CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARBULLETIN.COM Punahou teacher Yunus Peer, shown here with the world in his hands last month, pioneered a project that brings Hawaii math and science teachers to South Africa.

Isle teacher’s group
helps S. Africa schools

Yunus Peer’s program
signs up teachers to improve
education for poor children

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By Genevieve A. Suzuki
gsuzuki@starbulletin.com

Yunus Peer knows the difference a teacher can make. And he wants to reach out beyond Punahou School where he teaches world civilization.

That's why Peer began a volunteer program that enlists Hawaii teachers to help improve education opportunities for underprivileged children in his native country of South Africa.

The program, in its second year, is now part of "Teachers without Borders," a national non-profit organization that sends American teachers to other countries.

The volunteer teachers from Hawaii make annual trips to Johannesburg and Durban, the two largest cities in South Africa, and conduct workshops to improve teacher classroom skills and brainstorm for strategies to better teach math and science.

In the last two years, Peer has taken seven Hawaii teachers to South Africa, and they have worked with 235 teachers and 530 students from rural areas, Peer said.

"If you consider each teacher has at least 300 students, that's like 65,000 to 70,000 students that are impacted by the teachers," Peer said.

"That's phenomenal. If you can help teachers, it's amazing how far and wide you can spread that net."

Next year Peer is adding Eastern Cape, the country's most poverty-stricken province, to the itinerary.

The education system in South Africa needs a lot of improvement since the country abolished apartheid eight years ago, he said.

"They've got these hundreds of thousands of rural schools that they need to upgrade," Peer said.

Education is the passport out of poverty and prejudice for youngsters in these rural schools, Peer said. The workshops also help teachers find ways to enable the students to pass the South African Matriculation Exam, which is required for entry into college.

"You pass that and you escape that whole cycle of poverty," the 45-year-old teacher said. "You get to college."

Peer, who now lives in Waimanalo, has come a long way from apartheid. "My grandparents were Indian slaves who came to work in the cane fields in South Africa," he said.

Peer said his father, Cassim Peer, was obsessed with education because he never had a chance to go to college.

"He ended up building schools for black children and got into very serious trouble for that -- he was arrested," Peer said. "He was arrested constantly."

Peer left South Africa in 1971 to attend the Waterford School in Swaziland, an independent kingdom that was free from apartheid. Some of his classmates were the sons of well-known political activists, such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Peer left South Africa in 1976 and headed for the opposite end of the world -- Hawaii.

"In some ways, it was kind of running away from apartheid, to see how far I could go," he said.

He earned two bachelor's degrees at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and taught at Maryknoll School. He then moved to New Hampshire in 1985 and taught school for 13 years there.

Peer earned a master's degree at the University of New Hampshire before returning to Hawaii in 1998 to teach at Punahou.

After his father died in 1997, Peer said he felt it was both a duty and an honor to continue his father's dedication to improve education in South Africa.

"My vision is that eventually we will have high schools all around the state and all around the country sending their teachers to developing countries to help upgrade educational systems," Peer said.

"How many countries are there in the world with brand new democracies that have functioning societies?

"There aren't many, and to be in the middle of all of that, especially with all of the emotional and family ties I have with South Africa, to have the opportunity to help build a new country, that's exciting."

For information about Teachers without Borders, go to www.teacherswithoutborders.com.