Addendum to prior bulletin:

We hear some very inspiring talks at Rotary and I think that's today's speaker, G.E.M. Munro was one of the best. Apart from being a remarkably fine and engaging speaker, the message he gave was moving and motivating. GEM has been working for many years to improve education opportunities across Canada particularly with the indigenous population, and overseas. For his work with the aboriginal community, he was awarded but the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. Through all his talks across the country he has become a Rotarian "by osmosis.   He is the Executive Director of the Amerok Society an international charity that provides education to the least advantaged people around the world. As well as living and working in some of the world’s were worst slums and several of Canada's saddest, poorest, most remote communities, he lived for many years in the indigenous ghetto of a major prairie city, where he served as a trust trusted activist and advocate. He was by invitation, a founding member of the "the urban First Nations initiative”.  His intimate experiences at that time informed the writing of his most recent book “The Silver Apple of the Moon”.  He has also written a best-selling book “South Asian Adventures with the Active Poor" recounting his and his family's experiences in bringing education to some of the most oppressed women and children. He's in demand around the globe as a speaker on education as to the path to Peace and we were so fortunate to hear him in person.

Bangladesh, he described as the worst school system in the world with Pakistan giving it quite a run for its money. Nothing appeared to be being done inside the cities and the approach to developing education for young women in particular, in a rural setting, simply didn't work in the city. A different approach was required from building schools, filling them with teachers and then with children, inside the city. One in three children in the world are unable to get any education at all, a deeply disturbing statistic. His project was to teach mothers to become teachers in the deepest, darkest slums. He was told of the futility, and probable fatality of such an approach where he would probably be killed by slumlords, corrupt police or possibly enraged husbands. It was thought that the women from these slums could never learn. He was able to disprove that.

Introduced with a brief video, was Shanaya who, as a young wife married at 11yrs of age to a 46-year-old and now living with her in-laws, was required to do everything for the family, quite literally a household slave. There were between 8 and 12 people in a tiny space half the size of most people's kitchens. Everything she did was menial and her quality of life is described as the poorest on earth in peacetime.

So they opened a school in the slum, not a school with walls but with people only. The plan was to provide education to one person who would then go and teach five children everything she had learned. This was done in a formal way, monitored by the Amerok Society. From this there came an extraordinary progression from slavery to a life of purpose. Shanaya had a two-year-old daughter whom she taught everything she knew and amazingly this child, at the age of six was doing the same thing and had her own classroom of five children. We saw a lovely video of Shanaya’s daughter at the age of six, looking groomed and properly dressed and looking as though she had developed a confidence that one would never normally see in a child in this situation.

Contrary to the belief of many, the natural state of the human mind is learning, not ignorance, and a natural outreach to learning where it's available is then to teach. It is extraordinary that this six-year-old actually chose to open up her own school.

Shanaya's father who, following the typical pattern of “getting rid of his worthless daughter” to a man in his 40s, was totally ignorant, illiterate and aware of no other way of living. He joined her school and we witnessed Shanaya’s daughter showing her grandfather how to hold his pencil properly, to take his studies seriously and to be quicker in responding to her questions like the other children in the class!  Amazingly the grandfather welcomed this education.

The change from seeing women as brainless baby machines to becoming teachers and seeing women and girls having an education was an incredible eye-opener for him. He declared that he loves GEM for what he's done.

ISIS has been recruiting poor, desperate Bangladeshis to go out and kill. The likelihood of them being able to recruit a child such as Shanaya’s daughter or her little students is so much reduced because of what they've learned. This kind of barbarism can be countered by education only. It's a terrible sin of omission not to educate these people into a state of rebelling against the kind of barbarism to which they've been subjected.  Extremists have no answer to strength, wisdom and education. The extremist will rejoice in death and cannot be frightened by it.  The only Terror for the terrorist is the reasoning mind, and learning. It’s death by starvation to the extremist. Peace, Rotary's fourth objective, can only be achieved by education. Monitoring of this whole educational process is done by teachers and other mothers, coordinations and supervises.

Whereas taking a girl from this situation of servitude was almost impossible, there is now a reduction in resistance to releasing the girls. They started by taking widows who were still quite young, given that they were married at 11 to 40-year-olds, and had become, not “free” but more mobile and had become beggars or worse. They were the first contact, six widows and two defiant and brave neighbourhood women who started the School. Their reputation is now preceding them and there is a long waiting list of women begging to join the school.

There are no buildings, no furniture just a mat and a stool for GEM as they refuse to let him sit on the floor! Hundreds of children can be educated from a $10,000 per annum School Without Walls run by the Amerok Society. There is no model like it in the world for economy. Most importantly the education remains sound following a curriculum that doesn't get mutated by a process of "Chinese Whispers or Telephone" and integrity is retained throughout. The now educated young women will never be rich but they are well, and they can take control of their lives. Amazingly the husbands are following suit and have become more hopeful and they can even get good advice and support from their wives!

GEM was thanked for his talk and we wish him well in his ongoing ventures.

Anthony Ford-Jones