 Flora McDonald's North-South is brought to you in the public interest by the International Development Research Center. We look at what's happening in the world around us. It's very easy to be pessimistic. The massive display of military power in the Gulf, ecological disasters, ever more refugees looking for safe haven from famine and civil war. Today we begin a new series of North-South, our fourth. The programs we have in store will take us to many of the world's trouble spots. But things are not all bad. There are positive developments which give us hope for the 1990s, and we'll be covering these as well. We found one of them right here in Canada, on Vancouver Island, where teenagers from all over the world come together to study and work and to jointly seek solutions to difficult problems. You could say they're in training to create a better world. 6 a.m. To get teenagers out of bed at that hour can be tough, but these teenagers have no choice. Do you know how to simulation? Everybody out, you have two minutes to get to wait the building. For two weeks, these 17-year-olds have been learning about the often brutal lives of people in the South. Now it's time to discover what each one has absorbed. They're told that rebels have attracted troops of their corrupt government. Suddenly, everyone's a refugee. Welcome to the International Seminar on Youth and Development. For four weeks in July and August, 130 grade 11 students from across Canada gather here on the campus of the Leicester Pearson College of the Pacific, on the very southern tip of Vancouver Island. They're in the company of some 50 slightly older students who act as facilitators. Most of these are graduates of the regular two-year program at Pearson, or one of its sister colleges around the world. 44 different countries are represented in this crowd. For the past week, they've seen films from the Sudan and the West Bank. They've talked to people back from Cambodia and Mozambique and Guatemala. But today's rude wake-up call was a surprise. And now the rebels are asking them to join the revolution. There are other parts of the summer program where no simulation is needed. When you're by the ocean and the sun never seems to stop shining, you take advantage of everything this place has to offer. Often it's simply being together, shooting the breeze. Or people seek their own space, letting the wind and the current provide the challenge for the afternoon. But you can count on diversity in this program. The Green Bay and the tall trees are also conducive to a discussion about disappeared people in Latin America. A friend of mine is a refugee from Guatemala, and the reason she came here is because her parents were both union workers against Coca-Cola, which in Guatemala is a really, really bad union. And for this specific issue, her parents are both being very involved in trying to get a union informed and stuff like that and trying to protect the workers' rights. And in the newspaper it was published a list. These are the top ten people who are going to be gone. We're going to kill them. And her parents were number one and number two. Most of the activity is organized around small discussion groups and workshops. It makes it easier to express what you really feel. What has really been inspiring for me to be involved in this conference is to see just the level of awareness that is already there. And if that awareness isn't there, the honesty of the questions that have been being asked. And it's starting to make me feel really optimistic because I can feel that there is a generation right there behind me, very close behind me, supporting all of the efforts that we've made, and I feel it's growing. And so I'm really glad that I've been here. Most young people, certainly myself, are basically starved for some decent education because the school systems are so boring and they're teaching stuff that's completely irrelevant. We're in the middle of a global environmental crisis and we have the scientists telling us we have ten years left to start solving these problems. And yet the school systems are still teaching us history and prime ministers and stuff like that. Or basically they're training us to live in a world which scientists are telling us is not going to exist in the future. Not all the attention is on far away places. The Community Outreach Program involves street kids in Victoria and protecting the old growth forest just up the coast. The point is to get the students to question, even confront. With the participants and one thing that I'm really glad that happens is that there's a rage that develops within the participants. They listen, they hear things that they see and they think for themselves and while they're thinking there's a rage that comes over them, they're disturbed and it's that disturbance which I try to create. I try to get them annoyed, I try to get them freaking out, I try to push them to the edge and that is where the energy and the power lies and if they can feel just that tension within themselves then they can have a general idea that something isn't quite right somewhere and given that rage then they can probably, we hope that they will probably try to do something to correct that and correct themselves, correct their society and eventually correct the globe as it is. At Pearson College you can be serious and happy at the same time. Before dinner there's some serious dancing practice going on. The dance is from the gold mines of the Transvaugh but it's a big hit in small town Canada. It's popular everywhere I have done it in Canada. I've done it at a school in Peterborough where there are all people in the community dance. Everywhere I have done it and my friends have done it, it's been very popular and I haven't, I don't know, when I first saw it being done I said I have to learn that dance. I didn't ask myself why or why it was good, I just said I have to do it. They put in a lot of their energy, their enthusiasm to learn something completely different and perhaps a chance to learn something that can go back and either show off to their friends or teach their friends. In fact I've got a story from one of the people I taught it to last year a very quiet girl who went back to rural Nova Scotia and taught it to a whole school and they were doing it on the Trans-Canada highway at one point, you know, the whole school so it's quite amazing to hear people doing that sort of thing with the dance. One of my strongest ideas about this program is that international development does not only involve giving money to students from poor countries to come to Canada but it's using students from other countries to help develop Canadian people and I think that development is a two-way process and interpersonal relationships are extremely important. Mark Gabriel is a full-time teacher at Pearson College. The summer program was his invention. Lester Pearson said in his Nobel Peace Prize speech that how can people understand each other if they don't know each other and this is one step to have people know each other so they can understand each other and feel more concerned about the implications of events in all parts of the world. In more ways than one, this campus is a shelter. There's a climate which nurtures deeper understanding, lasting friendships and with the natural surroundings. Well, to some visitors it may seem there's almost too much beauty and harmony around here. How can you discuss the cruel realities of war and development when you're in utopia? In the evening I see so many people that just can't go to sleep they have to reason things out, to process them, all the knowledge and information they've gathered and I think there's no better place than this, the quietness you have and the time and just the feeling of relaxing that you get in the evening when you have to recharge for the next day. It's just beautiful. Something that Susie said was how these discussions are so powerful. Nature, it seems like whenever we have discussions and that kind of thing at night I just go for a walk, I go out and I just go into nature there's a trail out in the forest there and I just, I get so revived because some of these discussions really wear me down because they're so emotional but when I go out in the forest it just makes me feel so much better. Much of the energy that's generated here is channeled into one looming event a full evening truly international cultural show. Act by Act the presentation details are nailed down. The press is going to be standing here, you're going to need a center spot and then after the center spot you'll need the right and left to come on. No one has to be dragged onto stage and the performers often give their acts new identities in the rehearsing. Take this Norwegian song, translated on the spot and performed by people from Kelowna, Hong Kong, Singapore, Quebec City and Senegal. What the show is about is to have them participating in another culture sometimes in their own country but sometimes in another culture. Get to understand somebody else, get to feel what someone else is feeling and if you can have that personal level chances are that you're going to have a better chance or a better attempt at trying to make some kind of connection between yourself and another developing country yourself, another underdeveloped peer, another underdeveloped teenager and one thing the show will bring out is to put all this development all this cultural aspect, all this friendship that we have been working on for the past two and a half weeks put that all together in one big basket. The energy just never stops flowing in short stolen moments or in massive doses out in the open where rivalry and physical strength find their place in the mix. When you're 16 or 17 a month at Pearson College can change the course of your life. CEDA and the Canadian school boards that foot most of the bill don't have to look far for the impact. I've had more than 200 letters from last year's participants requests for resources, telling me what they've done in schools sometimes criticizing a government policy and making suggestions for the new program they have published a newsletter with two issues of a newsletter which has gone to everyone I think that is perhaps the pleasant surprise which was very very strong and which I had suspected but not really thought through and that has been a very very encouraging sign. It's an hour and a half into the war simulation exercise the refugees scrounge whatever cardboard and wood they can find to build shelters at least for the wounded and the traumatized. Is there any way to find out who that medical person was? We can't get any. He's going to die, he doesn't get them. But even here they aren't left in peace and then it's over. Negotiations. The ceasefire has been arranged between the government troops You were displaced persons within your own countries and back to the cafeteria for hot chocolate, cookies and some reflection on what might have been. All the confusion and like all the noise the sirens and the yelling and stuff that atmosphere it it made you sort of panic inside but as well it you could really I think we could relate a lot more to learning lately about like El Salvador and all these countries that have this situation of war constantly. I'm from Alberta and I've seen a lot of cattle farms and dairy farms and that and I felt that I was in a cattle farm and I was a cow out of 200 cows honestly and like sure I was fed and I was led along to my next destination and you know I was cared for if I had a wound on my leg I was cared for but I didn't know what was going on I didn't know what these people were trying to tell me I didn't know what to believe so a lot of confusion and that's how I felt. Young people come from all over the world to work and study at Pearson College but they're only a tiny fraction of the millions of people in developing countries who'd like to have an opportunity to study They find that in their countries classrooms and textbooks and teachers are often in short supply How best to help these millions of people acquire an education? Distance learning or learning in other than the conventional classroom is proving to be a most effective means of bringing education to the masses and the commonwealth of learning is rapidly becoming one of the key players In this report we take you to the headquarters of the commonwealth of learning in Vancouver It's the nerve center of an operation which provides distance education materials to the 46 developing countries of the commonwealth In this century the world's population has exploded There are now over 5 billion of us to be fed, housed, cared for and educated But how? No ordinary school system can handle these numbers New methods for learning must be found No country, anywhere can any longer respond adequately to the demands for more access and for better quality unless they turn increasingly to the technologies that are associated with distance education I think that is really not debatable anymore That is the fact of the matter Distance education is one solution to a growing problem It's effective because it's so flexible it can reach people in their homes, their workplaces, their community gatherings Canada has played a pioneering role in distance learning Peter McMeek, and a director of the commonwealth of learning cites the medical school at Memorial University in Newfoundland as a good example of what can be done The medical program runs through a teleconference system to, well, when I was there last, it was 45 I think it's up to 60 or 70 sites in little hospitals and medical clinics right up the coast of Labrador and right throughout Newfoundland which means that a doctor doesn't have to come to St. John's a doctor can be part of that program and take part with all the specialists and with his peers In West Africa, something similar is taking place a regional link-up by packet radio and satellite to provide new learning opportunities to several countries Hafeez Wally was director of the National Teachers Institute in Nigeria before joining the commonwealth of learning There are two ways, one, the books that have been produced are being reproduced, for example, for the Gambia And another way, we are going very high-tech call is supporting a program using satellites to exchange textual materials between Nigeria and the Gambia and possibly Ghana and Sierra Leone The offices of the Commonwealth of Learning are in Vancouver the first Commonwealth institution to be located outside of Britain So we have nine people confirmed It has been in operation only since 1989 but already its potential is apparent It can do for the delivery of education what CNN is doing for news You know, these whole things are all linked together into a system called internet It can make possible the exchange of educational materials to 50 countries using every means of delivery from print to satellite transmission This sometimes leads to criticism that values from richer countries in the north are being imposed on the south Let's sing, people in my family But Dr. Dennis Irvin disputes this citing his own experience as an example We did our studies, not in the university where we came from, because there weren't any We studied in the UK, as I did or in Canada or in America You were originally from the Caribbean Yes, but we took what we learned and created something different in our own respective countries which was more suited to that context You can apply the same thing to distance education The Open Learning Institute material here was in fact taken from the UK Open University and they used that as a base to develop their own in Hong Kong We are taking material from Hong Kong which is closer to what we think is Uganda's requirements to be used by Uganda but we hopefully, for Uganda to modify in later years and make it something which is more characteristic of Uganda So the process of evolution takes place as has been done in conventional education in many of these countries Distance learning is critical to the development of women It can help tear down the cultural and social barriers which for so long have limited women's access to all forms of education Yes indeed, in particular Programs for women are a priority at the Commonwealth of Learning and they range from literacy courses to professional upgrading to leadership training in government and industry That is what this flexible, more open approach allows and this, as I said, is particularly pertinent to women and women's needs so that they can fit this in with their work day and do on-the-job training and at the same time be learning and upgrading their skills Distance learning can mean education for all In many parts of the world this is still a revolutionary idea but the Commonwealth of Learning is taking practical steps to see that this becomes a reality The strength of the Commonwealth has always been in practical functional cooperation We will continue to deal with the larger political issues questions of human rights democratization and so on These are important things and will continue But at the end of the day it is a cooperation in health in legal, in medical, in scientific and so on This is where the real strength of the Commonwealth is and where it's value lies Next week, join me on a South African journey From the straight jacket of apartheid clashes driven by animosity and ambition now threaten the cohesion of South Africa But on my journey I also found real hope taking root And that's our program for today I'm Flora McDonald See you next week