2018 – Teachers Across Borders Southern Africa

From Director/Founder of TABSA Yunus Peer:

Teachers Across Borders Southern Africa 2018

Dear Punahou Family & Friends,

Thank you for allowing me to share.

My father died a free man in 1997 after voting for the first time in his life in 1994 at age 69.

It was left to my generation to be part of the next revolution to help rebuild South Africa after the ravages of Apartheid.

We are not doing a very good job at it.

Zuma and Mugabe are gone, and we have a very very long road ahead.

The effort to build and rebuild continues on many fronts.

I landed and lived in Hawaii in 1977 as a UH student – Waimanalo is as much home as Port Shepstone, KwaZulu, on the exact opposite side of the planet, both towns along the ocean, identical vegetation, and diverse communities that live on opposite sides of the track.

For the 18th year, I am blessed to have educators from Hawaii and the US mainland who have agreed to accompany me to South Africa to help mentor our math and science colleagues from rural schools who did not have the same opportunities at higher education that we are privileged with in the first world.

I am eternally grateful for their love and generosity. TABSA began as a Punahou Math and Science mentoring project in 2001 and is now part of Teachers Across Borders , a 100% professional volunteer organization operating in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Southern Africa.

This year TABSA is working in the city of roses, Bloemfontein, 4600 ft in altitude, a hour’s drive west of the Lesotho border. The Free State is also the heart of old South Africa, where even today, old embedded attitudes sound loudest in economic tones. Change takes time.

Three hundred South African colleagues from rural schools await our arrival and three week stay. June 20 – July 17 in Bloemfontein Free State Province. They have requested specific topics in math and science – and the TABSA team assembles innovative lessons that require minimal and recyclable materials to teach math and science to classes of 40 or more.

Please visit our website and FB page for more information and if you know any of the 2018 TABSA members ,

you can follow us on our FB page which will be managed by Owen Martel, P 05, currently volunteering in a youth camp in Slovenia.

TABSA: www.tab-sa.org

TABSA FB: https://www.facebook.com/teachersacrossborderssa/

TAB: http://www.teachersacrossborders.org/

Yunus.

TABSA 2018

Math Team:

Jim Metz – Univ. Hawaii- retired

Brad Uy – Kamehameha Kapalama

Aviva Halani – Phillips Exeter Academy, NH

Joy Kenyon – Lovett Academy GA