About OUTREACH
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” Lao Tzu
With this Chinese adage in mind, OUTREACH provides practical learning materials to educators and communicators in low-income countries. These materials are adapted and used to help the poor–especially youth–improve their health and environment.
Why the poor in the developing world? Because they are the ones who suffer most from worsening environmental conditions. It is usually the poor who become ill or die from polluted air, poor sanitation and hazardous waste dumps. It is the poor who are especially vulnerable to disasters, such as hurricanes, landslides, droughts and floods. It is the poor who have nowhere to turn when the soil they farm turns to dust; when forests they forage are cleared; and when seas they fish are depleted of stock.
Education is vital for combatting poverty and protecting the environment. Yet in many parts of the world, educational systems are severely over-stretched. Often there is a scarcity of good learning materials in classrooms. Those that do exist are not always relevant to the most pressing problems in developing countries. Many teachers, particularly in primary schools, are often untrained, and need materials that guide them as well as their students.
What are needed are learning materials that give youth the knowledge and help them develop problem-solving skills to deal with environmental and health realities. OUTREACH helps to meet this need.
The improvement of environmental and living conditions for the poor does not rely solely on actions taken by individuals and communities in poorer communities. People across the globe need to be aware of the demands and pressures they impose on the developing world. They need to better understand–and take responsibility for–the impact of their societies’ actions upon the global environment. By making its materials available to a wider audience through its web site, OUTREACH hopes to help facilitate this understanding.
