Asia-Pacific teachers have a lot to gain from a program that helps empower the leaders of their local education unions. Anna McAlister reports.

Imagine teaching in a different country where your biggest worry is something like how many in your class have HIV, or the number of children who work as labourers instead of going to school, or whether your students will eat today. You'd be beating down the door of your union and lobbying the government for solutions. Except that your union is under-resourced and the government is unwilling or unable to help.

That's the situation for many teachers' union members in Asia-Pacific nations, and since 1998 the AEU has been involved in a project to help them by improving their unions. The John Thompson Fellowship Program aims to strengthen education union leadership. It uses the skills and experience of western teacher unionists in a training program that runs for three weeks once a year in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at the premises of Education International, the union federation representing 30 million educa-tion workers worldwide.

John Thompson was a prominent Canadian Teachers' Federation unionist and the secretary-general of the World Confederation of Organisations of the Teaching Profession from 1970 to 1981. The fellowship is the brainchild of the Canadian union. The program is jointly financed and facilitated by the teacher unions AEU(Australia), CTF (Canada), SNES (France) and NEA(USA). The AEU's share comes from the 0.7 per cent of members' dues which go to its In-ternational Trust Fund.

"The AEU is committed to helping developing countries build strong, democratic teacher un-ions so they can achieve quality public education systems," says AEU federal secretary and EI vice-president Susan Hopgood. "We have the resources to enable us to work with others who don't have those resources at their fingertips." Fellowship program participants are education union leaders who are in a position to effect change, but require international support because they lack the resources or face difficult politi-cal conditions. Many are classroom teachers or university lecturers, says AEU Tasmanian branch industrial and women's officer Roz Madsen, who is part of the team that delivers the program. "The unions don't have the infrastructure or money to support paid union officials. Often they don't even have a union building, computer or fax machine."

Most Asia-Pacific unions have issues in common such as low pay rates, big class sizes and a lack of facilities. But the fellowship program participants have their hands full with even more fundamental problems. "In some countries they have to deal with AIDS, child labour and making sure school children have food in their bellies," says Madsen.

Just out of jail

For the program's tutors, the varied cultural perspectives of the Asian unionists are an interesting challenge. They have different levels of English fluency and many have never left their home province before, let alone travelled internationally. Some are from nations where freedom of speech is denied. "The president of one of the Cambodian unions had just come out of jail for making a minor public statement against the government," says Madsen. "We have to be mindful of the cultural differences and political realities."

Much of the program's value is that it allows participants to share their experiences with col-leagues from other Asian countries. When funds arrived from the World Bank to open more schools in India, participants rallied to help untrained Indian teachers who were employed out of necessity. "The teachers were paid about a fifth of what a trained teacher earns," says Sagar Nath Pyakuryal, who is the Education International coordinator of the fellowship program. The low salaries lead to a quick turnover of teachers as they move on to work that pays better, and India still has no program to train them. The Indian unionists have been getting advice from Indone-sian colleagues who solved a similar problem in their own country.

Each of the Asian unions in the fellowship program sends three representatives, one of whom must be a woman. Madsen says in some countries, women are able to teach, but are unable to attend union meetings unless they are accompanied by a husband, brother or father. The host un-ions are striving to change such practices.

Madsen has found that the program's male participants are less likely to be convinced by the achievements of western women than by those of a woman whose culture is closer to their own. One of the program's most inspiring speakers is a woman-Lok Yim Pheng. As secretary-general of Malaysia's National Union of the Teaching Profession and an EI board member, she is a strong role model for women in the program and an example to the men of what Asian women can achieve. "She gives the women hope that they can do great things," says Madsen.

Sagar says one of the program's greatest achievements has been to change attitudes to women in leadership. "Unions have become more receptive to women leaders and women's participation in union work."

He praises the contributions of the host unions. "Australians bring strong unionism. The Aus-tralian trainers have their own brand of unionism to talk about, and it appeals. It's much closer to the Asian participants at the training [than the French or North American styles of unionism]."