Educating across divides
Supporting schools to bring children together across difference
Every generation has to choose democratic resilience afresh—we can’t take it for granted. That choice starts in classrooms. Our invaluable partnership with Pears Foundation enables us to deliver peace education that teaches young people to disagree well, protect one another, and build real pride in a diverse, fair, compassionate society.Sharon Booth,
Founder & Executive Director, Solutions Not Sides
Establishing shared spaces where children from different backgrounds can learn together is an essential component of peace-building and social cohesion. The benefits can be transformative, not only for the children themselves, but also for their teachers, parents and wider communities.
Pears Foundation supports schools and education organisations that bring children together across religious, ethnic and social divides. Although our partnerships take place in different contexts, they share a belief that meaningful relationships formed in childhood can help challenge prejudice, strengthen communities and create more hopeful futures.
Israel
Since 2001, we have provided long-term, unrestricted funding to the Hand in Hand network of bilingual, integrated schools and communities.
The Israeli education system is divided into secular Jewish schools, religious Jewish schools and Arab schools with the result that Jewish and Arab children are often educated separately. Hand in Hand brings Jewish and Arab children together to learn in both Hebrew and Arabic, with a specially designed multicultural curriculum that exposes students to multiple perspectives and teaches them critical thinking skills. This creates an educational environment in which both cultures, languages and identities – as well as the students’ religions – are recognised and valued equally. Through their daily interactions, Hand in Hand students learn how to negotiate difference, complexity and contradiction.
The impact of Hand in Hand extends beyond the classroom. Parents, teachers and local communities all play an active role in school life, helping to build relationships and strengthen shared society within the communities the schools serve. Today, the network educates thousands of children across Israel and has become an internationally recognised model of integrated education.
Northern Ireland
For more than two decades, Pears Foundation has supported the Integrated Education Fund (IEF), helping more children in Northern Ireland access integrated education.
Integrated education brings children and staff from Catholic and Protestant traditions as well as those of other faiths, or none, together in one school. Integrated schools have provided an important alternative to an educational system in which most children attend religiously separated schools. Our support for the Integrated School Trust Programme helps schools deepen their commitment to integration while sharing learning and good practice across the sector.
England
We are also a founding funder of The Linking Network. A key driver of stereotyping, misunderstanding, fear and prejudice is a lack of meaningful contact with people different from ourselves. The Linking Network supports schools across England to build relationships between children who might otherwise never have met. Through carefully structured, year-long partnerships between schools, children share experiences that help them explore their own identity, become more comfortable with difference and build meaningful connections across communities. Alongside this, The Linking Network develops resources and training for teachers and runs intergenerational programmes that bring younger and older people together to strengthen understanding across generations.