National news in Portugal - Siprofis promotes training on Gender Based Violence

In May 2023 Siprofis ran training on ‘Gender Based Violence’ in partnership with The Steve Sinnott Foundation. The Teachers Syndicate of Santiago (Siprophis) are a Teachers Union in Cape Verde who have heard about the work we are supporting in Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Haiti. Ann Beaty, our CEO, met with them last year in Cape Verde when she met teacher unions in Senegal as well.

 

This training was reported in the news released on Inforpress (the official news agency of Cape Verde) in May 2023:

 

The Teachers Syndicate of Santiago (Siprophis) promotes this Saturday, a training on ‘Gender Based Violence’, at the Cor-de-Rosa house in Plato, aiming to raise awareness of the practice of violence prevention throughout the educational sector and to reinforce the teacher's knowledge regarding issues of Violence Based on Gender (GBV) and to contribute to improving its capacity to act in prevention.

 

The president of Siprofis, Abraão Borges, told Inforpress that with this initiative he intends to work on the prevention of violence through the training of the teachers themselves. Gender Based Violence, and any kind of violence in educational institutions, can be addressed as a brutality against the entire education system. He considered that for Cape Verde to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), the country needs to have teachers trained in non-violence, in education institutions and schools.

 

At a time when much is said about violence in schools, SIPROFIS believes that one of the best ways to combat this scourge is through training teachers, so that they know the best strategies to deal with violence in the educational space. The training is aimed at teachers and kindergarten teachers.

 

According to the schedule, the training will be divided into three sections under the themes ‘The role of school in combating Gender-based Violence’, ‘Peace Promotion and Strategies to tackle gender violence in schools’, and ‘How to work for gender equality with students in school’.

 

Artur Correia, former national director of health, joins experts Silvina Andrade and a representative of the Cape Verdiana Association for the Fight Against Gender-Based Violence as speakers of this training, that will have Roda Moniz, Ricardino Rocha and representative of the Cape Verdiano Institute of Equality and Equity (ICIEG) in the role of speakers.

 

Abraão Borges said that Siprofis wants to involve all the organisations that fight against violence, and that the training of the city of Praia, which will cover the teachers of Praia, Old City and São Domingos, will continue on June 3, in Santa Cruz, extensive to teachers of São Miguel and St. Lawrence of the Organ.

 

The third phase is scheduled for the Tarrafal de Santiago council, in order to welcome the teachers from Tarrafal, Santa Catarina and São Salvador do Mundo.


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The Inforpress online newspaper https://inforpress.cv/siprofis-promove-formacao-sobre-violencia-baseada-no-genero/


The Inforpress full news program can be found here, between 1 min 30 seconds to 4 mins 50 seconds:


Steve Sinnott • May 22, 2023

Send My Friend To School

By John McLaverty • May 12, 2025
There are none better placed than children themselves to advocate for the right of all children to have an inclusive, equitable and quality education. This is the philosophy behind Send My Friend to School, a unique coalition which brings together young people, politicians, teachers and civil society in joint campaigning to demand education for all children across the globe. The first Send My Friend campaign in schools took place 20 years ago in 2005, when pupils joined Nelson Mandela onstage at the historic Make Poverty History event in London’s Trafalgar Square. Since then, Send My Friend has campaigned on a specific education theme each year, such as gender equality, literacy, emergencies and removing barriers to education for persons with disabilities. Young people from thousands of schools have met their constituency MPs and young advocates have lobbied Parliament, met Ministers and hosted roundtables at the party conferences. In March 2025, we’re launching our new ‘Invest in My Friends’ Learning’ campaign, calling on the Government to urgently accelerate their commitment towards Sustainable Development Goal 4. In addition to the school campaign, Send My Friend is publishing a policy report and lobbying decision makers to take greater action. There are only five years left until 2030, when countries are due to meet the Sustainable Development Goal targets. There is no time to waste. Since its launch 25 years ago, the campaign has succeeded in placing education firmly on the UK’s development agenda and helped to secure funding for the Global Partnership for Education and Education Cannot Wait. It’s often said that MPs only advocate for the issues that their communities care about, and many MPs have had their first interest in global education sparked by meeting passionate young constituents. We support young people to meet at least 100 MPs every year. Many MPs were newly elected in 2024 and are still identifying the issues they wish to champion. Young people are taking the opportunity to give them a strong nudge towards global education. However, there’s little doubt that progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 has been faltering for some time. In addition, school pupils and their teachers everywhere have experienced the terrible impacts of Covid-19 and its aftermath. In this rapidly changing world Send My Friend has had to adapt. The most fundamental way we’ve done this is to bring young people more prominently into the high-level influencing spaces usually occupied by professional adult advocates. This has included meeting the Foreign Secretary, briefing the International Development Committee and participating in the COP climate change conference. In 2023, we launched the Young People’s Policy Report on Education in Emergencies. This is the first time, we’re aware of, that a policy report was specifically written for and launched by young people. In recent years, the Campaign Champions programme has become an integral part of Send My Friend to School. We recruit 20 14-15 year old pupils every year who provide leadership and high-level advocacy for the campaign. Their training and the resources we produce for the 1,200 schools currently taking part in the campaign reflect the participatory and youth-led ethos we wish to embed. Send My Friend sets out to both transform global education and also be transformational for all the young people who take part in it. This is never more true than in the Steve Sinnott Youth Ambassador programme. With the support of the Steve Sinnott Foundation and Oxfam GB we invite two young people from the Global South to visit the UK every year to lead high level advocacy and partnership campaigning. A particularly memorable highlight occurred on 20 September 2019, when Jessy and Isaac, the Young Ambassadors from Malawi, spoke to tens of thousands of young people gathered outside Parliament at the School Strike for Climate. Later this year we hope to welcome Queen and Santos, the 2025 Young Ambassadors from Uganda, to campaign in the UK. The lived experiences and values of young people in 2025 mean they are increasingly passionate about issues such as racial justice, gender equality, the climate crisis, safety, wellbeing and trauma. These resonate strongly with SDG4’s holistic aim of providing all children everywhere with an ‘inclusive and equitable quality education’. This is our strongest guarantee that the passion, creativity and commitment of young people and their teachers in the UK will continue to be heard in solidarity with children around the world as they call for greater investment in education during the next two years. To learn more and join Send My Friend to School visi t www.sendmyfriend.org BIOGRAPHY John McLaverty is the former youth campaigner for Oxfam GB and a retired secondary school teacher and teacher educator. He is presently co-chair of Send My Friend to School and volunteers for Schools of Sanctuary.

Portsmouth NEU, Steve Sinnott Foundation and The Traveller Movement

By Ann Beatty • April 28, 2025
Portsmouth Branch of NEU (National Education Union) held it’s AGM on Friday April 25th. Around the AGM several organisations and speakers were invited to take part.

An Education Revolution

By Ann Beatty • April 6, 2025
This week while out and about in Hertfordshire and we visited the British Schools Museum. We discovered the first school opened by Joseph Lancaster, was known as the ‘Poor Childs Friend”, was in 1810. It was his lifelong mission that all children regardless of their circumstances, should benefit from an education. Apparently, Joseph heard a small girl say, “Oh that I could read!” and this inspired him to create a simple education system that eventually would benefit children across the world. Joseph was the tenth son of a poor man himself from South London. His aim was to offer free education for everyone. However, it would be 93 years before the U.K. government finally made education free for all. There are still many countries today where education is still not free to access and it is certainly not compulsory for primary and secondary age pupils. Joseph’s mission really resonates with that of the Foundation, to support access to education for all. We enjoyed our visit and appreciated the tour given by two of the Museum’s volunteers, Angela and Clare. They described some of the challenges faced in the early years of formal education and shared some of the rules that teachers and students had to abide by with us.