RESPECT e-Zine Celebrates Its 50th Issue
RESPECT International is currently entering our forth year of working to increase awareness of refugee issues amongst youth from around the world, in part by introducing refugee students to non-refugee students by pen-pal letter exchange.
Every year I am amazed and impressed at how RESPECT continues to grow everyday and everywhere.
First, our global letter exchange program continues to evolve. Sandrine Cortet has recently taken on the role of coordinator of the French letter exchange program. Under her leadership and management, hundreds of refugee students in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania were introduced to non-refugee students by French pen-pal letter exchange all over the world. Our English pen-pal letter exchange continues to grow with letters from Northern Uganda, Guinea, Sierra Leone and, most recently, Nigeria and Ghana being distributed to schools and youth groups all over the world.
RESPECT International is very proud to announce the birth of RESPECT Europe - recently incorporated under the leadership of David Gonzalez. Through the birth of this new affiliate in Europe, RESPECT hopes to increase participation amongst European students in our letter exchange project.
RESPECT University continues to blossom under the management of Iona Lister and Iona has also taken on the role of content editor for this RESPECT e-Zine. Special and ongoing thanks goes to Will Wallace, Vice President of IT with RESPECT, who faithfully edited the e-Zine for a year and a half, until a month ago when Iona was kind enough to take it over.
Over the last two years, with funds raised by partner schools, RESPECT has succeeded in establishing two computer resource centers, one in each of Northern Uganda and Guinea. We are about to send four laptops to the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a portable computer resource center and we hope to send computers to a refugee community in Nigeria as well. Many non-refugee schools have sent care packages of various sizes to their partner refugee school.
RESPECT will continue to build on our partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute's Roots & Shoots Partnerships In Understanding (PIU) program. Roots & Shoots, an environmental action group for youth has connected at least two war-affected communities in the RESPECT network to other groups in the PIU program.
Through partnering with Unite For Sight (UFS), a 501(c)(3) (USA) non-profit organization that empowers communities worldwide to improve eye health and eliminate preventable blindness, several war-affected communities in the RESPECT network have received coursework on eye-care or a visit from one or more UFS volunteer.
UNHCR Canada has committed to help us spread the word about RESPECT's global letter exchange program through appropriate refugee schools in UNHCR's network. This will likely increase RESPECT's network of refugee communities greatly allowing us to introduce many more refugee students to non-refugee students around the world.
All in all, RESPECT is headed for a banner year with volunteers and participants on all inhabited continents on Earth involved in RESPECT. If you have participated in RESPECT's global letter exchange before and would be interested in doing it again, this would be a fantastic time to contact us again. Also, please consider telling a friend or colleague about us. Feel free to contact us at any time with questions, comments or concerns at respect@respectrefugees.org.
Thank you all for your commitment to refugee issues and your desire to keep up to date with RESPECT news through your subscription to this e-Zine.
Note: You can read Marc's message to e-Zine readers in the first issue of the e-Zine at: http://respectrefugees.org/ezine/2003/ezine20030327_message.shtml.