PEN is enabling every African child to learn by doing. 

In the Upper East Region of Ghana, there was a young boy named Issifu, living in a humble home – his dad was a mechanic and his mom sold goods in the market. 

As he went through elementary school, one of his least favorite subjects was math. One year, his grade in that class was 20%. He dreamed of being a doctor, but with grades like that, it wasn't going to happen. Then in his last year of junior high school, he had a math teacher who used a very different approach in class - he used activities, he made it interesting....even fun! That point marked a 180 degree turn in Issifu's life. He began loving the subject, excelling in it, reaching the top of his class across all the subjects, and today he is studying computer engineering at one of the best universities in Ghana.  

Issifu's story is why we are here.  
STEM education changes children's lives.  

We invite you to be a part of childrens' lives in Ghana, walking with them as they explore the world that exists when their potential is unleashed through STEM education.  

From $20 a month, you can become a PEN Pal,  a monthly donor program we have created to connect you with children like Issifu who are yearning for the doors of opportunity to be opened.

Your $20 monthly donation can provide one student with hands-on STEM education for an entire year.  
Your $50 monthly donation can provide one class of 40 students with the resources they need to learn hands-on STEM virtually. 
Your $165 monthly donation can provide one teacher with life-time practical skills to impact 100 new students every year till retirement.  

Right now, millions of children are where Issifu was – they are bored with the traditional classroom, their innate potential is being squelched, and any career aspirations are relegated to pipe dreams. BUT we know that a strong education will change the trajectory of their lives. 

Join us today and become a PEN Pal! 

*Note: Please make sure to select "monthly" under Donation Frequency to be added to the PEN Pals. Thank you for supporting Practical Education Network!*

PEN Pals - Practical Education Network

KWO is an indigenous women’s organisation serving women and girls in our community in Burma and in refugee camps in Thailand.  

The Karen Women’s Organisation (KWO) currently has a membership of more than 70,000 women living in Karen State, Burma and in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border. KWO is a leading indigenous women’s organisation working in protection and our programs directly serve women, girls, children, and the most vulnerable people in our community. We promote women’s leadership, gender equality and community ownership in all aspects of our work. KWO is active in four main sectors: Organising and Information Sharing Program, Education Program, Health Program and Social Welfare Program.  KWO is led and staffed entirely by women in our community. KWO participates in the struggle to stop all kinds of oppression of women and of children. We believe in a federal Burma, where all communities have gender equality, the protection and promotion of indigenous people’s rights, human rights, and justice. 


WHAT WE DO

Within our 4 program areas we provide: service delivery, advocacy, awareness raising, and capacity building threaded throughout our daily work and our funded projects. Our work varies from the delivery of hygiene kits for mothers with new-borns, conducting community health and nutrition education, to ensuring safe accommodation for women suffering violence, developing Women’s Protection Laws, to training young women from our Communities to become leaders. 

KWO believes that empowering women will help reduce human rights abuses and encourage an end to discrimination against women. We believe that women have a right to be properly represented in politics and society at large. And we believe that the whole community is better off when women play an equal role with men in decision-making. The 17 individually funded Projects which KWO currently implements in refugee camps and Karen State, run under our 4 programs, and have over 100,500 beneficiaries.

WHERE WE WORK
KWO lives and works in the 7 districts of Karen State, Burma which is in Southeastern Burma and in 7 refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border.

ORGANISING AND INFORMATION SHARING PROGRAM  - KWO’s Organising and Information Sharing Program provides services, advocacy and capacity building to support women’s empowerment, mobilize the community, and sustain the organisation. KWO believes that broad community and organisational education contributes to building a fair and tolerant civil society. We conduct training, events and activities around: women’s rights, indigenous rights, democracy, political awareness, a Federal system for Burma, child protection, human rights, project management, leadership skills, public speaking, financial policy and procedures, KWO policy, landmine awareness, etc.

The Organising and Information Sharing Program Co-ordinators are all Karen women who live in their communities. Work under this Program includes: to conduct community consultations to identify needs, share information in the community about the current situation, including through KWO publications, update KWO’s membership list, co-ordinate with the KWO Social Welfare Program to organize the distribution of humanitarian aid (food and materials) in emergency situations, oversee and monitor all funded KWO projects implemented in the area, arrange and attend meetings for KWO and our network, coordinate with other agencies on issues that affect the community, assist researchers and field trips for visiting individuals, advocate on behalf of vulnerable groups in the community, conduct individual and joint advocacy efforts on the local, national, regional, and international stage.  We currently implement 4 funded projects under this program.

EDUCATION PROGRAM 
KWO’s Education Program provides services, advocacy and capacity building to promote education in our community. We provide schooling where there are gaps in existing education mainstream services in the refugee camps, and in areas in Karen State. We particularly target girls in the community to ensure they have equal access to education, protection, development and care. We also place a significant emphasis on education that promotes and preserves Karen indigenous culture.

Our Education Program Co-ordinators are all Karen women and are part of the community. Every day they work to promote education, to identify children struggling at schools or at home and provide support to the family, and assist with school fees when possible. They monitor and support KWO’s funded education projects in their areas, visit all community schools and give encouragement to students and teachers. They conduct home visits and encourage parents to send children to school, and assist the poorest of the poor children to get into schools. They attend events organized by schools to share positive messages about the benefits of education for all. They meet with education leaders at all levels and advocate for inclusive education, improved child protection mechanisms, and the importance of girls education. We currently implement 7 funded education projects under this program.

SOCIAL WELFARE PROGRAM 
KWO Social Welfare Program provides services, advocacy and capacity building in all sectors of Karen society. We provide direct care and assistance to community members and we work to solve social problems in our community, particularly those that affect women. Due to the failure of Burma’s successive governments to provide care and security for the people, many ethnic groups, like the Karen, have established well-organised and high-functioning social systems. The KWO Social Welfare Program does a lot of the work that a free and democratic national government would normally be offering to the people.

Our Social Welfare Program Co-ordinators are all Karen women and live in their community. Their duties include: identifying and providing care to the most vulnerable members of the community including the elderly, people with disability or chronic illness, and families in trouble; providing assistance in emergencies; help to organize community events and ceremonies; home visits; build capacity and opportunity for women to earn income especially through traditional crafts; be advocates for the best interests of women in justice cases; fight for improvements in laws relating to women and child protection, justice system reform and better enforcement mechanisms both in the refugee camps and within Southeast Burma.

Overall our Program’s main area of focus is to prevent, and respond to Violence Against Women. Under the Social Welfare Program, and its funded project, we provide an enormous amount of training for women, for KWO leaders and staff, for local community leaders, and for the broader community. We currently implement 4 funded projects under this program.

HEALTH PROGRAM 
KWO’s Health Program provides services, advocacy and capacity building to promote better health in our community. Our Health Program activities address common community health issues, like nutrition and hygiene, and we focus on the health needs of women and of children. KWO collaborates with existing community health organisations to support local health workers, to care for patients and the community. We do not offer medical or clinic-based services ourselves.

Our Health Program Co-ordinators are Karen women who live in their communities. Their work includes: to advocate for better access to health services, accompany patients to hospitals or clinics, organise village and stream clean ups, identify health needs of the most vulnerable people and provide support in the home, conduct health education campaigns in the community, share information with families about good health practices, encourage communities to set up kitchen gardens, organise access to clean drinking water, improve village sanitation and the use of built toilets, promote KWO’s key health messages for women’s reproductive health, improve access to safe sanitary materials for all women and girls, monitor any funded KWO Health projects being implemented in their area, educate parents about good nutrition and childcare, advocate for recognition of skilled Traditional Birth Attendants, and for birth registration and birth certificates for all children. We currently implement 2 funded projects under this program.

Karen Women's Organization

A Historic Concert Hall in the centre of Amsterdam. Its superb acoustics place it among the finest concert halls in the world.

The Concertgebouw: A hall of and for music lovers

Back in 1881, leading members of the community took the initiative to build a concert hall, and it was thanks to members of the public that The Concertgebouw was inaugurated in 1888. To this very day, it is still the general public and private funds which keep the hall open. In fact, only five per cent of The Concertgebouw’s annual income is provided by the state. Indeed, The Concertgebouw intends to remain a private institution in the future. Obviously, support from the private sector is essential to ensuring that the hall can continue to welcome musicians and audience members alike, both today and in the future.

To safeguard The Concertgebouw’s existence, the Concertgebouw Fund Foundation was established in 2000. The fund contributes to the renovation and restoration of the hall and supports a variety of education projects which is one of its main goals. Perhaps you yourself have toyed with the idea of supporting the Concertgebouw and thus helping to secure its future. The Concertgebouw Fund offers a variety of options to help make that idea a reality. In exchange, you’ll be able to enjoy many special privileges as a patron of the Concertgebouw Fund.

History: The beginning of The Concertgebouw

The beginning
The date is 15 September 1881. Six illustrious Amsterdam citizens come together to breathe life into the ‘Provisional Committee to build a concert hall’. The Park Hall theatre in the Plantage area was about to be demolished, the Felix Meritis building was too small, and Amsterdam’s Crystal Palace was uncomfortable and notorious for its poor acoustics. A few months earlier, the weekly paper De Amsterdammer denounced the sad state of the capital city’s music scene. 'While the leaders of all self-respecting cities abroad have made sure their cities are graced with good concert halls, our government has declared that these ill-fated ‘arts’ are not its responsibility,’ the paper reported.

Construction commences
To determine a suitable location, the committee turns to Pierre Cuypers, the architect of the Rijksmuseum which was being built at that time. He helps negotiate the purchase of a plot of land near the new museum, just outside the city limits, in the middle of the Nieuwer-Amstel fields. On 7 March 1882, plans were completed for a public limited company with a capital sum of 400,000 guilders, for which shares could be purchased for 1000 guilders. On 8 July 1882, the company N.V. Het Concertgebouw was officially founded, even though only 250,000 guilders in shares had been sold.

Dolf van Gendt
There was no requirement for a particular building style, as long as the end result would fit on an area of 130 x 55 metres, be constructed for a budget of 300,000 guilders, and provide space for around 2000 concertgoers. After some bickering, a design was chosen – albeit a scaled-down version – from Amsterdam’s most frequently patronised architect, Adolf Leonard (Dolf) van Gendt, the creator of many famous buildings, including the Hollandsche Manege, Frascati, De IJsbreker and the Gallery of the Crystal Palace.

Grand opening
The Concertgebouw was completed in late 1886. However, due to a lack of confidence on the part of the funders as well as the necessary difficulties with the municipality of Nieuwer-Amstel (for example, with respect to filling in a small canal, paving the access roads and installing street lights), the grand opening of the long-awaited building was only celebrated on Wednesday 11 April 1888.

Famous acoustics: The secret of the Main Hall

Unparalleled acoustics
So what is the secret of the world-famous acoustics of the Main Hall of The Royal Concertgebouw? Is it just a coincidence that Dolf van Gendt, considered by his family to be completely devoid of musical talent, was able to create a perfectly resonant hall? In the time that The Concertgebouw was taking shape, the science of acoustics was still considered a mysterious combination of many different and undefinable factors. Professional recording equipment was only developed in the 20th century; at the time, architects only had successful examples to look to.

As a result, the Recital Hall is nearly identical to the renowned oval hall in the Felix Meritis building, while the Main Hall – in terms of design and materials used – was based on the large concert hall of the Neue Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany. In later restorations, the original design and finishing details of the halls were left intact as much as possible to preserve the sensitive acoustics. Because even the most advanced equipment is unable to unmask the secret of the Main Hall’s unparalleled acoustics.

Het Concertgebouw Fonds

The Berliner Philharmoniker, founded in 1882 as a self-governing orchestra.

"To the limits and beyond"  
The Berliner Philharmoniker – a world-class orchestra    

Outstanding expertise, uncompromising commitment to music: that is the Berliner Philharmoniker. In passionate interpretations, they make the great works of the repertoire shine and open up new horizons with performances of exciting contemporary music. 

Legendary chief conductors have left their mark on the orchestra's history and sound. Today they thrill a worldwide public in the Philharmonie and on tour, during live broadcasts and on acclaimed recordings. 

Communication with audiences will also be their focus in the future, whether in the concert hall or in the media. With digital programming, with education projects, but above all with concerts that enable listeners to experience the inexhaustible power and intensity of classical and contemporary music first-hand.   

The Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation

Collective of passionate musicians uniting for specific tours in Europe and across the world.

An orchestra committed to creating and sharing exceptional experiences in classical music.  
 
The Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO) was founded in 1997 based on the shared vision of being a free and international ensemble, dedicated to creating and sharing exceptional experiences in classical music. With 45 members spanning 20 different countries at its core, the MCO works as a nomadic collective of passionate musicians uniting for specific tours in Europe and across the world.

Mahler Chamber Orchestra gGmbH 

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