HomeAboutServicesInternational DevelopmentAssociatesWriting

Who Is NESA?

NESA is a group of Canada-based educators and community development experts with skills and experience in a wide variety of education-related fields, including literacy, adult and popular education, aboriginal education, community and international development, intern preparation and support, refugee assistance, and project management, strategic planning, project evaluation, instructional skills training, and non-profit organizational management. 

Don Sawyer, NESA principal, is an educator and writer living with his wife, Jan, in Salmon Arm, BC.  Don recently retired from Okanagan College, where he taught adult education, served as the college’s ABE Department Chair, and Director of the International Development Centre.  Don coordinated and managed five CIDA-funded development projects in West Africa, including the West African Rural Development Centre (WARD) project.  WARD was the focus of an award-winning Knowledge Network documentary, The Gambia: Communities in Action, and a 2005 Canadian Awards for International Co-operation finalist. 

Don has written non-fiction books, young-adult fiction, several children’s books, a series of novels for beginning adult readers, and essays that have appeared in most of Canada’s major newspapers.  He has taught in schools, colleges and universities from rural Newfoundland to BC to West Africa.  His curriculum development experience includes developing extensive provincial curriculum in literacy and adult education, as well as development education materials for use in training African community development workers and in Canadian high school classrooms.

Commonwealth Provides Grant to NESA Associates for West African Climate Change Action Symposium

A consortium of NESA associates, headed by Alpha Jallow, recently learned that their proposal to organize a three-day conference on climate change action has been approved. The West African Symposium on Climate Change Action will be the first large-scale conference held in West Africa to focus on concrete strategies and techniques for working with African rural communities as they struggle to cope with the changes that are upon them. Speakers and workshops will centre on what has proven successful at the community level in terms of practice, community mobilization and innovation adoption. A Designing a Curriculum (DACUM) session will be held at the end of the symposium to provide the basis for the development of a course for African development workers on climate change action.

NORTHERN EDUCATION SERVICES ASSOCIATES
(NESA)
Box 2653, Salmon Arm, BC
V1E 4R5, Canada

tel: 250-832-8405
fax: 250-832-8408

Africa: Communities in Action Resource Kit

A New and Essential Resource for Teaching Global Education

Africa: Communities in Action is comprised of two resources: Africa: Communities in Action Instructional Guide, and a DVD of the award-winning Knowledge Network documentary The Gambia: Communities in Action.

The DVD is designed as a case study, providing students and teachers with a compelling, positive look at the West African Rural Development (WARD) program and trained community development workers putting their skills in action in rural Gambia, one of the poorest countries in the world. Many development issues introduced here (gender, cultural and religious challenges, poverty, rural-urban divisions) are further explored in the Guide. This new and essential resource.

For more information, please contact Don Sawyer.

"I don't quite know how the authors and film-makers pulled it off. I only know that's it's an astonishing achievement."
Stephen Lewis

"Any student who successfully completes this ambitious new course material will be more than ready to become Canada's Minster of Foreign Affairs and International Trade."
Gerald Caplan
Home     About     Services     International Development     Associates     Writing     Testimonials     Contacts