Teachers without Borders

Teachers without Borders (TwB) is a network for teachers and educational professionals.

The Network has an active role in awareness raising and developing Global Citizenship Education in Finland. TwB provides teachers in Finland with opportunities to use and develop their competencies by working abroad, supporting the capacities of local teachers and education sector development in developing countries and fragile contexts.

TWB network sent 21 long-term and 7 short-term volunteer teachers abroad to support FCA education projects in Eritrea, Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal, Greece and Uganda. TwB network plays an important role in FCA’s Right to Quality Education theme.

In 2017, TwB had a total of 1,800 members. Evaluation of the piloting phase of TWB work 2014-2017 from the start until today was carried out. The evaluation strongly recommended that the work with Finnish teacher volunteers should continue and to include it even more in in FCA’s strategic plans.

The theme of Global Citizenship Education focused on refugee situations and their root causes. TwB network participated in a Global Citizenship Education project that promoted active citizenship skills and offered new ways to implement the new National curriculum for education in primary and secondary education in Finland.

The Finnish Language Says Welcome language guide project under the aegis of TwB continued supporting asylum seekers to cope with everyday communication, increased their participation and supported their motivation and mental health in the process of asylum seeking. The work is funded by Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund AMIF.

In 2017, the project offered 15 trainings for 167 participants in a special language teaching method called Toisto (Finnish for ‘repetition’), which emphasizes the significance of listening and repeating at the early stages of language learning. The project also developed new language teaching materials and supported different group activities for asylum seekers. The amount of participation in the language groups for asylum seekers was 3748 and altogether 88 volunteers were involved in the project.