Health & education

Ten years and thousands of child beneficiaries later, Sylvia Arthur reports on a unique British charity whose aim is to put itself out of business.

School children from Zimbabwe, Eritrea, the Central African Republic, Mauritius and Trinidad and Tobago are among the winners of the European Commission's (EC) International Drawing Competition on Gender Equality, announced on 29 June.

Each winner will be given €1,000 to spend on computers, books or pay for school, library fees or other educational materials. The winning drawings were picked by pupils of between eight and 10 years of age at the European School in Brussels, Belgium, the same ages as the entrants.

Established by the African Union, with the support of the European Union, the Pan-African University (PAU) is set to open its doors in autumn 2011, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Jean Ping, announced on 30 June at the opening of the 17th Summit of the African Union in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.  The first three campuses, out of an eventual five, will be opened.

 This Autumn will see the drafting by the European Union (EU) of a Communication on the Horn of Africa, including Somalia. The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, is also due in the region in September. Ahead of both, Somali Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working in different parts of the country with EU partners assess their country’s humanitarian and development needs.

The experience of EFACAP*– a network of teacher training centres to which several primary schools are linked – is indicative of the ebband flow of the Haitian population after the earthquake. The Courier visited two training centers - Mirebalais and Lascahobas.

The Lascahobas centre’s director, Hope Saintil remembers how “many families flocked here. In our school alone, we received 76 new students. Most families have since returned to the capital after several months. Of that initial group, only 18 students remain.”

A five-year EU-funded programme is helping to prevent blindness in some of the poorer countries of the Caribbean region; Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica and St. Lucia. It is being coordinated by the United Kingdom based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Sightsavers International, with its partners in the Caribbean.