VSA’s 2008 education resources provide fun learning opportunities for students based on the latest New Zealand curriculum.

There are opportunities for primary, intermediate and secondary schools and groups associated with Girl Guiding NZ.

Primary Years 2-6

Talking Favourites Picture Postcards and Primary Resource


As part of VSA Project Friendship, students have the opportunity to be involved in a postcard exchange with primary students in countries where VSA volunteers are living and working.

The VSA Talking Favourites postcard exchange presents a unique learning opportunity for primary school children in New Zealand and around the world to exchange ideas, consider different values and experience diversity in a meaningful way.

Curriculum Links:

Key Competencies:

Values

The following future focus issues are explored in this resource:

Students are able to engage with new ideas and values from children in different global contexts and consider how being part of a global community can enable learning from each other and what value this process has.

Cost:

The postcard exchange opportunity is free to primary schools in New Zealand for schools who wish to print off the website. Visit this site from March 1, 2008. Download lesson plans, picture cards, activity ideas and postcards for your students to fill in.

Resource packs are available for teachers in hard copy format at cost price including:

Order the VSA Talking Favourites Resource pack today.

How does the exchange work?

VSA volunteers work in Africa, Asia and the Pacific and often have connections to schools in the communities they live and work in. These schools may be in remote areas in developing countries and students are rarely able to access the internet or communicate with other students around the world. The volunteers are able to meet with students and teachers who are interested in being involved in the postcard exchange. Since 2005 VSA volunteers have delivered postcards written by Kiwi children to students in Bougainville, South Africa, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, Tokelau, Viet Nam, Vanuatu, Cambodia and Rarotonga.

Reply cards and information about the students involved will be posted to you upon receipt of your school’s postcards. (Please note: reply postcards are copies of originals.) Visit this site from March 1, 2008 for instructions for completing and sending the postcards.

When

In 2008, the VSA Talking Favourites postcard exchange will run for a two month period from 1 August to 1 October.

Visit Talking Favourites with your students.

Download your copy of the VSA Talking Favourites resource pack using the links below:

TOP OF PAGE

Years 5-8

Helping Out in New Zealand and Papua New Guinea

This year VSA is offering a new CD Rom :

'Hands On' Getting active in your community .

A level 3-4 Social Sciences and Technology Education resource

Students have the opportunity to:

Explore a new global context: The CD ROM features children from Papua New Guinea sharing ways they participate in their community and how they use resources in a sustainable way.

Think about values: Using social sciences activities students consider roles and responsibilities children have to help out in their community and what impact they can make.

Take action: Images and creative ideas from children around the Pacific provide a great entry point into the main focus of the CD Rom – a technology based community project - Making toys: making change.

Links to the new curriculum:

Key Competencies:

Values:

The following future focus issues are explored in this resource:

The impact children can make as citizens including actively responding to issues of environmental sustainability.

Students are able to engage with new ideas and values from other Pacific Island contexts and consider how being part of a global community can enable learning from each other and what value this process has.

Featuring:

About the authors

The CD Rom features students from Vunapope International Primary School in Kokopo , Papua New Guinea . The children demonstrate how they are involved in everyday activities including working in their village gardens, slicing cocoa pods to gather the beans, using coconut leaves to make brooms and toys, and cutting grass at school.

The technology project:
Making toys: making change

How can children in New Zealand get their 'hands on' to fun play with toys that encourages recycling and reusing resources?

The aim of the Making Toys: Making Change technology project is for students to investigate, plan, design and evaluate a toy made from recycling/reusing materials. The finished product should be suitable for use in a preschool setting where children can have fun and play safely with the toy.

To kick start the project students view a PowerPoint showing ways children around the Pacific create their own toys out of natural and recycled materials.

Technical specifications:

The CD-ROM assumes that the following technologies are present:

Cost:

$25 (Available to New Zealand schools only).
Contact Us to order a copy of the CD Rom.

TOP OF PAGE

Secondary

Guide to international volunteering

This resource raises issues about how young New Zealanders can, and are contributing to the global community, from a realistic and practical perspective. Young people considering volunteering in a developing country can use the guide to identify pathways to this kind of work, the advantages and disadvantages, and who’s out there doing it – and why. The guide challenges thinking about the choices we make when volunteering overseas. It suggests effective action we can take to live out our desire to ‘make a difference’.

Comprising a booklet and DVD, this resource is suitable for independent research or sparking classroom discussions. The DVD is a suitable length for showing at assemblies.

A class set of booklets and a DVD ‘Volunteering Overseas’ featuring interviews with young New Zealand volunteers talking about their experiences, can be made available free to Secondary Schools (quantity restrictions may apply).
Contact Us to order.

Guide to international volunteering.

Class sets of the booklet and DVD can be made available to Secondary Schools on request.

Contact Us to find out more or place an order.

TOP OF PAGE

VSA 'Hand of Friendship' Badge
Ngā Ringa Aroha

Download resorces for the VSA 'Hand of Friendship' badge below.

Use this postcard template for VSA’s Talking Favourites postcard exchange.

Learn about activities children around the world are involved in.

Download VSA’s Charade Cards

Download VSA’s Picture Cards

GirlGuiding New Zealand extends the hand of friendship

Close to a hundred Guides, Brownies and Pippins units throughout New Zealand partnered up with VSA for Project Friendship in 2007. A new Friendship badge was also introduced to promote global understanding and celebrate friendship.

Together the girls raised nearly $10,000 for VSA to help it send skilled New Zealanders to work alongside people in developing countries. During the process, the girls got an opportunity to learn more about and experience glimpses of life in other countries.

Guides, Brownies and Pippins leaders will be contacted early next year, and invited to get involved with Project Friendship and other VSA education initiatives. Or use the Contact Us form and we can send you an order form.

One Unit's story:

A VSA returned volunteer from Lao PDR was invited to speak to Taitua District Guides. They tell us about the experience.

August was a very good time for Guides NZ and VSA to launch their new joint project, the Hand of Friendship badge, especially for the guides in Taitua District. Not only was it international month in guiding, but it also coincided with DC Joan Whittaker's daughter Sarah returning to NZ from Laos after completing an 18-month VSA assignment there. Joan had already arranged for Sarah to meet with the girls from the three Taitua guide units to talk about her experience of living and working in Laos as an English teacher to government officials, so when the information about Project Friendship was received, it was easy to extend the presentation to cover clauses from that badge as well. In early September, the girls and leaders of Dinsdale, Nawton and Glenview Guides got together for a very interesting and informative presentation by Sarah on VSA, Project Friendship and life in Laos.

For Sarah (now 30), it was an opportunity to visit her old guide unit in the hall where she had gained her Chief Commissioners Award (now Guides Aotearoa) 16 years earlier. It was also a chance for her to talk about the work of VSA, tell the girls about the personal rewards gained from being a volunteer in a developing country such as Lao PDR and to encourage the girls to sell lots of friendship badges, and complete some of the Talking Favourites Postcards for sending to children in Cambodia .

From the voices of the guides – here are some of the responses.

Quotes from the Guides re Project Friendship:

TOP OF PAGE

Contact VSA

If you have any further questions about VSA's education resources and ways your school/group can use them please contact us.

TOP OF PAGE