A JUNIOR CERT paper has included questions on the Africa Centre’s drive to promote a better image of a continent usually associated with wars and poverty.
The Civic, Social and Political Education (CSPE) paper featured a poster from the Dublin-based organisation’s ‘Africa Also Smiles’ campaign, which aims to restore balance to perceptions of Africa among the general public.
On the poster, positive images of the continent were depicted with the tagline: “The dignity and resilience of Africa’s people must not be disregarded despite the scars of war, poverty and disease.”
The campaign, which was launched two years ago and is ongoing, has also included an education pack for schools and sessions with teacher training institutions.
On the CSPE examination paper, Junior Certificate students were asked a number of questions based on the Africa Centre’s poster, including whether they would choose happy or sad images to support “a fundraising campaign to help people in poorer countries”.
Africa Centre co-ordinator Eric Yao strongly welcomed the inclusion of the poster in the examination.
“This is a great achievement for our development education programme and it is one of the ways to measure impact of development education activities we are doing,” he said. “It shows that our work is having a positive impact on the Irish education system and it is a step in the right direction that attracted the interest of the State examiners.”
