Sessions
Migrant Child Storytelling Project at the iEARN Conference
Kristin Brown
Rights and Opportunities Foundation
Kristin Brown Ed.D., director of the Rights and Opportunities Foundation, has more than four decades experience in addressing issues of educational equity and promoting multicultural and diversity-responsive education. She is the co-founder and co-director of the global learning network “From Shore to Shore” or “De Orilla a...Read Full Bio
Kristin Brown
Kristin Brown Ed.D., director of the Rights and Opportunities Foundation, has more than four decades experience in addressing issues of educational equity and promoting multicultural and diversity-responsive education. She is the co-founder and co-director of the global learning network “From Shore to Shore” or “De Orilla a Orilla” (in Spanish) and the iEARN-Orillas Center. Orillas has been widely recognized by educational researchers as an exemplary project for immigrant and minority language students in the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and other Caribbean and Latin American countries. She has many professional and academic publications including Literacy, Technology and Diversity (co-authored with Jim Cummins and published in 2007 by Allyn and Bacon). Dr. Brown served as senior professional development specialist at the Center for Language Minority Education and Research. She has taught graduate education students at the university level and continues to work with future teachers in the United States and Latin America. She is also active in helping develop both teacher training and classroom programs with Departments of Education, universities, and policy makers in several countries in the Americas.
Session Description
This poster session presents the Migrant Child Storytelling Project and website.The poster will share photographs and stories of young migrants who have participated in the project and whose voices are featured on the project website. Ideas will be shared with iEARN educators for organizing storytelling activities and photography workshops involving migrant students in their classrooms, together with an invitation to share the stories, photos and student artwork on the project website. Educators who teach units of study on migration are invited to use the first person accounts on the website as a resource for teaching and learning. The project highlights the importance of including the experiences of migrant youth in teaching about the SDGs.
What will educators learn and be able to do at the end of the session?
- Inform educators about the Migrant Child Storytelling Project and website and its value as an educational resource.
- Share strategies with iEARN educators for organizing storytelling activities and photography workshops involving migrant students in their classrooms.
- Extend an invitation to iEARN educators to share the stories, photos and student artwork of migrant youth (up to age 18) on the project website.
- Invite educators who teach units of study on migration to use the first person accounts on the website as a teaching and learning resource.
- Discuss with iEARN educators and project facilitators ideas for incorporating migrant child storytelling into other iEARN projects, or for creating a new project linking migrant youth to their countries of origin or to other migrant youth internationally.
- Highlight the importance of including the experiences and first-hand accounts of migrant children and youth in teaching about ALL of the SDGs.
Additional Session Information
More about the Migrant Child Storytelling project and project website:
The project website is for any migrant child, under the age of 18, from any part of the world who has a story to tell. The stories can be told in any form: words, pictures, photographs, video. They can be about any topic of importance to the child. We deliberately use the term MIGRANT to include all children who have been forced, or have chosen, to leave their home country for any reason, and who are trying to establish a life in another country.
The website can also be used by educators to teach about migration. In this international project migrant youth tell their stories in their own words -- migrant children speak for themselves instead of being spoken about.
EVERY CHILD HAS A STORY TO TELL…
There are 65.6 million forcibly displaced people in the world today. 22.5 million are refugees and half of these are children. In 2016 more than 63,000 unaccompanied children sought asylum in Europe, while 50,000 unaccompanied children fled violence in Central America and tried to enter the United States.
Why are children fleeing their homes? What is it like to be bombed in Syria, threatened with kidnap and murder in El Salvador, or flee forced prostitution in West Africa? How do they manage these journeys? What happens if you are kidnapped in Libya? How do you get in a rubber boat to cross an ocean when you have never seen the sea before? Live in a refugee camp in Northern Greece or a shelter in southern Mexico? How do you smuggle yourself across the Italian Border? What do these children hope for their future?
On this website children from the Middle East, South East Asia, West Africa, East Africa, and Central America tell their stories and give you their own answers, in words and pictures. They are now living or traveling through Greece, France, Italy and the UK, or moving from Central America to Mexico and the United States.
The Migrant Child Storytelling Project is supported by the Rights and Opportunities Foundation, a non-profit, non-governmental organization based on the principles of human rights with the mission of improving the world through education, humanitarian assistance and environmental protection.
The project was developed and is coordinated by Lynne Jones – an aid worker, doctor and writer who has been working with migrant children in Europe and Mexico for the last few years. The website was created by Lynne Jones and Luke Pye – an international development consultant whose most recent work has been for UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning, focused on strengthening conflict and disaster risk management capacities in the education sector in Uganda.
Session Resources
Migrant Child Storytelling - Website
The website for the Migrant Child Storytelling poster session.
Migrant Child Storytelling - website #2
Website of the Rights and Opportunities Foundation.
Another website I may use during the Migrant Child Storytelling Poster Session.