"From Classroom Discussion to Funding a School"

Instructional Technology Professor Nick Eastmond is an optimist about his students, so don’t even try to tell him that they only care about building grade point averages, building resumes and building their careers. His students, in fact, built an elementary school in Africa.

 

The project was recently featured in "The Christian Science Monitor," one of the nation’s most respected newspapers.

 

Honor’s students in Eastmond’s class "Race and Communication in the USA and the New South Africa" — in addition to keeping their GPAs in fine form — spent three years raising the funds to build the Dukelweni School near Port St. Johns in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa.

 

Thursday night, Dec. 5, two Utah State students who traveled to Africa and visited the school will present a program titled "Out of Africa" at 7 p.m. in the Taggart Student Center auditorium.

 

Emily and Steve Ballard will highlight the internships they completed for the Academic Development Program at the Border Technikon in East London, South Africa. The internships followed up on work completed by Eastmond, while on sabbatical there in 1996. Steve worked as a coordinator for the program of Supplemental Instruction at the Technikon, supervising the work of some 70 student leaders. Emily assisted with the Life Skills classes and was able to contribute lessons in food and nutrition based upon her studies at Utah State.

 

While in South Africa, Steve and Emily were able to visit and take photos of the school, built with funds contributed by four Honors classes at Utah State. This was particularly appropriate because Emily was a member of one of those classes and one of the top fund-raisers that semester.

 

Eastmond penned his version of the story for a featured piece in "The Christian Science Monitor" under the section "Class Act: A Teacher’s View." The complete story follows.

 

"From Classroom Discussion to Funding a School"

By Nick Eastmond

 

Africa must be in my script for life.

 

In 1965, I spent my freshman year at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria. As the only white student for most of the year, I had a unique set of experiences and made a group of friends who have influenced my life ever since.

 

Fast-forward to 1996, with me in the role of university professor rather than student. I spent a year's sabbatical at the Border Technikon in East London, South Africa. I was helping to establish a center for academic development, based upon work my colleagues and I had done at Utah State University. My placement was made possible by the International Foundation for Education and Self-Help (IFESH).

 

Back in the United States the next year, I devised an honors course entitled "Race and Communication in the USA and the New South Africa," which I taught over the next three years to four classes of undergraduate students.

 

We explored the unfamiliar world of South Africa, mainly from a black perspective, and then, midway through the class, turned our focus to a similar look at racial matters in the US.

 

We read a variety of authors, invited in guest speakers, and corresponded by e-mail with students in South Africa. My students were frequently astonished to discover parallels between barriers to progress for blacks in South Africa and in the US.

 

During my second time teaching the course, I mentioned that IFESH had a

 

program to build elementary schools in Africa, at a cost of $10,000 for a two-room school.

 

Several students caught hold of that idea and commented, "How hard would that be, anyway? We could do that." Before the hour was over, we had decided as a class to build a school in South Africa.

 

Raising money is difficult, however. That class's personal contributions and a collection table in our student union netted $2,000. The next class sponsored two dances and did door-to-door "dorm storming" to raise another $2,000.

 

The final group organized a three-mile Walkathon, enlisting the help of various groups on campus, and raised $4,000. Last May, we donated $8,355 to IFESH to build the school.

This experience was a form of service learning. Student energies were turned from yet another class assignment to doing something that will make a difference in the world.

 

I learned that having students study oppressive conditions without being able to do anything about these conditions is a recipe for apathy or cynicism. My classes needed a positive outlet for idealism.

 

Six months later, the new Dukelweni School has been built. Our donation, combined with funds from the New Zion Baptist Church in Philadelphia, helped build the four-classroom school near Port St. Johns, in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa. The school is big enough to accommodate 145 students and nine teachers.

 

Other outcomes are intangible. As one black student noted when asked how to begin a conversation with someone of another race, "It is quite easy to start a conversation when you are working side by side on something you both believe in."

 

Friendships and opportunities for service keep coming up. I think Africa now appears in several people's scripts for life. Seven students involved with the class have now done internships in South Africa. And the others will be thinking about their role in building that school for a long time.

 

More information about the Schools for Africa program is available at http://www.ifesh.org.

 

Story introduction by Tim Vitale

South Africa photos by Steve Ballard