taleia Thurman, a Washington Middle School student who hosted Siphokasi Makeleni from South Africa for two weeks this May.

"Worlds Apart HeARTS Together was a very unique experience, please do it again! Everyone at Lakeside loved it and only wished the South African students could stay longer. The program really opened my eyes to what’s going in South Africa and was a very special experience. The South African students brought out our best qualities so we did things normally we wouldn’t think of doing. Singing, dancing and having LOTs of fun. It was refreshing to have the opportunity to learn from each other. We bonded with the South African students immediately and I know we’ll remain life long friends. This experience inspired me and was so cool and amazing!"

Susie Neilson, a Lakeside student who hosted Denzyl Witbooi from South Africa for two weeks this May.

Our objective is to provide teachers and students with powerful curriculum that does three things. Our first goal is to engage students in timely curricular issues, while teaching academic skills. Our second goal is to tech digital storytelling as a powerful medium for student voice. Our third aim is to facilitate meaningful, cross-cultural exchanges about specific topics and curriculum.

This year, we are thrilled to focus our curriculum on Climate Change.  We will offer three tracks within this topic that allow teachers of any subject to join in.  Two tracks, Culture and Traditions and Conflict and Reconciliation, will focus on social and political issues embedded within the topic of Climate Change.  The Sustainability and the Environment track will include more environmental science work, including labs and activities appropriate for math and science. 

By the 2008-2009 school year, we plan to expand the curricular topics we can support, allowing partner teachers to choose from a range of issues to examine. While we will continue to support individual teachers with digital storytelling and other aspects of international education, we believe this new direction will allow Bridges to develop a highly effective collaborative model that can be expanded to new sites and curricular topics. In the long run, we hope to build a storehouse of timely and evocative curriculum that a variety of teachers can implement, thus allowing students of all walks to life to engage with pertinent issues while forging cross-cultural partnerships. 

Extended Family
Just like marriage, any successful partnership must be generously and attentively forged on both sides of the relationship. Clearly, Deputy Principal Denzyl Witbooi represents the very best in what anyone would want in a learning partnership. From securing visas for seven students in record time, to getting the parent ok’s for middle school students who had never been outside the country, all the while keeping the school operating effectively, Denzyl has been a magician who knows how to get things done. Not only that, in the three weeks we spent with him in Seattle, he demonstrated a keen ability to be as comfortable speaking to a crowd of 500 students as he was speaking with key Bridges supporters and lead teachers about his vision for the partnership.  Finding partners with the commitment, the vision and the ability to implement effectively across cultures is not easy, but we all feel exceptionally blessed to be working with our new Lead Partner in South Africa. Bridges  will travel there in August for our first South African Bridges international digital storytelling workshop, and we already know it will be a major success from every standpoint, with Denzyl as the key host and planner for this event.

Bridges Volunteer Honored
Jessica Markowitz is a familiar face at Bridges events, helping register and greet participants, and serving as a host for Bridges students from our international sites. Not satisfied with working with just Bridges sites, Jessica launched out with leading a project to organize students at the Seattle Girls School to raise money for a school in Rwanda that serves girls whose families have been victimized by genocide. For this, and her other international activities, Jessica was recognized for her outstanding leadership and community service by the Mayor of Seattle this month. She exemplifies exactly the kind of student we need, and one who is making a positive and lasting difference in the world. Congratulations!