At Bowring, 100 adults recently signed up to take an English course. The programme had been carefully planned, with a three-month course leading to a certificate. The 100 were divided into four groups, but within two weeks three of the classes had only one pupil attending. The teachers are discouraged, and blame the closed camp mentality, lack of study experience and the fact that some refugees from Bowring recently left for Finland and Holland, where English would be of secondary importance.
Motivation and morale building are clearly key problems.
Some agencies, such as Save the Children Fund at Bowring, have been trying to tackle the problem of apathy by running vocational programmes on a commercial basis. This gives refugees a financial incentive to learn, and seems to us a sensible policy.
There have been problems. For instance, it is difficult to avoid some refugees being paid much more than others, and this also affects those refugees employed by CSD in running the camps.
CSD has been reluctant to allow the refugees to be paid in hard cash, and has also refused to allow certain tools and equipment into the camps, on the grounds that they could be used as weapons. However, there are signs that CSD is now taking a more relaxed view, and allowing training programmes to be expanded.
In the open camps, vocational training programmes tend to be more successful, perhaps because the refugees pay to join courses. At Jubilee, eight students have recently finished
There a word processing course for which they paid $150. are scouts and guides, and the youth club/community centre has recently opened a bodybuilding and fitness room (subsidised membership of $60 per month). Western cookery classes, a bilingual camp newspaper and a health and beauty course are further evidence that life in an open camp is very different to life in a closed camp.
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