violence against children WORLD REPORT ON - CRIN

146Violence against children in schools and educational settingsSchools Coalition of Washington was set upout of concern about violence against gays andlesbians in Seattle schools, but it and similarSafe Schools Coalitions in a number of otherstates now serve as public–private partnershipsthrough which many Government organisationsand NGOs collaborate to address violenceand other safety issues in schools. 196Many other countries have similar organisationsthrough which parents and communitybasedorganisations address a wide range ofissues in schools, in collaboration with educationauthorities, school heads and teachers. 197Elsewhere in this section, a number of examplesare given of ways in which parents andIn Mexico City – ‘Combating Violence:Education for Peace’ projectcommunities get involved in addressing thefull range of violence issues in schools. Wheresuch involvement is not already taking place,there may be existing mechanisms for securingthat involvement. In Lesotho, the UnitedRepublic of Tanzania and a number of othersub-Saharan African countries, for example,there are now local committees that involve abroad range of stakeholders in addressing thefull range of issues related to HIV and AIDS.Mexico City, Nepal, and Kenya provide examplesof what major cities or whole countriescan do to involve parents and communities(see boxes).In Mexico City, social inequalities, poverty and other factors have contributed toincreasing violence in homes, schools and the whole city, and school violence has beenlinked to high rates of early dropout. Currently, more than 1,500 of the city’s schoolsand 450,000 of the city’s students are participating in a project called “CombatingViolence: Education for Peace – For Me, You, and the Entire World.” The project consistsof training workshops that build the capacity of school administrators, teachers,students and parents to resolve conflicts in a non-violent manner. Follow-up in schoolsaims to ensure that the lessons have been absorbed and put into practice, and to providesupport to individuals charged with the responsibility for continuing to build thecapacity of each school’s population to resolve conflicts peacefully. The project owes itslaunch and success to leadership and enthusiastic support from the Secretary of Educationand, mostly importantly, from school heads. The hope, now, is that the projectwill become a permanent programme after the city’s next general elections. 198