Inspiring Women Fall 2017

CRP's Super Girls Program is an after school program for girls designed to address refugee girls'
particular needs and challenges. It aims to foster and promote lifelong learning and personal
development through creative play and a trauma-sensitive approach. Participants will receive
leadership, life skills, project-based learning, and technical computer training over intensive, six
-month sessions. Over FAWCO's two-year funding period, the program will serve 120 girls and
will aim for at least 80% of participants to achieve grade-level academic targets.
Beryl Cheal is working with staff on designing and implementing training for the adults who will
be working on the Super Girls project, as well as doing additional training with other staff
members involved in other projects throughout the organization. Underlying her work is a
special emphasis – working with refugees as survivors of trauma. She is helping CRP become
into a trauma-sensitive organization so that all refugee participants in programs throughout the
NGO will be able to take advantage of a trauma-informed staff working in concert to help
mitigate the effects of traumatic experiences.
My name is Beryl Cheal and I was born in California,
USA. Now I call Seattle, Washington my home,
although I tend to spend quite a bit of time in other
parts of the world. I always wanted to be a teacher.
The day after school vacation started, my twin sister
and I started playing “school.” One of us was the
teacher and the other the student – and then we
would switch. That lasted just about all summer,
every summer until we were about 11 or 12 years
old. Education was valued at our house even
though we were the poorest family in the rural area
of southern Oregon where we lived. Yes, we were
poor, but my mother and father always talked
about when we would go to college – it was never
where we would go, it was when. A very poor family
with middle-class ideas.
So, we went to college — a church college in Southern California whose representatives always
told us that the college needed people like us. Little did they know that we had no money. But
my twin and I believed them and showed up with $50 each! When the financial officials asked
when our parents were going to send the rest of the money we told them that our parents had
no money but the college representatives had said they needed people like us – so here we
were! I think it was quite a surprise for the college folks. I don’t think they had had anyone do
that before! We got jobs and managed to get through the first year, washing our clothes and
bedding in the bathtub of the dormitory before any of the other girls got up to see that we
were using the bars of soap they had left in the bathroom the night before and brushing our
teeth with salt and soda, since we could not afford toothpaste.
But we did it. We took two years off to repay the first year’s college loan and six years from
when we entered, my sister and I graduated with Bachelor’s degrees and teaching certificates.
She has become a psychologist with a PhD – I became an educator with two Master’s degrees.
At first, I taught primary and middle school (5 years), then I moved to early childhood
education. It was a good move. That has been my career for the last nearly 50 years. My work
in early childhood education has involved teaching Head Start (a federally funded preschool
program for low income children in the US), developing Head Start programs as a federal
employee, director, consultant, trainer, and coach for Head Start and other early education
programs in various parts of the world. I have worked with programs for young children in the US
Pacific Northwest and New York City; as the director of a kindergarten system for Palestinian
refugee children in the Gaza Strip, Palestine; trained preschool teachers in Eastern Europe
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