The AASP is pleased to announce that the first recipient of the Francois Manchuelle Award is Brenda Randolph and the organization African Access. For twelve years African Access has developed solid materials on teaching and learning about Africa and then used innovative technology to bring this information to the K-12 community. African Access has been especially effective in bringing a critical voice to books on Africa marketed for children to an ever widening group of educators. The Award Committee noted that "the African Access target audience of K-12 is a particularly critical community to reach if we Africanists are really going to change how Americans view Africa."
Great Zimbabwe, Photograph by William Dewey |
The Award Committee also wished to note and give Honorable Mention to Thomas Hale and a program at Penn State called "New Connections." In this program interactive video courses on Africa are brought to remote campuses of the Penn State system that otherwise would have no opportunity to study Africa. The Award Committee feels that both of these proposals truly honor Francois Manchuelle's commitment to bringing down barriers to the study of Africa.
The 2002 Francois Manchuelle Award went to the African Studies Center Outreach Program at Boston University for its impressive outreach to K-12 teachers. The Summer Institutes and lectures provide invaluable opportunities for the K-12 teacher to learn more about African history and societies. The games, curriculum guides and loaning library make available critical materials they can incorporate into their classes. In addition, the Outreach Program must be commended for its web-site which is an invaluable resource for teachers especially those beyond Boston who do not have easy access to the city's resources on Africa. The Outreach Program has regional significance when one considers the paucity of African Studies in the colleges and universities in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
The director of the program, Barbara Brown, deserves special praise for her hard work and dedication to the struggle to get Africa included in the K-12 curriculum requirements in Massachusetts. This is an important victory and it will only deepen the demand for the important work the Program is conducting.
The 2003 Francois Manchuelle Award went to Daniel Boyd a Professor of Communications at West Virginia State College for the pilot program TELEDRUM. Boyd partnered with the University of Dar es Salaam to teach filmmaking to American and African students while producing films for international aid organization. This creative and fruitful partnership has produced two films thus far "Duara" and "Sound the Drum."
