Rotary Grant Supports Bridgeport/South Africa Educational Partnership

By Nancy K. Crevier

Newtown resident Tim Bartlett returned January 31 from a three-week trip to South Africa, traveling with a team of six from the Bridgeport early childhood education (ECE) community. The ECE is forming a partnership with rural South African communities, thanks to a grant issued in December by Rotary International.

Mr Bartlett, a member of the Bridgeport Rotary Club, and director of the Bridgeport YMCA, which oversees three different early childhood centers in that city, was invited to join the team in November, he said. The other five team members, Dr Barbara Welles-Nystrom of Fairfield University; Heather Ferguson, a speech and language pathologist in Bridgeport Public Schools; Bridgeport kindergarten teacher Lindsay Davis; Donna Thompson-Bennett, director of Parent Leadership Training Institute; and Dr Laurie Noe, Early Childhood Education Program coordinator for Housatonic Community College, and Mr Barrett interviewed and began preparations for the trip at that time, in anticipation of the grant.

Once the grant was approved in mid-December, said Mr Bartlett, things moved quickly. Within three weeks the group was on board a plane headed for Johannesburg, South Africa, the first stop in the three weeks of collaboration with South African early childhood education specialists. The goal of the partnership, he said, is to help with the creation of an early childhood education lab school in the Royal Bafokeng area of South Africa.

The lab school model came of interest to South African Rotary members visiting Bridgeport this past summer. “The Housatonic Community College has a lab school in Bridgeport,” said Mr Bartlett. Two preschool rooms flank a central “observation room” where early childhood education students and instructors can view the young students’ interactions, in preparation for actual classroom experience.

“The South African Rotary visitors were very interested in implementing something like this in South Africa. They saw similarities between their hometown and village schools and the Bridgeport schools, that is, of pockets of depressed areas surrounded by cities of wealth. They have a similar language diversity there, too,” explained Mr Bartlett. In Bridgeport, he said, approximately 67 different languages are spoken in the homes. “There are 11 official languages in South Africa,” said Mr Bartlett, “and the South African Rotarians wanted to see how this is handled in Bridgeport.”

What the summer visitors saw, said Mr Bartlett, was that children here are succeeding, despite language differences in the homes and at school. “They saw success with few resources, and wondered how they could bring this program to their schools,” said Mr Bartlett.

A New Model Of Exchange

The grant received in December reflects the new model of member exchange by the Rotary, said Mr Bartlett. “Visits are of a shorter time period than in the past, and with a targeted purpose, such as this case, with early childhood education.” The trip also reflects the Rotarian motto of building bridges and building international good will, Mr Bartlett said. “We’re all neighbors, and it is about learning about the world around you.”

 The South African Rotarians applied to Rotary International for the grant, and were awarded $75,000 to begin the exchange of information and visitations.

Mr Bartlett admitted that he was initially hesitant when approached by other Rotary members to be a part of the team. “But then I realized this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” He was able to adjust his work and home life to allow for the long absence, and accepted.

The team traveled to several rural village schools, bringing with them small, easily packed items like stickers, pencils, bubbles (“Very popular with the kids,” he said), crayons, clay, and other things universally appealing to children.

The issue was not with the actual construction of a lab school, but rather with the setting up of the program, said Mr Bartlett, and that is where the team advised their South African counterparts. “They don’t have the institutional know-how to set up classrooms, implement daily schedules, or essentially how to run a school like that once it is built. They wanted our input,” he said.

The schools are very behind American schools, he discovered, but he was very impressed with what was accomplished in the less than ideal situations.

“We saw classrooms in which they had turned cardboard into classroom furniture. We complain about things here, but there, they had 50 to 60 kids in a classroom, often with three to a desk,” he said. However, he added, “There was a tremendous resolve to get things done, no matter what they were faced with. Time after time, I was amazed at how resilient the people were,” said Mr Bartlett.

Experience As Education

The visit was educational in many ways, said Mr Bartlett, who stayed with four different Rotary member families while in South Africa. “I got a terrific experience,” he said, particularly during the two weeks he was hosted by a Muslim family.

“It was unlike anything I had experienced before. Their home was in an area built during Apartheid. It was not so wealthy as some of the surrounding towns, but it was a very active neighborhood,” he said, with a mosque just two blocks away from the hosts’ home.

“I was very fortunate to have this experience. I got to meet the Deputy Minister of Education for all of South Africa, as he was a friend of the family’s. I had a chance to sit with him and talk about educational systems in America and South Africa. It was amazing,” he said.

He also stayed on a large farm in the village of Middelburg, where more than 300,000 dozen eggs are produced each week, and at an elegant estate in the town of Bela Bela, as well as at a home in Boksburg.

The other education he received, said Mr Bartlett, was the impact that HIV has on the lives of South African citizens. “We hear about HIV problems, but I don’t think we realize the effect that it has on their lives. They are missing a whole generation of people from HIV. We visited an AIDS Hospice, and an orphanage, to show us how it affects the children. That got to me a bit,” he said.

Young children, who lose all of the adults in the family to AIDS, become the “head” of household. “Or,” he said, “they become wards of the state, or just become transient.”

Visiting a platinum mine, he was told that 80 to 90 percent of the workforce is HIV positive, creating a constant turnover.

“I discovered there are a lot of things we take for granted,” Mr Bartlett said.

There is a general realization in the villages that they visited, he said, that only through education will things get better. “They do value education,” Mr Bartlett said.

He looks forward to a visit in mid-March from South African delegates, who will again visit Bridgeport’s early childhood organization, and attend observations on campus at Housatonic Community College, as well as workshops and discussions there.

How successful the partnership will be is yet to be seen. “It’s too early to tell. We are just establishing the first link, and digesting the problems. I was extremely impressed, and would be happy to return again. We certainly can help each other, and I’d love to be a part of it,” said Mr Bartlett.