NEW YORK (PRWEB) APRIL 02, 2019
Inspired by children and their capacity to imagine better futures, Emer Beamer founded Designathon Works to enable children to creatively resolve issues in a continually changing world. The Designathon Works learning method is grounded in design thinking. It empowers children, supported by teachers and aided by modern technology, to explore their interests in and engagement with social issues. Through the learning journey, students research problems and develop real-world solutions. In a design-athon, Beamer explains to C.M. Rubin, children “work on issues such as plastic soup, climate change, and refugee problems. The size of the issues is highly motivating and also corresponds to the level of concern children experience. They want to think big.” The projects offered to children are all linked to the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDG’s). “Ultimately, we want all education systems to teach children to become creative changemakers for themselves and for a better world,” says Beamer.
Read the full article here
Emer Beamer is the founder and method designer at Designathon Works where children design a better world using new technologies. She is also the co-founder of Butterfly Works and NairoBits, Ashoka Fellow since 2016 and Lego Re-imagining Learning Fellow.
CMRubinWorld’s award-winning series, The Global Search for Education, brings together distinguished thought leaders in education and innovation from around the world to explore the key learning issues faced by most nations. The series has become a highly visible platform for global discourse on 21st century learning, offering a diverse range of innovative ideas which are presented by the series founder, C. M. Rubin, together with the world’s leading thinkers.
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David(at)cmrubinworld(dot)com
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U.S. aid cuts to Central America will stall progress made, intensify violence, and increase forced displacement
New York, NY April 3, 2019 - The International Rescue Committee (IRC) warns that the Trump Administration’s aid cuts will significantly impact efforts toward stability in the Northern Triangle of Central America – Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador – and could exacerbate violence and forced displacement, reduce help for those fleeing, and undermine hard-fought progress for vulnerable populations in the region.
Said David Miliband, President and CEO of The International Rescue Committee –
“The Administration’s policy toward the Northern Triangle is both inhumane and illogical. Cutting aid, closing borders, and returning thousands to unsafe and unstable countries is bad policy and bad strategy—putting lives and American interests at risk.
“I visited The IRC’s mission in El Salvador just last month, where I met community leaders and NGOs dedicated to addressing trauma and assisting families and individuals displaced from pervasive violence. This great work, this brave work, is needed more than ever - and needs to be supported and enhanced, not cut back.
“For too long the crisis in the Northern Triangle has been defined by those arriving at the border, yet that lens fails to address why they are coming – the mothers, fathers and children I met, who just want to be safe in their homes and communities. Limiting aid – and the region’s capacity for solutions at home – only increases their suffering. It is their fear and suffering that forces them to flee.”
The Center for Global Development (CGD) has noted that the USAID-funded crime prevention programming, under USAID’s Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), was shown to reduce reports of homicide and extortion by half. Violence is a primary driver for individuals and families fleeing. For less than 2 percent of the U.S. foreign aid budget, these programs are saving lives and helping to reduce the root causes of displacement.
As an organization on the ground in El Salvador, The IRC’s assessment is that current aid is necessary but insufficient. Security and economic growth initiatives, youth-job training, and violence prevention are important - but they are incomplete. Education, especially early childhood and young school age education, are key to ending violence as gang recruitment ages drop younger and younger. Even prior to aid cuts, this represented the very smallest portions of the U.S. investment in the region. Now is the time to do more, not less.
The IRC calls on the Administration to restore its aid to the region - and in the United States, reverse the harmful policy course it has taken. Immediate steps can be taken to address this today:
These are common sense solutions, with a track record of progress that have benefitted the U.S. and Northern Triangle countries and – most critically – these are solutions that would keep vulnerable populations safe from harm.
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For footage of David Miliband’s visit to El Salvador, visit here. For more information about IRC's work in El Salvador and in the U.S. visit here.
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VAWA and the NRA
By Laura Finley
631 words
That Congress has not already reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is abhorrent. VAWA, which was initially signed into law by President Bill Clinton, has provided funding and support for domestic violence services for decades. Its various reauthorizations (in 2000, 2005 and 2013) have extended provisions to victims of dating violence and stalking, immigrant and Native victims, and more. Yet the current reauthorization, which was supposed to occur in fall 2018, has stalled, in part due to the government shutdown and in part due to a provision that would block domestic abusers from having firearms. Not surprisingly, the NRA has been vocal in its opposition to that provision.
The proposed bill would extend so-called “red flag” measures that prohibit individuals with a history of domestic violence, stalking or sexual assault from owning or possessing guns. Several states have adopted such laws, which are often called extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs), which allow families and members of law enforcement to petition for a temporary seizure of someone’s weapons if he or she poses a danger to self or others.
Federal law also seems to allow ERPOs. 18 U.S. Code § 922 (g) prohibits individuals who are under court order “for harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner" from possessing a firearm. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which was established in 1993 to collect more detail about criminal incidents, provides information on state-level domestic violence convictions to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, although it is only on a state-by-state basis. The VAWA reauthorization would mandate that states provide relevant legal information to the federal government. In early 2019, New York became the 14th state, along with Washington, D.C., to pass ERPO measures while 29 other states already have similar restrictions for individuals convicted of domestic violence.
Data indicates that ERPOs are effective. A 2006 study found that states that adopted laws authorizing the confiscation of firearms from individuals subject to a domestic violence-related restraining order saw intimate partner homicides drop by seven percent, while another study led by researchers at Duke University's School of Medicine Center found that the EPRO measure enacted by Connecticut in 1998 averted up to 100 suicides, as well as likely dozens of violent homicides. Research is very clear that guns escalate abusive situations. A gun makes it at least five times more likely a woman will be killed.
The NRA, however, has used what is its typical narrative to whip up concern about that provision of the reauthorization. It argues that proponents are “playing politics” and that ERPOs will lead to a slippery slope of broader gun confiscations and prohibitions. NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker told National Journal, "The NRA opposes domestic violence and all violent crime, and spends millions of dollars teaching countless Americans how not to be a victim and how to safely use firearms for self-defense. It is a shame that some in the gun-control community treat the severity of domestic violence so trivially that they are willing to use it as a tool to advance a political agenda.”
While the U.S flounders on reauthorizing VAWA, at the potential peril of domestic violence victims, Australia has enacted measures that will likely severely curtail abuse. New legislation prohibits anyone who had been convicted of domestic violence anywhere in the world from getting a visa to enter the country. The new law even allows those who have been convicted and are currently living in the country on visas to be kicked out, as of February 28, 2019. I am not expressing support for that law, as certainly it raises some concerns about rehabilitation and second chances, but it does stand in stark contrast to the lack of political will to address domestic violence thoroughly in the U.S.
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Laura Finley, Ph.D., teaches in the Barry University Department of Sociology & Criminology and is syndicated by PeaceVoice.
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