The engagement of Pestalozzi Children’s Foundation (PCF) in twelve countries emphasizes the interdependency between quality education and a more peaceful world. Children’s education contributes tothe realization of children’s rights,intercultural awareness and competencies in order to erode culturally rooted prejudice and mistrust.
To realize its mission, since 2013, PCF supports in Myanmar in collaboration with a local partner organization internally displaced children in 14 camps out of 167. Following fighting between the Myanmar national army and the Kachin Independence Army, people fled for their safety and found shelter in camps.By providing protective learning opportunities in safe and equipped learning spaces, PCF and its local partner ensure access to education to more than 2000 displaced children in these camps. Taught by trained teachers, in addition to skills in literacy and numeracy, those children are provided with knowledge to understand the root causes of violence and armed conflict. In multi-cultural societies, intercultural understanding and tolerance constitute the key and are a prerequisite to reach a peaceful living together.
With the aim to reduce migration and to cope with its psychological consequences, PCF in collaboration with a local partner organization, UNICEF and the Norwegian Refugee Council also supports more than 200 returned migrant children in Honduras. To flee violence and to seek for family reunification and better life, thousands of children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador migrate mostly to the United States each year. However, a lot of them return traumatized to Honduras.. Those returned migrant children often fail to reintegrate into the educational system that does not address their needs. By developing an adapted curriculum and providing psychological support to these children as well as by raising the awareness of their peers, teachers and local communities about the discrimination they faced, the project aims to ensure that they finish successfully their educational process.
