Two Melton Fellow projects - UFRO Fellows' Mañiuco Community Education and ZU Fellows' Global Citizenship Education - are coming together! In April 2014, primary school students at Liangshan School in China got to virtually "meet" their fellow global citizens halfway across the world, at Mañiuco school in Chile, through a video, postcards and presentations made by the school students and Melton Fellows. This "meeting" was a step in the bridge that is being built from Chile to China (and vice versa) as Fellows expand their efforts to bring global citizenship education to primary schools in each country.
Led by Fellows in each country, the two projects have previously been working to empower school-going children at Mañiuco School in Chile and Liangshan and Baiji Schools in China. Now, the two projects are working across boundaries of space and language to share common challenges as well as to understand differences among them.
In the first "exchange" carried out, students from the Mañiuco school made special cards introducing themselves, while Melton Fellows put together a video and presentation about Chile and especially focused on the students at Mañiuco school, many of whom are Mapuche children. As part of the meeting, Fellows Patricia Ortiz, Hari Ravikumar, Yinzhen Wang, Chenlin Wang and others made presentations about different cultures. Now, the tots from Liangshan Primary School have also made cards and presentations that will be taken back to Chile and shared with the students at Mañiuco School.
From this first exchange, the projects will define how they will continue to collaborate and build relationships, knowledge of different cultures and worlds with the students from each of the primary schools.
