F.C.'s Dick McCall Feted for Global Reconstruction Through Education

One of the intriguing things about living in this region is how surprised you can be to find out who your neighbor might be. Take Dick McCall. To many watching his two sons excel at sports at George Mason High School through the 1990s, he was the guy working the sideline markers at football games or chastising referees at basketball games.

A long time City of Falls Church resident, McCall was honored last month for his work in community and education development throughout the world. An article in Creative Times, a quarterly publication of Creative Associates International, revealed the truly global reach of McCall's very human and compassionate nature.

From his years of traveling around the world helping devastated countries, McCall has learned that building strong communities starts at the bottom, a concept which he says is crucial for areas in America as well as war-torn countries throughout the world. The senior vice president of Programs for Creative Associates International, McCall has worked in places like El Salvador and Iraq to supervise community rehabilitation as the countries worked to reform themselves and overcome years of oppression and violence.

In assessing his work he focuses on two areas; the cohesion of the entire community and the development of education systems. During his years of work he has discovered that a strong community is often based upon the successful development of the school system. Education can often provide the way to heal old wounds. One of the main problems in restoring an area that has been plagued by violence is the demobilization of ex-combatants. For many former militants, returning to a community after years of violence is long and difficult process.

McCall said the most important part in facilitating their return is in the creation of a skill based training program. “Many joined militias because they didn’t have anything else,” McCall said. And many ex-combatants have been carrying weapons since they were children instead of going to school to learn occupational skills or the necessary social skills to function in peaceful society, he added. To deal with this deficiency, many of the programs focus on literacy and professional skills in order to open up other options.

But skill training is only one thing that ex-combatants have to deal with. One of the biggest issues they face is depression. When the world they were accustomed to ends, full of violence and conflict, they are often left ungrounded without any focus for their lives. The solution for this, according to McCall, is working with a militant’s area of origin in order to reintroduce them to familiar places and structures.

The reintroduction requires tact on both sides. The aura of violence that the former combatants still carry can be a deterrent to their acceptance into a community, and the combatants often have feelings of guilt about the life that they led since leaving and feel they can’t return.

“One has to work to reconcile fears on both sides,” said McCall. The key to creating a community that will open up opportunities for mutual reconciliation ultimately comes down to its educational structures.

In August of 2003, McCall traveled to Iraq to do an assessment of Iraqi schools and supervise the implementation of the RISE program, meant to bring necessary improvements to an education system long under-supported by the previous regime and thrown into turmoil by the war. The assessment looked at the number of students and the needs for supplies and facilities. In many cases there weren’t enough schools and the existing schools often lacked even the most basic resources.

Unlike other rebuilding programs, Creative Associates attempted to put the work of school reconstruction in the hands of members of each community, rather than imposing the changes themselves. Working with dedicated teachers and Iraqi citizens, the group handed out kits to 1.5 million students and instructed teachers in the use of global positioning system technology to identify schools by coordinates, since many of the schools didn’t even have official names.

The method was meant give the Iraqi people ownership of their own communities. “We took the Iraqi capacity that was already there and turned the work over to them,” he said. “For the first time at the local level it became their system.”

The group applied the same concept to its teacher education. Teachers were brought together from across the country to share new styles and techniques. Core groups of teachers were then instructed to share what they learned with other teachers, once again making them responsible for their development.

McCall noted that the coming together of the teachers was even more important that what was being taught. It allowed teachers for the first time to meet others from other parts of the country. That experience had a stronger effect motivating the teachers to stabilize their education structures than anything they could have taught.

The work at the local level in education was having nationwide consequences toward empowering the Iraqi people, McCall said. But he conceded that since he was last in the country the violence has gotten much worse and has hindered some reconstruction efforts. But in spite of the growing obstacles, the Iraqis have continued to push their education, he said. Even for lower and middle class Iraqis suffering through great hardship, the focus outside of basic necessities has been getting their children the best education possible. As war flooded the country many families were worried whether or not their children would be prepared to take the necessary exams to graduate from high school.

For McCall this came as a reminder about the importance of education and the privilege that people in the U.S. have come to take for granted.

In raising his own children in the City of Falls Church, McCall said he was thankful for the way that the community was focused around the schools. When Falls Church became an independent city over 50 years ago, the purpose was to gain ownership and control of the schools from the larger Fairfax County system.

In that context, he has seen how the community has become successful based on its intense support for the schools. He pointed out that even when the City had great financial difficulties it didn’t cut the school budget. Rather property taxes were raised with few complaints because of a general understanding of the schools’ import.

“The most important aspect in this society, as busy as people are, is that you must take time out for your kids and their schooling,” he said.

On the executive board for the Falls Church Education Foundation McCall, wants to increase the opportunities for city students by increasing personal stewardship from the community.

The Falls Church Education Foundation is working to establish a permanent endowment for the City’s schools in order to provide funding for programs that are not included in the school budget like robotics and teacher training.

McCall has also seen, as a father of two athletes who played for George Mason High, how school programs like sports bring a community together.

He said that local school programs are the basis for larger developments. Working with groups in South Africa, McCall saw how schools were used as gathering points for a community. Whenever a community had to be brought together, notes were sent home from school with the students.

This technique was used to arrange for local leaders who were then trained in teaching the rights and responsibilities that black Africans gained at the end of Apartheid.

He said that to spearhead a successful reconstruction, local powers had to be built first. The creation of local leaders led to people feeling that they were being listened to by the national leaders. According to McCall, international bodies put too much emphasis on the creation of national leaders without their development at the local level. “There are all these constitutions with great sounding words, but they don’t give any ownership to the people,” he said. As a result, citizens are left feeling powerless. “Without local empowerment, elections are no more than political elites running for control of the capitol,” he said. “Education is a key way you can get at this vacuum.”

In the U.S., he said, the same kind of vacuum is apparent in large communities where students and parents often feel lost within a system. The solution comes from more personal attention from the schools and a sense of ownership of the schools by the members in the community.