Bangkok

Sierra Leone

WOW day 2005

WOW day 2004

News 2004 from our old WOW-day project in Bogota, Colombia

WOW day 2003

WOW day 2002

This is the 11th year that Waldorf pupils around Europe participate in WOW-day. 126 schools in 17 countries have taken part in the campaign and have raised 456.204 euros for less fortunate children in other parts of the world.

WOW-day is organized as a cooperative venture between the European Council for Steiner Waldorf Education (ECSWE) and Friends of Waldorf Education.
ECSWE meets three times a year and has representatives from 20 European countries representing nearly 600 Steiner-Waldorf schools. At these meetings WOW-day is planned and coordinated by an ECSWE working group consisting of:
Meri Arni-Kautu, Finland; Astrid Bjønness, Norway; Christopher Clouder, UK; Jeppe Flummer, Denmark; Kamiel van Herp, Belgium and Helmut von Loebell, Austria/Colombia.

To choose the projects we use the expertise of the staff of the Friends of Waldorf Education, and all the money that is raised is directly transferred through their accounts and international contacts. We would also be interested in hearing about your experiences and projects for WOW day

Please note!
Without the exact details of your address we are unable to thank you, or pass on further information. Please note down your school, address and class where relevant on the transaction.

Former WOW-day projects

Our oldest project is in Bogotá. There we have financed the building of 36 family houses, have founded a kindergarten for 50 children and this year set up a Social Education Centre for 150 children. As this project got more money than all the other projects put together, and as they are in a good financial position at the moment, we will leave them for a while.
The other project, the Child Protection Foundation in Bangkok, has also been well supported by WOW-day. They built a new house outside of the city for their abused children last year, a building they had dreamt about for a long time and now, thanks to your support, have managed to build. Now we will also leave them for a while to give a chance to other children in other countries
Other previous WOW-day projects have been:
Parsifal in Santiago, Chile; Lar Benjamin in Sao Paulo, Brazil; a drop-in centre for drug addicts in Split Croatia; kindergartens in the townships Khayelitsha and Philippi, South-Africa; Wolakota Waldorf school in Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, USA

If you still want to work for any of these earlier projects, you are welcome to do so. Just remember to send us a note about it.

In the Social Education Centre in a deprived area of Bogotá, this child has now got the chance to learn, together with 150 other children from the district.
All thanks to WOW-day.






Pupils working for WOW-day:
There are many ways of creating a WOW-day.
In some schools it is the upper classes that undertake the campaign, in other schools it is one or more of the lower classes. Even some teachers get involved
In Michael Hall, England, the teachers performed a play,
“Blithe Spirit” by Noel Coward, and donated the
income from the three performances to a WOW-day project.
In Ellen Key Skolan in Sweden Class 3 started a
project with wool in spring, and then they took it
up again in the autumn of 4th class and did felting. It
turned out that they had so much wool that they
could make two carpets: one was made the prize
in a lottery, and the money was given to WOW-day. The children had a lot of fun while felting with their hands and feet in the big entrance hall of the school, and in this way they helped other children to get a better life and a greater opportunity for learning.

In 2001 the 10 years of civil war in Sierra Leone ended. But the war still affects life in numerous families and communities throughout the country.
In the UN’s development programme list Sierra Leone ranks bottom place for the 6th year in succession.
The terror, killings and torture of civilians have led to a society with very high unemployment, endemic violence, untimely deaths, drug abuse and a high crime rate.
In the capitol Freetown there is an Amputee Camp for people who have lost arms or legs. Many thousands of innocent people lost their limbs during the cruel war, and some of them have been helped to build up a new life.
In this society there are many children who have no access to education, and many have dropped out very early as a result of their parents’ inability to support them.

In the midst of all this a Waldorf initiative was started in 1997.

The school is located in the capital city, Freetown. It has 6 classes with 150 children from 6 to 16 years of age and 6 teachers.
The children come from very impoverished families. They include orphans, foster children and many from single parent mothers. These parents live on a subsistence basis and earn a living from activities such as petty-trading, fishing, gardening, stone breaking and other low paid casual jobs.
The fact that all these children come from poor and unhealthy families makes it hard for them to pay even minimal school charges to help in the running of the school.

The school has no formal recognition, but is part of an NGO called Action for Child Protection (ACP), which was established as a child rights’ advocacy organisation. ACP works for street children and other disadvantaged children and is a charity within the Ministry of Social Welfare. It is also a key member of the National Forum for Human Rights (NFHR) in Sierra Leone. Shannoh Kandoh is one of the initiators. He received aWaldorf training in England and is now working to develop the school and make it an independent Waldorf school.

WOW-day sent some money to this project this spring, and this money is now being used to renovate the building, construct a temporary toilet and supply running water. It means that the children will have better conditions in the school when they start in September.
They will also open a new class 6 this year and have a new teacher.
The biggest problem is to find money for teachers’ salaries.

We encourage you to work for this school in Sierra Leone in order to help maintain and develop the educational environment for all those children who are queuing up to enter the school.

In South-Africa there is still a lot of poverty, and many children are suffering, especially in the townships around the big cities.
In the beginning of the 90’s the kindergarten teacher in Constantia Waldorf School in Cape Town started to give afternoon courses for women in the townships. This has since developed into an education centre.

The Centre for Creative Education (CCE) works with women who care for children between 3 months to 6 years in impoverished, black communities around Cape Town. These children have to have someone to take care of them as the mothers have to work, or to seek work, in order for the family survive.

The CCE says:
“Our emphasis is on treating children as human beings needing recognition and self-worth. We work on the principle that the effects of poverty can only be overcome through creative, healing and affirming approaches, and that these early years of childhood are crucial in establishing positive, constructive attitudes to life, essential before the child goes to school.”
The training programme has expanded because of the big demand: from 60 women in 2003 to 107 in 2004. There is a two year initial programme which is mostly practical/method related. Here the students are introduced to the daily life of the kindergarten and the development of the child. The second phase is a deepening and develops the knowledge acquired in the first two years.
They use a lot of artistic activities to help the women develop themselves and give them more confidence after all the years of apartheid. This will reflect on their work with the children in the kindergarten.

The centre received a very positive report from the Council of Higher Education. It was full of praise for the quality of the programme, the enthusiasm of the learners and the fact that it answers the need of the South African situation.
They were given accreditation for the training.
It is very important that women working in kindergartens get a recognised training because then they can apply for food subsidies for the children.

12 kindergarten teachers, who graduated from the courses last year, have founded a group called ISISEKO SOBUNTU, which means “The Foundation of Humanity”. They work in 10 different kindergartens in the townships. They meet regularly to study further and cooperate in helping all the kindergartens to develop. This year they learnt to use a sewing machine and made curtains for the kindergartens. They also did a course in budgeting and managing money for the running of the centres, and they are very eager to learn more.

The children of the townships:
Ann Sharfman, the leader of the CCE from the beginning tells:
“What pains me is that all children are born with a trust to the world, and our children are born into this township where there is lack of food, work, houses, there is a lot of illness and criminality, and they think this is the way it is because they don’t know anything else.
When these children grow up, they will see that there are others living a very different life; the contrast between rich and poor is not less now than before. Then they watch TV, even the poorest have access to TV, and here they experience a life where everything is possible, where there is luxury, violence and intrigues. At the same time they experience their own lives which consist of poverty, hunger, illnesses and criminality.
It is these children who come to our kindergartens. They are filled with disappointments, and here they experience that people care, that they have the possibility to play, paint, draw, sing and move. 200 children come to our kindergartens, and many more want to come.”
WOW-day will help CCE to be able to train more teachers who can make life better for the children of the townships in Cape Town.

The school children in China are overburdened with long school hours and endless exams. The children have a great deal of homework every single day. Some children cannot even complete their homework by midnight, and also many children have extra lessons on the weekends. Children have been exploited in extreme ways. Many parents and teachers are very unhappy with the current educational system in China, but they cannot do very much about it because the both the educational system and the social setting are very powerfully controlled.
Some people are, of course, looking for alternative education. There are many private schools in China now, but there are only very few alternative schools due to the political and ideological control.

This autumn of 2004 a Waldorf kindergarten and school will open in Chengdu in China.

Ten years ago two Australian travellers had an afternoon tea in an open air tea house in Chengdu. They had an unusual conversation with a young Chinese couple. The conversation inspired the Chinese couple to take teacher training in Emerson College in the UK, then they later went to Sunbridge College in New York. The conversation has been written up in their book “Panda and Wondering Geese” published in Australia.
The Chinese couple are Li Zhang (Lily) and Huang Xiaoxing (Harry Wong).
After a long period of waiting and preparation, an initiative group has been formed, and they are now preparing to start a kindergarten, a school and a Bio-dynamic farm in Chengdu.
Li Zhang, Huang Xiaoxing and Zewu Li are the core of the group. There are a dozen people including scholars, students and an educator who are also very active in this endeavour.

The group has found a place for the school and kindergarten. It is a holiday resort with some farming land about 10 km from Chengdu. The property belongs to Zewu’s aunt, a retired senior officer in a bank. She will rent it to the group at a very low rate. The resort consists of 35 small rooms and two large rooms, a typical country courtyard with a small garden in the middle.

So far it has been confirmed that at least 12 children will enrol in the kindergarten and about 12 more are waiting to see how it goes. Most of them are from families that are participants of the initiative and friends of the group.
Li and Huang have been busy collecting teaching materials, books and supplies and writing proposals for fund-raising, but now they are back in China working on the renovation of the building.

Huang has written a book on Waldorf pedagogy in Chinese and published by Guangdong Educational Press in mainland China.
Jiang Tao Zhao and Lei Li are parents who really wish to have a school like the one Huang writes about in his book and they will bring their own children to join the group this summer. Zewu was a primary school teacher and has completed Waldorf teacher training in England. His wife is a music teacher, and they have a daughter who will be in the new school. Eckart Loewe is a German Waldorf graduate who has been living in a small village in China for more than five years. He teaches children as a volunteer in a poor village and has been mentioned a lot in media. He will join the group.
Li, Huang and the group will manage with small funds to quietly start the work due to the political sensitivity of the project.
They will need all kinds of help, and any kind of support will be crucial to the future of the initiative. WOW-day will support this first Waldorf kindergarten and eventual school in China.

This is the 3rd time we have ART studio in St. Petersburg as a WOW-day project.
Last school year only three schools worked for the sight-impaired children of ART studio, but with the general WOW-day money we will be able to donate a total of about 8000 euros to Alla and Igor and the other teachers in St. Petersburg.
With the WOW-day money ART studio managed to buy a flat last year, which will be turned into a centre where sight-impaired and disabled children will participate in various artistic activities.
This year’s WOW-day money will make it possible to renovate the flat so that they can start using it next year.
This will be a great step forward for the blind children of St. Petersburg.
Alla helping one of the sight-impaired boys
ART studio has now been working for five years, and the success of the project is very apparent.
The sight-impaired children often have other disabilities in addition; some can hardly move and have very little confidence in themselves. By doing eurythmy, dancing and moving to music and rhythms they have slowly started do feel more secure, which makes them happier and more active.
Some of the children are orphans living in a children’s home where they get very little stimulation.

ART studio arranges trips into the countryside for the sight-impaired children They organize camps, buy fruit and sweets for the children, teach them to do daily work, like laying a table, and they run workshops with modelling, painting, felting and other handicrafts. This is a great joy for the children who are more used to being hidden away in flats and children’s homes.
Not many years ago, in the Soviet Union, there was no recognition of disabled people as it was considered shameful. That is why they were hidden away and not taken proper care of at all.
With ART studio this is being changed. The sight impaired children of this group even put on performances which they have shown on stage in St. Petersburg. This is a completely new life for these disabled people and for people in Russia in general.

Classes from Helsinki Waldorf School have been visiting ART studio and plan to do that again. Also some pupils from Norway have met Alla and Igor and seen how they work with the children. It has been very impressing, and they come back home full of enthusiasm and praise for this work.
When ART studio gets its own proper home it will be even more striking to come and study this innovative work. We recommend a trip to St. Petersburg to meet with the people in ART studio, while also admiring this beautiful city.
In that way WOW-day can be more than raising money, it can also be what we want it to be: Waldorf One World.

WOW-day will help the sight-impaired children of St. Petersburg to get their own centre in the city, where they can develop their creativity, gain self-respect and get a better life.

WOW day 2006

WOW day 2005

WOW day 2004

News 2004 from our old WOW-day project in Bogota, Colombia

WOW day 2003

WOW day 2002