Transforming education, transforming lives in the MENA region

Abstract

Nothing is as important as to be able to situate oneself when one is responsible to educate others and enter into an ongoing dialogue. Contextualizing oneself is as important as contextualizing the other in order to construct the realities that shape our world and our everyday life. We are the products of the political economies in which we exist and also the historical moment during which our consciousness was shaped. We are the product of our gender, our class and the disciplines that shaped the lenses through which we perceive the universe. I am an Egyptian woman who grew up in the sixties of the previous century and hence belongs to that very particular generation that was shaped by the years of hope, transformation, revolution and change. I belong to the third world that was colonized and later rendered even more dependent through a myriad of intertwined interests between exogenous and endogenous actors. I have also been influenced by the more progressive components of the Mediterranean and European culture; a culture that has been rich with economic anthropologists, philosophers, Arab nationalists and materialist historians. I also carry an international identity that focuses on the struggle for rights, justice and the abolition of discrimination and poverty. I believe in human dignity/respect and the fundamentals of goodness. I adhere to the universal declaration of human rights and the various rights based movements that are in fact all spiritually founded. My intellectual foundations are transnational and eclectic. My background covers political economy, social anthropology and education. I come to the realm of education through a human development perspective one that views the ultimate goal of education as human liberation. As an educator the achievements I am most proud of is the contributions made towards Community Education with a rights and empowerment framework in Egypt and the Middle East and North Africa Region. The first in-depth experience in community based education and girls’ education began in the early nineties in Egypt (Zaalouk, 2004; Sultana, 2008). Since 2005 concerted efforts were exerted to propagate rights based education in the form of Child Friendly Schools and Girls’ education in the whole MENA region. Other agendas that were pursued in the region were focusing on Early Childhood Education and Development (Sultana, 2009) as well as fostering education during emergencies in several countries in the region notably the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Sudan, Lebanon and Yemen as well as beyond the region proper as defined by UNICEF, namely Afghanistan. All these contributions were achieved during the time I worked for UNICEF in my capacity as Country Officer and later as Regional Adviser for the MENA region. I believe I have influenced others and continue to do so in my current position as academic educator at the American University in Cairo Graduate School of Education. I believe in transformational education and have myself been influenced by the works of Dewey, Freire, Green, Torres, Lambert and the many community educators I have worked with. I think if I claim to belong to any of the educational movements it would be critical education and liberation education. Those blends of education that strive to sharpen people’s consciousness, to enhance their capabilities and foster their life opportunities towards an empowered existence; the kind of education that recognizes the context but strives to change it; an education of the heart, soul and mind that can potentially bring about justice and allow children and adults to grow to their full potential.