Strategic grant agreement with DfID - update

Development Education

TUC affiliate Education and International Officers as well as tutors and NGOs took part in the third International Development Education Seminar on Wednesday 5 October. The seminar, which received some excellent feedback, aimed to share best practice in development education, as well as examine how NGOs might assist unions in their efforts at strategic capacity building. The seminar also gave an opportunity Mike Green, Head of the Information and Civil Society Department at DFID to gauge affiliates views on how they would like to see DFID support their area in the future as well as the TUC can further assist. As the seminar came to a close, Teopista Birungi, General Secretary of the Ugandan National Teachers Union gave a presentation about progress towards achieving universal primary education by 2015 in Uganda and the conditions that the teachers face.

The third TUC trade union Development Education Fact File entitled 'Trade and Trade Unions' now ready. This fact file shows how trade can be an engine of economic growth and development but how trade rules are currently skewed in the favour of richer developed countries and against developing countries. It also importantly examines why these are trade union issues, how trade impacts on labour standards and employment, multinational companies and supply chains, fair and ethical trade and what trade unionists can do to make difference. As with other TUC development education materials, the fact files accessibly written, and alongside suggested activities, can be used in the classroom, as a resource for seminars or branch meetings. It along with similar fact files on Refugees and Migration, International Development and the Trade Union Role and International Health and Safety, can easily be downloaded from www.tuc.org.uk/internationaldevelopmentawareness.

Also close to completion is a new HIV/AIDS international development digest which will complement the TUC's existing Digest on International Development also available through the TUC website. Rather than reinvent the wheel by developing a new trade union development education fact file, it will briefly set out the key issues behind HIV/AIDS and why it is a development and workplace issue and what role trade unions can and are playing, before reviewing the many existing education materials and reports that exist in this area.

DFID/ TUC Relations

The third DFID/TUC Forum on International Development between union General Secretaries and their deputies/substitutes and DFID, Chaired jointly by the Secretary of State and the TUC spokesperson on International Development was held on Tuesday 15 November. Agenda items discussed included: DFID/Trade union funding, DFID guide on 'How to work with trade unions', DFID China Country Assistance Plan, World Trade Organisation Ministerial in Hong Kong, Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and a planned DFID Asia 2015 Conference. The next meeting will take place on 9 February from 3 - 4.30pm (Forum) with a 2 - 3pm (union pre-meeting).

Development Awareness - Visitors

Adwoa Sakyi, the Gender Officer of the General and Allied Workers' Union of Ghana is to be hosted by the SGA in the first week in December. Adwoa is currently the Chair of the IUF Global Union Federation's Agricultural Workers' Trade Group and will be meeting with her counterparts within her sister union the TGWU, taking part in Make Poverty History activities, including trade justice activities in London and Nottingham, meeting with NGOs, the DTI and DFID as well as addressing the Northern Region TUC Conference on Trade Unions, Internationalism and Gender Inequality alongside Gareth Thomas, Minister for International Development.

For further information on any aspect of the SGA, please contact the SGA Project Officer, Gemma Freedman at the TUC on 020 7467 1233 or email gfreedman@tuc.org.uk