Of course, without a doubt. I must dedicate my first blog post to my pride and joy: The Adelaide Kurdish Ethnic School.
This school is set up through the Ethnic Schools Association and The Department of Education and Child Development from the Government of South Australia. We have accredited teachers voluntarily providing their invaluable time and effort to teach our students. We have a principle, a chair-person, secretary, public relations officer, a treasurer and a group of volunteers who help out every Sunday for two hours. This is a community based school and without the help of our volunteers it would not exist.
We currently have over 40 students, ages ranging from 5-16, enrolled at our school and 3 active classes. Classes are run every Sundays for two hours.
Although the main purpose of the school is to teach students to read and write in Kurdish it has become more than that. We wanted to create a ´Home away from home´ where the children could interact with other Kurdish students and learn about their backgrounds, culture, history and traditions. A place where a sense of pride in where you came from could be maintained amongst the youth and our next generation…. who will ultimately carry the torch for the fight for Kurdistan.
The future of our very newly established school looks very bright. Something that I would definantly endorse for the future is the integration of different dialects. At the moment, and very unfortunately we only have accredited teachers who can teach in the Soranî Dialect, to expand by obtaining teachers who can teach Kurmancî as well would be, personally, my ultimate goal.
In saying that I would like to point out we currently have quite a few Kurmancî speaking students learning in the Soranî language and happen to be some of our top academic students!
You can support our school and find out more by liking our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.307451312598827.90867.304772082866750&type=3#!/pages/Adelaide-Kurdish-Ethnic-School-Inc/304772082866750