Building bridges with Asia | Coffs Coast Lifestyle News | Health, Fashion, Food and Wine in Coffs Coast

31st March 2009

SCOTTS Head Public School is one of 30 schools around Australia embarking this month on a groundbreaking project aimed at building a permanent bridge between two very different worlds.

The large-scale BRIDGE project - Building Relationships through Intercultural Dialogue and Growing Engagement - is an intercultural understanding project which will forge ongoing school-to-school relationships between Australia and Indonesia.

“School education needs to equip our young people to resolve global issues like climate change,” Angie Evans said.

“To do this we need to work with our closest neighbours, speak each other's languages, understand our similarities and differences. BRIDGE aims to go beyond the classroom into communities and families, developing long-lasting connections.”

The project, ultimately involving 180 Indonesian and Australian teachers, begins this month with the first group of Indonesian teachers arriving to meet their school partners from rural and city schools across Australia. They will participate in a three-week intensive training course alongside their Australian partner teachers.

BRIDGE will build permanent networks which will be supported by IT training and hardware provision.

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