ChaletMissions
Reaching out to Home Educators all over the world: Encouraging, Supporting and Lobbying for Parental Rights and Freedom in Education.
In the summer of 2009 we went on a tour of Europe promoting and defending the freedom to home-educate and giving aid to persecuted German families.
Opportunities may be open for our workshop students and Chalet Performers to aid in fostering these fundamental freedoms within these nations that are at risk of losing them.
Europe Tour 2009
The Highländlers (our folk dance performers) took a team into Europe in the summer of 2009, prompted by the increased pressures on European families who choose to educate their children at home.
It is a fundamental right and responsibility for parents to make educational decisions for their children, yet these basic human rights in education are being denied to families in Germany.
German parents are being imprisoned and heavily fined, children forcefully taken from their homes, and families are being compelled to seek political asylum in other countries (including the United States), to seek relief from this oppression. Even American missionaries working in Germany are under fire, and some are being forced to leave the country. We are personally aware of at least eleven families who have left the mission field because of this issue.
Freedom in Education
Germany & The Netherlands
Our group met with hundreds of German students and with the directors of private schools, discussing practical ways to make it possible for families to educate their children according to their conscience, through umbrella schools and other alternatives. We also met with home educators in various settings, including speaking and performing at a home education conference in The Netherlands.
Parental Rights
Switzerland
Swiss parents are rapidly losing the right to direct the lives and activities of their young children; the laws marching ever closer to a goal of mandatory child care. The Highländlers worked with parents and business leaders to defeat one such aggressive political measure.
Georgia House Resolution 850
We communicated with American legislators and attorneys (as well as German families and private schools) before our tour, exploring ways that we could help.
Resolutions and endorsements from the Georgia state government were prepared and hand-delivered by The Highländlers to German state and federal officials under the direction of German nationals. We were very honored to have had the personal attention and counsel of the leading attorneys (including Mike Donnally of HSLDA) who deal with these legal issues in Germany as we assisted in coordinating and implementing this effort.
The Team
Our mission team was comprised of an experienced, award-winning, semi-professional group of folk dancers, keeping alive the folk traditions of our European heritage.
Throughout history, public speaking and performance have proven to be powerful means of swaying public opinion. We performed at several unique and historic events in Europe. Of particular interest, was our invitation to perform in the medieval town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Our group was the first outside group, in the 120-year history of their historic association, to be invited to participate in this very major event.
Future
You can become involved
We continue to be involved in the lives of missionaries and home educating families in Europe, and actively engaged in the challenges before them. Many invitations are open to us and we may return in 2011.
Opportunities may be open for our workshop students and Chalet Performers to aid in fostering these fundamental freedoms within these nations that are at risk of losing them.