EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network

Learning by Experience

Introduction

The aim of the Learning by Experience project was to produce educational material on refugee and development issues for Finnish and Swedish secondary school pupils.

Description

During the project students in teacher training and in journalism studied refugee and development questions and produced and wrote educational material for the project. The teacher training students were also carrying out school visits to secondary schools using the produced material. The students were mainly from the project implementations areas; the Helsinki metropolitan area, Oulu and Vaasa. Altogether 70 students have participated in the project.

Results

LbE has produced the educational material Paossa maailmalla and På Flykt i världen, in Finnish and in Swedish. The material consists of a book (In flight in the world), video (In flight in Uganda) and www-pages.
As a part of the project a field trip to Uganda was carried out in November 2003. Nine students participated in the field trip. The students met with Sudanese refugees in Adjumani, in northern Uganda and urban refugees in Kampala. These experiences make the fourth chapter in the book.
The Lights and Shadows –photography exhibition was also a part of the field trip to Uganda. Thirty two Sudanese young refugees took photographs of their lives for five days. An exhibition of 150 photographs was compiled out of the 1500 photographs taken.
A part of the LbE-project was the SAITTISKABA competition. The competition was for Finnish and Swedish secondary school pupils (2004-2005). School classes in both countries could participate in the competition by producing their own www-pages on refugee and development issues and win a class trip to the capital of the neighbouring country.

Financing

The Learning by Experience -project (2003-2005) was mainly financed by the European Commission and the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The partners in the project are the Finnish Refugee Council, Literacy and Adult Basic Education (LABE), an Ugandan NGO and Swedish Unicef.

Contact info

Finnish Refugee Council
Ludviginkatu 3-5 B42
00130 Helsinki
Finland
Phone: +358-9-6962 640
finnref@pakolaisapu.fi

Project start date

01/01/2003

Links

Learning by Experience website

Document type

case

Themes

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration > Education

Keywords

Higher education, Secondary education