Portsmouth NEU, Steve Sinnott Foundation and The Traveller Movement

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.

The Traveller Movement, in collaboration with The Steve Sinnott Foundation, were invited to screen the film Never Going to Beat You (NGTBY) as part of the 2025 AGM of Portsmouth NEU. On Thursday evening the film was shown at the Southsea Cinema and Arts Centre.


The film was introduced by Jude Tisdall representing the Traveller Movement. Jude is also an ambassador for the Steve Sinnott Foundation. The film was shown to an invited audience of NEU members including teachers and educators. NGTBY is a film about domestic abuse, based on true stories of 18 Romany, Gypsy and Irish Traveller women. It is powerful and hard-hitting film, commissioned with the purpose of raising awareness. It is a masterful portrayal of how domestic abuse can destroy lives and effect families and community. The film is part of the Traveller Movement Education Programme and can be used to raise awareness among service providers and professionals or, as a discussion opener with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, or indeed any community where such topics are seen as taboo. Domestic abuse and violence is of course not limited to any one community or any one sector of the population. This is a problem that cuts across all sections of society; it is not age related, class, culture of gender related. The showing was followed by a discussion.


For full details of all trainings available please visit www.travellermovement.org.uk



Among the invited speakers at the AGM on Friday evening, April 25th were Ann Beatty CEO of the Steve Sinnott Foundation and Shamella Dhana Chair of Trustees and Founder member of Portsmouth City of Sanctuary.


Portsmouth City of Sanctuary


PCoS is grassroots, award winning, humanitarian charity, primarily assisting Portsmouth’s migrant community with direct action. The PCoS volunteer team aims to compassionately uphold the dignity and independence of all individuals it supports, regardless of status, and strives to do so with respect and welcoming warmth for everyone.


Shamella spoke about the organisations work in helping local asylum seekers, refugees and migrants, sharing some of the enormous range of projects which include a Refugee Hub, Action Asylum, Welcome Box arrivals, Welcome Wheels. There is a female only space HAVEN which has a programme of activities and support to those who have suffered gender violence. And much, much more. Shamella is an inspirational speaker, passionate and knowledgeable.


For further information of the work of PCoS please go to www.portsmouth.cityofsanctuary.org



The Steve Sinnott Foundation


The Steve Sinnott Foundation is a small charity with an enormous reach. Their mission is to change lives through education by creating a worldwide community of educators and learners. striving for universal access to quality education and ongoing improvement of teaching and learning.


Ann Beatty, CEO of the charity spoke of some of the current projects supporting this vision to accessible education are


  • Positive Periods: a project which started out in one country and has now been rolled through to The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Uganda, Malawi, Senegal, Nepal, Haiti and Cuba. On reaching puberty girls can miss out on up to a quarter of school time by not having the materials to manage their periods
  • Running workshops on gender-based violence. Creating safe spaces to talk, explore and understand.
  • Mother Tongue Literacy Classes


Ann thanked the NEU Portsmouth for their continued support and spoke about Steve’s ambitions and dreams in relation to education for all. She also noted that the work of the Traveller Movement and Portsmouth City of Sanctuary had similar and overlapping purpose and hopes in relation to cultivating an awareness and creating change around gender-based violence in all its forms.


For further information please visit www.stevesinnottfoundation.org.uk


If you are in Southsea do pop in and meet Aysegul and Hannah, they host loads of community events and they made our evening a great success. www.southseacinema.co.uk



Ann Beatty • April 28, 2025

36 Bicycles. Countless Futures in The Gambia.

By Ann Beatty • May 20, 2026
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity. 

Education for Hope in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Times

By Laura Griffin • May 13, 2026
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here

I heard it said today by a friend that “You learn a language best when you use it to speak and write about things that are important to you. ”

By Susan Piper • May 6, 2026
This summed up to me about why I volunteer for the Hands Up Project. HUP is a charity trust which, through its network of volunteers, connects children around the world with young people in Palestine. By means of online interaction, drama and storytelling activities, it enables the use of creativity and selfexpression to promote mutual understanding, personal growth, and the development of English language skills. I joined HUP in 2020 during COVID. After going to Palestine in 2017, I wanted to get more involved in working with Palestinian children in schools. HUP gave me the opportunity to link up with schools in the West Bank and Gaza. Every week I’d tell them stories from all over the world, then we’d discuss it, play games and I’d get them to retell it. Sometimes we would work from their coursebook English for Palestine’ in mutual team teaching sessions with their teacher. The simple act of telling a story became much more than entertainment. It became connection, healing, and a bridge to the world beyond their immediate reality to help them improve their language skills, and to give them a platform to speak about their lives in a language that connects them to people everywhere. I loved it, every week, seeing their smiling faces on the screen and building long lasting friendships with their teachers. I even went to Gaza in 2023 and met some of the kids I’d only seen on Zoom. It was a beautiful experience and something I will never forget. As hostilities escalated, I lost contact with everyone. I thought about where the kids were and what had happened to them. As I watched schools being bombed, universities flattened, and people killed in their thousands, I thought about where the kids I’d met were and what was happening to them. I kept in contact with many of the teachers I knew and heard daily news of displacement, destruction, hunger and bombing. Recently, I’ve started to link up again with children in Gaza, and it feels wonderful to be back helping them learn after being denied an education for over two years. Connecting with children in Palestine is more than just words. When a child in Palestine confidently tells their story to someone on the other side of the world, bridges are built, empathy grows, and the world gains a fuller picture of childhood in contexts far from peace and privilege. My work with these children is rooted in the belief that education and voice are inseparable. Through storytelling and English language learning, I witness children not just learning new vocabulary, but reclaiming their narratives, believing in their potential, and finding human connection in a world they perceive has abandoned them. And more than anything, this work reminds us all that children — everywhere — deserve to learn, to speak, and to be heard. Links to HUP information, books and resources: The Hands Up Project BY SUSAN PIPER Susan Piper is currently an ESOL teacher in Oldham, Greater Manchester and has worked in education for over 30 years. She is also a volunteer for the Hands Up Project and is the International Solidarity Officer and President of her NEU district. She believes in quality education for all and aims to make her lessons creative and inclusive so that effective language learning can take place.