Archive for category: Education

Information and stories on education.

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8 Facts about Education in the United Kingdom

Eight Facts About Education in the United Kingdom
When thinking about education in the United Kingdom, it is almost impossible not to consider Oxford and Cambridge. These two-century-old bastions of higher education in England garner recognition throughout the world and lend themselves to an image of British superiority in education. Rightfully so, they sit atop the education system but facilitate the overlooking of the rest of it. When looking further down the hierarchy, imperfections emerge, bordering on a crisis. Despite its image of a wealthy, developed nation, 4.5 million children live below the poverty line, comprising 33 percent of the country’s demographic. With such a substantial proportion of students struggling to feed and clothe themselves, poverty takes a profound toll on British education. Here are eight facts about education in the United Kingdom that illustrate the crisis.

 8 Facts About Education in the United Kingdom

  1. Poverty and Education: As a testament to how staggeringly poverty affects the classroom, 87 percent of teachers and other staff claim that it has a significant impact on learning, according to a survey that the National Education Union and Child Poverty Action Group conducted. Six out of 10 respondents in this survey said that the situation had worsened since 2015. Surveys such as these demonstrate the shift in focus from children’s learning and development to their fundamental well being.
  2. Food Banks: To combat this growing issue, many schools in the U.K. host food banks to feed students and their families. About 8 percent of schools operate a food bank on-site, according to the National Governance Association’s survey. In addition to basic food services, many schools feel the need to provide general welfare as well, including emergency loans for parents.
  3. Teachers Provide Care: Teachers themselves bear much of this burden, often balancing their duty to educate with an instinct to care by providing foods such as cereal to students in the middle of lessons. Additionally, some go to the lengths of washing clothes for their pupils and ensuring they have food during holidays. The most compassionate educators dip into their own bank accounts to buy supplies and clothes for the kids that need it most. The CfBT Education Trust started in 1968 as the Center for British Teachers and became a charity in 1976. It generally researches and supports the education sector, often in service of teachers to alleviate these issues.
  4. Attempt to Garner Funding: With funding strapped already, schools worry about their ability to accommodate disadvantaged pupils. Seventy-eight percent of school governors reported a general failure to meet needs due to inadequate funds and 61 percent said that they could not extend support to disadvantaged students. Compelled to help these children, many lobby for additional funding that they doubt will come.
  5. Sure Start Centers: Record unemployment, stagnant wages and high inflation place low-income parents in a precarious situation, sometimes choosing between sending sick kids to school and losing a day’s pay to stay at home with them. In 2010, 3,500 Sure Start centers operated throughout the U.K. to mitigate some of the daycare and other early childhood necessities for parents who needed them. Since then, however, 1,000 have closed or have severely restricted services.
  6. Challenges for Students: While parents and teachers face hardships due to the poverty crisis, children ultimately suffer the most. Students ashamed of their lack of supplies or new clothes skip school more frequently out of fear of bullying. This exacerbates their already tired, hungry, angry and confused mindset. Their poverty affects their learning at home just as much as at school, where crowded, noisy homes make homework and regular sleep exceedingly difficult. On top of that, their lack of resources shows more dramatically than at school. Computers, textbooks and other supplies become inaccessible in families that do not work or work hard but can barely afford the basics.
  7. Children’s Mental Health: Due to all of this, low-income children often feel that they fall behind wealthy classmates, and may develop mental health issues as a result. In the short term, one in four feels anxious or worried about their family’s financial situation. In the long term, these children have more than two times the chance of developing more permanent mental health conditions. The Sutton Trust encourages social mobility through education by focusing on efforts to combat educational inequality.
  8. Charities: In addition to those aforementioned, numerous charities combat these conditions. The Nuffield Foundation strives to benefit social welfare through funding education, science and social science research projects. Nesta, formerly the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, originated in 1998 to promote innovation in the U.K. by running practical programs, conducting research and supporting partnerships. The Education Endowment Foundation champions a dedication to the insurance that children from all kinds of backgrounds have access to education, fulfilling their potentials and applying their talents. Lastly, the Wellcome Trust funds biomedical research as well as promoting the public understanding of science.

These eight facts about education in the United Kingdom do not cast a particularly optimistic light, although there are several efforts to improve circumstances. Though the U.K. faces an exceedingly uphill task to address poverty and education in Britain, the charities named in this article do excellent work to assist as many children as they can. While their work is important and provides desperately needed support, ultimately the government’s funding cuts impede systematic progress. The good news is that many candidates across the U.K. recognize the need for more education funding and have promised it ahead of the upcoming December 2019 election.

– Alex Myers
Photo: Flickr

Preserving Traditional Cham Script

Traditional Cham Script
Vietnam is a multiethnic state, home to a myriad of indigenous peoples in addition to the dominant Vietnamese (or Kinh) ethnic group. Centuries of conflict and cooperation, from Han Chinese domination, Vietnamese southward imperial expansion, Mongol invasions, French conquest and American intervention, molded the complex dynamics between these various groups. The Cham, inheritors of an ancient civilization with a culture and language all their own, are one of the unique groups of people within Vietnam.

The Marginalization of a Culture

Now diminished to a small minority in their central Vietnamese homeland, with much of the population diasporic, the Cham people seek preservation of their unique culture. Their cultural heritage includes their traditional script, an integral aspect of their cultural heritage and their link to the wider Indian Ocean sphere. The Eastern Cham, residing along the coast of present-day central Vietnam, preserved the traditional Brahmic alphasyllabary-based Cham script despite centuries of foreign domination. Unfortunately, decades of pedagogy neglected the classic script in favor of a simplified but less logical, modified one. However, efforts are underway to ensure the predominance of the traditional Cham script through digital means.

While the annexation of the northern Cham lands by Nguyen Vietnam in 1471 diminished Champa’s sovereignty, Cham culture persisted in the still unconquered regions to the south. Po Rome, a 17th century King of Champa, established a uniform version of Cham script. Originally developed for bureaucratic communications, the traditional script came into regular use in the everyday lives of the Cham people, particularly the Western Cham of present-day Vietnam.

Opponents of a Modified Script

Now, modified Cham script in educational institutions threatens the survival of the former script. Though both traditional and modified Cham scripts derive from the Brahmic alphasyllabary, the modified form introduces characters not present in the traditional script, creating substantial differences between the two. The Cham Textbook Compiling Committee, the organization responsible for developing the modified Cham script, seeks to improve primary school education through the use of the script, but in doing so precipitates pedagogical neglect of the traditional Cham script. Standing athwart the Cham Textbook Compiling Committee’s preference for the modified Cham script is a cross-section of the Western Cham, ranging from elders to students and intellectuals.

Opponents of the modified script’s ascendancy over the traditional script insist that favoring the former and marginalizing the latter will hinder the transmission of Cham customs and values from the older to younger generations. In turn, assimilation of the Cham minority into the hegemonic Vietnamese majority will accelerate. Defenders of the traditional script fear that loss of the traditional script may lead to the physical destruction of precious historical documents, as functional illiteracy will plague students taught the modified script. Moreover, traditional script proponents emphasize that the traditional script is more stable when one compares it to the less rule-bound character of the modified script. Continued relegation of the traditional script will compromise the Cham cultural identity and sever the people’s links with its history, all while replacing a rational system with an arbitrary one. Yet cause for optimism exists, thanks to multinational initiatives aimed at restoring the traditional Cham script’s predominance through the script’s integration into digital interfaces.

Digitizing the Traditional Cham Script

The USAID-backed SPICE program, with the company BREOGAN, made significant strides in promoting the use of the traditional Cham script in Cambodia through the development of digital technology. This initiative emerged from a policy seeking to secure at-risk languages by providing an easily-accessible online communications medium. In the case of Eastern Cham, the SPICE program designed a downloadable keyboard based on the traditional script, resolving the failure of earlier systems to reproduce all Cham phonemes with success.

With the increasing prevalence of online communication, even in more remote parts of the world, the creation of a digital access medium in an accurate rendering of the traditional Cham script will, through continual use, encourage greater use of it. The language’s classic script could undergo a revival and replace the modified script that dominates Cham schools in Vietnam. An open-access license for the font and keyboard further facilitates the SPICE program’s mission to revive the traditional script.

USAID is not alone in its efforts to restore the use of traditional script to daily Cham life. In 2015, the Faculty of Education of the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, designed a process to convert Cham in Latin script to traditional Cham script with minimal errors. Although traditional script fonts already exist in Vietnam, flaws beset these fonts. Moreover, before the completion of this study, no process existed in Vietnam to convert Cham Latin font to traditional Cham script font. The digital font conversion that the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia team developed accounts for the intricacies of vocabulary, grammar and semantics in traditional Cham script. Testing the accuracy of the process by converting the fonts of three poems, the study’s authors found 100 percent accuracy for two poems and 99.88 percent accuracy for the last. Many expect that the study will vastly improve the odds of traditional script preservation.

Developing methods that facilitate accurate online communication in the traditional Cham script promises to undo decades of the script’s marginalization. The future of the Cham people and their culture lies with their ability to communicate across the diaspora in their ancestral language. Before, the use of a modified script limited the exposure of the Cham youth to their written language. Now more opportunities exist for the younger generations to internalize the traditional written language. This progress will ensure that the link to their ancient cultural heritage lives on.

– Philip Daniel Glass
Photo: Flickr

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In CodersTrust We Trust: Providing an Education and Life for Those in Need

CodersTrustThe only things a person needs to survive is food, water and shelter, but they won’t thrive. To provide them with an opportunity to thrive starts by giving them access to education. While this seems relatively easy for some, others are not as lucky to have this opportunity. For those who are not as fortunate or not able to access education, putting forth legislation and supporting non-profits and other NGOs that give people this opportunity allow citizens who once had nothing to thrive and become productive members of society able to give back to the community. Organizations such as CodersTrust give people the opportunity for an education they most likely would not receive.

CodersTrust

CodersTrust was founded in 2014 in Denmark with the hope of providing access and marketable skills to children and young people around the world who are considered “underprivileged, disadvantaged and marginalized,” people who do not have access to education or opportunities to thrive in a professional setting. They welcome children and young people from all walks of life including women, those who are disabled or refugees, teaching them both digital skills and soft skills which give them the best chance at finding a job or internship opportunity; for one of the goals of the organization is to train as many people as well as possible. These are the people who have very few options in life, CodersTrust gives them an opportunity they might not have to get an education and be independent. 

Mads Galsgaard, the current CEO of CodersTrust, spoke more candidly about the reason behind the formation of CodersTrust saying, “CodersTrust was founded on the vision to create affordable education and job access to people in developing countries. The founders deeply believe in outsourcing work to talented people abroad and through their past projects, they came across several talented people in Bangladesh, helping them with accounting, etc.”

As of now the organization itself is rather small but is looking to expand. According to Galsgaard, there are three people stationed in Denmark, three people in Kosovo and two people in Kenya. The largest headquarters in Bangladesh with over 50 staffers there. Regarding the future plans for the company, Galsgaard states, “We are scaling up the business and will onboard new staff members in the coming months, to ensure that our online and franchise partners are given the full human interaction that is key for a successful education and job creation.”

CodersTrust was founded with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in mind. The Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, were created in 2016 with the idea that they were created to ensure that all countries will fight to end poverty, fight inequality and address climate change, all while ensuring all people are apart of the conversation and that people globally will benefit from these goals. The SDGs are based on the success of the Millennium Development Goals and address all countries to do their part, not just the wealthier countries. The goals combine the importance of ending poverty and social justice while trying to protect the plant and stop the adverse effects of climate change. There were seventeen rules implemented when the UN created this plan. CodersTrust works to follow rules 1, 4, 5, 8 and 10. These rules are no poverty (1), quality education (4), gender equality (5), decent work and economic growth (8) and reduced inequalities (10). CodersTrust’s dedication to these rules is something Galsgaard is extremely proud of with the organization. 

Opportunities for Women and Young Girls

Coderstrust has also done many projects to assist women and girls in obtaining an education and having a fair shot as well, for one of their main focus groups is women and young girls. They have partnered with other organizations, that too help with offering those in areas where education is not possible, an opportunity for education. When speaking of the impact CodersTrust has had on the battle for gender equity, Galsgaard says, “We have done several projects to focus on young women, in Kosovo with Women in Online Work (WoW) and recently in Bangladesh, where are training 1000 women to become digital freelancers.”

The interesting part of CodersTrust does that differs them from other organizations is that it works to combine education with job experience and job hunting, so people working with CodersTrust are doing both at the same time. They also encourage globalization through the internet by allowing their students and clients to branch out to businesses worldwide. The example they use on their website is “Companies in Bratislava can have their website built in Kenya and students in the Philippines can bid on managing the Social Media Portfolio for the Mountain Bike Shop in White Horse, Canada.” Since the foundation of CodersTrust, 11,525 people have received an education and graduated, 11 countries have been introduced to CodersTrust and 18 different courses have been offered to students. CodersTrust has mainly reached students in the Global South, as well as post-war zones, for education and job opportunities are the worst there. 

With the development of this organization, their goal and plans for the future involve globalization for their education plans, and job searching in order to improve themselves and help more people. With this vision, students will be able to take everything they have learned from their time at this organization and apply it to the job market. When asked if CodersTrust intended on expanding outside of technology and freelancing, Galsgaard said, “Our primary focus is training people in digital skills, but our marketplace could over time also provide a job market for tradespeople, such as carpenters, plumbers, etc. We focus on providing a transparent platform where companies can easily find workers and have a secure payment flow, where both parties can review validated reviews, certificates and other elements to build trust and easy operation.”

Plans For The Future

With the success and the growth of CodersTrust in mind, Galsgaard talks about plans for the organization five years from now and ten years from now and what he would like the see the organization accomplish from there. Galsgaard says, “We wish to have 1 million users by the end of 2020 and 5 million by 2025. If our scale-up goes as we hope and expect, our touchpoints will be both online and offline, to ensure that people all over the world can access our offerings, as long as the student has a laptop/mobile device and a stable internet connection. We also wish to provide certain entry-level education programs for free, to ensure that we also attract people with no or little IT skills and lift them out of poverty.”

Regarding the expansion of the organization and CodersTrust’s vision for the future, Galsgaard states, “Our expansion strategy is based on providing a global footprint reaching even more people, whilst still maintaining the human interaction so each student has direct access to support anytime and anywhere.”

– Sydney Toy
Photo: Flickr

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Reducing Ghana’s Poverty Rate: 3 Keys to Success

Ghana's Poverty Rate
Ghana is a West African country that has made considerable progress in reducing poverty. Ghana’s poverty rate gradually lowered since the 1990’s. Poverty reduced from 52.6 percent in 1991 to 21.4 percent in 2011. Ghana slashed its poverty rate by more than half and became a middle-income country in 2011. The three reasons for this huge reduction are economic growth, diversification and education development.

Poverty Reduction in Ghana: 3 Keys to Success

  1. Economic Growth: Ghana’s 2017 GDP growth rate was about 8.4 percent, which was the seventh-fastest GDP growth rate in the world. The economy is developing quickly, as the country sets a few policy barriers to investment and trade in relation to other African countries in the region. Due to the few barriers, investment in natural resources such as oil and gold are common. Gold alone brings about 48 percent of the country’s revenue and is one of the main reasons for economic growth. Gold production amounted to about 590,000 ounces in 1990 and increased to 4.6 million ounces in 2018. As of 2018, Ghana is number seven in the world for gold production.

    Oil is also an important export but is relatively new. The oil sector is less than 10 years old, yet is growing at a rapid rate. In 2017, more than 500 million barrels were produced from the Sankofa fields. Ghana’s growth averaged about 4 to 5 percent in the 1990’s and has gradually increased over time. Thanks to steady growth, Ghana’s poverty rate was 21 percent in 2012, which is less than half the African average of 43 percent.

  2. Diversification: Oil and gas are two areas that helped diversify the economy and reduce Ghana’s poverty rate by creating jobs and increasing wages for those transitioning out from low-wage occupations and into more lucrative fields. The service industry is 57 percent of GDP and remains the largest sector and another important area in Ghana’s growth. The service sector also employs about 40 percent of the population.

    Agriculture still employs a little more than a quarter of the population, yet the service and manufacturing sectors have steadily grown since 1991. Developing economies are mainly agriculture-dependent economies. As a middle-income country, the amount of the population employed by Ghana’s manufacturing and service sector expresses transitioning into a developed and stable economy. In 2008, employment in agriculture was 52.5 percent and reduced to 33 percent in 2018. Service employment rose from 33 percent in 2008 to 47 percent in 2018. In only 10 years the service sector has grown 14 percent. The industry grew 4 percent during that same time period. Telecommunications and tourism are two services that helped grow the service sector.

  3. Focus on Education: A better educated and trained country leads to more opportunities. The number of people in Ghana’s workforce without education dropped from 41 percent in 1991 to 21 percent in 2012. Almost 90 percent of children attend school, which is a big difference from other African countries. Only 64 percent of Nigerian children attend school. Ghana spends about 8 percent of its budget on education, which is more than the United Nation’s 6 percent benchmark. For reference, the U.K. spends a little more than 6 percent on education. Ghana’s progress in education began with the U.N.’s millennium development goals that the U.N. set in 2000, and it developed at such a fast rate because it pushed for education.

Ghana’s poverty rate slashed in half thanks to education development, diversification and fast economic growth. The economy is still strong despite its 2015 recession. The economically diverse and natural resource-rich Ghana has made tremendous progress in poverty reduction and is projected to continue reducing its poverty rate in the future.

– Lucas Schmidt
Photo: Flickr

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Bringing African Farmers into the Digital Revolution

digital inclusion for African farmersThe spread of mobile technology has granted developing nations access to the digital revolution. This is called digital inclusion. From the digital revolution, we have experienced one of the most innovative new business models, networking. Companies like Facebook and Instagram are involved in social networking. Uber and Lyft specialize in transportation networking. Go-puff, Grubhub, and Door Dash all focus on food delivery networking.

What makes these business models unique to networking is that their products are simply information. Food, cars and people’s personal information, provided by the users themselves, is the secret. Networking companies need only to provide intuitive transfer of this information over the internet.

New companies across Africa are taking advantage of the networking business model. With increased digital inclusion for African farmers, there are new ways for transactions to be streamlined.

Hello Tractor!

The mechanization of agriculture is an important innovation to spread into developing countries. Unfortunately, many farmers in these countries cannot afford to outright buy a tractor and maintain it. Hello Tractor! creates a network between tractor dealers, contractors and farmers that makes mechanization a reliable and affordable investment for all.

Based in Nigeria, Hello Tractor! targets the 36 percent of the Nigerian population that is employed in agriculture. The physical product of Hello Tractor! is a device that attaches to tractors and monitors them, sending GPS and maintenance data to the Hello Tractor! software.

Farmers use the software by downloading a mobile application, to book the dates in which they need tractors. Once contractors send out their tractors, they can use the app to see if the tractors are being used properly. Tractor dealers also have access to the information so that they may perform maintenance when required.

John Deere supplied 10,000 tractors to Nigeria’s Ministry of Agriculture in 2018 and they are all managed by the Hello Tractor! systems. Ultimately, digital inclusion for African farmers can build trust between stakeholders.

Agri-wallet

Selling produce is a more arduous task than many may think. As the market expands, this risky and tedious process only puts more pressure on farmers. Digital inclusion for African farmers can settle this issue.

Between the farmer and the consumer, there exists a distributor. However, unlike how we think of big business deals in America, these distributors can not put down payments on produce. They must take weeks to sell the products to consumers and bring back the returns to the farmers after.

A solution to this problem is in high demand as 70 percent of workers in Kenya are employed in agriculture.

Agri-wallet fits nicely into a niche area between the Kenyan farmers and the market distributers. When farmers sell to their distributors, Agri-wallet pays up-front into the farmers’ banking app. Now, farmers can restock during this intermittent period of sales.

Convenient transactions and loans such as these would not be possible without the growing interconnectivity of mobile technology spreading into Africa.

Now, 4,000 farmers in Africa are benefitting from the services of Agri-wallet.

Farmer’s Pride

According to the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, 3 quarters of Kenyan farmers have planted fake seeds at least once. Farmer’s Pride is a Kenyan company that will provide infrastructure and safe avenues for e-commerce among farmers and distributors.

A primary focus of Farmer’s Pride is “putting the area on the map” so that village-level farmers are more attached to society as a whole. Extra care for farmers, from digital access to insurance to local access to veterinary care for livestock, is what makes Farmer’s Pride such a promising franchise.

10,000 farmers have been connected through Farmer’s Pride, making an extra $2m income through their intervention.

These secure smartphone apps are promoting e-commerce, intelligent planning and proper resource management. When African farmers are given the opportunity to be included in the digital world, the entrepreneurial and economic prosperity we have enjoyed in America will become open to them.

– Nicholas Pihralla
Photo: Flickr

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3 NBA Players Shooting to End Poverty

nba players shooting to end poverty

NBA players display their passion and skills on the court. They are recognized for both the number of points they score and shots they block. However, several players display their passions and aspirations off the court through charitable work. They are indeed recognized for both the number of lives they affect and the smiles they paint on the faces of the less fortunate. Here are three NBA players shooting to end poverty.

Buddy Hield

A native Bahamian, Buddy Hield grew up in Freeport, The Bahamas. Excelling in the sport of basketball, the University of Oklahoma recruited him to their team where he became a sensational collegiate player in the United States. His feats in collegiate basketball landed him a spot on the Sacramento Kings basketball team of the NBA. When Hurricane Dorian struck The Bahamas on September 9, 2019, Buddy Hield immediately began sending help.

Threatening the lives of 2,000 people and throwing many more under the poverty line, Hurricane Dorian became the worst hurricane in Bahamian history. Hield raised a significant amount for his birthplace and sent needed supplies. Hield has raised about 300,000 dollars in total through the Buddy Hield Foundation and the Kings organization. He also spearheads the donation cause of food and clothing to his people. He even plans to travel to the Bahamas with his mother to cook for the impacted Bahamians.

LeBron James

LeBron James is an extraordinary man on and off the court. Born in Akron, Ohio, LeBron James showed superstar potential as early as high school. Breaking records and winning the NBA Finals is important to James but so is his charity work. In his hometown of Akron—where the poverty rate is approximately 25 percent—James founded his own public elementary school called the I Promise School. He founded this school to improve the well-being of the Akron population, offering education to the less fortunate to help increase living conditions and decrease the poverty line. The school opened with only grades three and four but hopes to be fully functional by 2022, teaching grades one through eight. Amazingly, the school has shown promising results in which 90 percent of students have reached goals in both math and reading. The LeBron James Family Foundation evens covers all schooling expenses in the school’s family resource center where parents are provided with services from work advice to legal services. All of this is in an attempt to increase the living conditions of James’ beloved Akron community.

Pau Gasol

Two-time NBA champion, Pau Gasol epitomizes an outstanding citizen. Born in Barcelona, Spain, the Memphis Grizzlies drafted Gasol in 2001, where he became the first foreign player to win Rookie of the Year. While balancing his basketball career, Gasol became heavily involved in global issues, ranging from AIDS to obesity.

He has been a UNICEF Spanish Ambassador since 2003, tackling childhood obesity and malnutrition to better the lives of children globally. He aims to see that children live their full potential in eating the proper foods. Around the world, 149 million children below the age of 5 are stunted from the effects of malnutrition, and over 40 million are obese. Since 2003, Gasol has dedicated his time, outside of basketball, to advocate UNICEF’s work in nutrition, education and other humanitarian work by traveling to impact children in Iraq, Lebanon, Chad and other needful countries.

In collaboration with his brother, Mark, the two founded the Gasol Foundation to decrease childhood obesity through physical activity and healthy eating habits. Just recently, Gasol was named the Global Champion for Nutrition and Zero Childhood Obesity by UNICEF.

These three NBA players shooting to end poverty demonstrate excellence on and off the court. Their kind hearts and charitable acts deserve as much recognition as their athletic abilities do. From donating clothes to building schools, these NBA players have indeed shot and scored both on the court and in their communities, global or domestic.

– Colin Crawford
Photo: Unsplash

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8 Facts About Education in Somalia

The Somali Democratic Republic, commonly known as Somalia, is located in northeast Africa. It currently has a population of 14.3 million people. Of that population, many young Somalians have struggled to receive a proper education, even at the primary level. However, awareness and assistance are becoming more widespread. Many are helping Somalian children gain access to better educational opportunities to ensure a better quality of life. Listed below are eight facts about education in Somalia. By getting to know the current status of Somalian education and its origins, the country can make more progress to improve the educational climate for Somalian children.

8 Facts About Education in Somalia

  1. The educational system in Somalia consists of five phases: primary (grades one to four), middle (grades five to eight), secondary (grades nine to 12), technical (ages 15 to 18) and tertiary (higher education).
  2. A primary cause of the lack of educational resources in Somalia is due to the civil war that broke out in 1991. This directly impacted the educational system in the country, leaving many students displaced from the classroom. Further, many teachers are uncertified for their job, even over two decades later.
  3. Historically, Somali people have learned by word rather than written language. For many years, the Somali language had no script. Eventually, the adoption and acceptance of the Latin script occurred in Jan. 1972, following the recommendation.
  4. Compared to other countries, Somalia has one of the lowest enrollment rates of primary school students. Elementary school-aged children make up roughly 1.5 million of Somalia’s population. However, only 42 percent attend school.
  5. Funding for primary education efforts is in progress. On October 11, 2019, the United States Agency for International Development announced that $50 million will be going towards reforming and improving the Somalian education system. USAID will create a five-year program to “increase access to quality education and support accelerated learning for out-of-school children and youth who have been persistently left behind,” states the U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu, Somalia.
  6. Since Aug. 2019, as many as two million new textbooks have been printed in efforts toward the new Bar Ama Baro system (meaning Teach and Learn in Somalian). These new books cover topics that are relevant to Somalian life and culture, such as the English and Arabic languages, mathematics, Islamic studies and science.
  7. Somalia’s education funding from foreign powers does not only rely on the United States. Khaled Al-Jarallah of The Deputy Foreign Minister of Kuwait, located in western Asia, also recently announced that he will be holding a conference to help fund the new Somalian education system.
  8. Somalian teachers have responded positively to the implementation of the new system. Teacher, Abdulkadir Mohamed Sheikh, has praised the new curriculum for its ability to be centered around Somalian religion and culture.

These eight facts about education in Somalia show that U.S. international powers and the Somalian government are making substantial efforts for the current and future generations of Somalian children. Providing them with better education will assist in reducing the existing level of poverty in the country. Additionally, it will also allow the Somalian people to achieve and enjoy a higher quality of life.

– A. O’Shea
Photo: Flickr

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7 Facts About Poverty in Havana

7 Facts About Poverty in Havana
In 1962, the U.S. imposed a full embargo on Cuba which prohibits all trade between the two countries. Since then, Havana, the capital city of Cuba, has become ridden with poverty and inequality. Here are seven facts about poverty in Havana.

7 Facts About Poverty in Havana

  1. Living Conditions: Under the Castro government, the housing deficit in Havana has grown by 20 percent each year since the 1990s. Out of 2.6 million housing units, 1 million are below standards. Most buildings have not been updated or maintained properly since 1959. There are 696 multi-family buildings in a critical state, leaving some Havana residents in fear of having their roofs collapse. In rural areas, Havana residents sometimes live in self-made huts with dirt flooring. The government is working to improve living conditions, but it could take up to 10 years to meet demands.
  2. Economic Classes: The Cuban government has not recently published poverty data for Havana; however, the average salary for those working a government job is around $20 a month. Doctors and nurses have recently received a raise which gives specialized doctors $67 a month and entry-level nurses $25 a month. If a doctor works a typical 40-hour workweek, this means that they would make around 42 cents an hour. Waiters and cashiers in Havana on average earn less than $220 a year, which is four times less than what doctors make.
  3. Hotels and Tourism: Around 26 hotels in Havana are tied to the Cuban military and therefore the money gained from tourism does not benefit the people of Cuba. An alternative option for tourists is Airbnb, as this directly benefits citizens by allowing them to rent out their rooms. Sometimes, the money Cubans earn from Airbnb rentals is more than they would make in an entire month.
  4. Food Rationing: In Havana, the government rations chicken, eggs, rice, beans, soap and other basic goods. Rationing has forced the citizens of Havana to plant their own gardens and farms. Today, over 90 percent of the produce that people consume in Havana grows there. An organization called Proyecto Communitario Conservacion Alimentos (Community Food Preservation Project) helps teach Cubans to grow and preserve their own food. These efforts have helped many people in Havana learn to cook food from the goods they produced themselves.
  5. Social Systems: Despite the fact that the average person in Havana lives on less than $1.20 a day, Cuba boasts having one of the highest literacy rates in the world due to their free education. Health care is also free and considered a human right. People in Havana live just as long as U.S. citizens, regardless of their impoverished living conditions.
  6. Currency: Cubans have two currencies, each with different uses. Local Cubans in Havana use the CUP (Cuban Peso Nacional), which converts as 25 CUP per $1 USD, while tourists use the CUC (Cuban Convertible Currency), which holds the same value as the U.S. dollar. The dual currency system has created large inequalities in Havana because only those working in the tourism industry use CUC. This has created a two-tier class system that benefits only those working in tourism. To remedy this, however, the Cuban government has plans underway to eliminate the dual-currency system.
  7. U.S. Embargo: The embargo between the U.S. and Cuba has been a contributing factor to Havana’s fall from grace. According to NAFSA, resuming American travel and trade will not only boost the Cuban economy but will also empower Cubans to impose change on their government. The NAFSA Cuban Engagement Initiative works on legislation that will end the U.S. embargo on Cuba.

There is a long road ahead to end Havana’s poverty crisis, but with people doing work to change U.S. policies and increase responsible tourism, the world could see Cuba’s capital city return to its once elevated state. The most important step is to spread awareness and mobilize to change government policies that will benefit Havana’s citizens.

– Lisa Di Nuzzo
Photo: Flickr

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8 Facts About Education in Switzerland

Eight Facts About Education in Switzerland
Switzerland is one of the leaders in education within the European Union. With a national initiative to have accessible education to all of its citizens, the Swiss education system ranks number six on the Study E.U. education ranking of 2018. So what exactly is it that allows for such a praiseworthy education system? These eight facts about education in Switzerland show why the country is so successful in the education of its people.

8 Facts About Education in Switzerland

  1. Canton School Systems: Each canton – a Swiss state – has primary responsibility for how the schools in their area are run. Effectively each canton runs their own education system, though there is an overruling federal educational system: The State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). Each canton can create its own structures such as school calendars and education plans. There is, however, an agreement among the cantons to keep a baseline level of continuity. This opens individuals up to the ability to shop the public schools that fit their own and their child’s needs.
  2. International Schools: Switzerland has a host of schools that cater to international families, operate bilingually or are privatized. This creates a smoother transition for English speaking individuals who can then benefit from education in Switzerland.
  3. Number of Schools: There are currently around 44 schools in Switzerland that specifically accommodate international students and are a part of the Swiss Group of International Schools (SGIS). This schooling goes from primary up to secondary and offers both day and boarding options. Many of the schools follow the Swiss canton curriculum, but many also provide curriculums based on the individual’s home country.
  4. Homeschooling: Homeschooling is not a common practice within Switzerland; some cantons have even outlawed it. In August 2019, the Swiss supreme court rejected a mother’s appeal to the right to homeschool her child. It declared “the right to private life does not confer any right to private home education.” The court also stated that the cantons have the right to decide what forms of schooling they will allow and are in the best interest of the children that reside within their districts. Only 1,000 children receive homeschooling throughout all of Switzerland, a country with more than 8.5 million citizens. Many are against homeschooling in Switzerland because they believe it to be a deprivation to the child’s social education. They believe that a child can only achieve this through daily peer interactions. Further, many believe that homeschooling causes inequality within society because not every family can afford its costs.
  5. Compulsory Education: Education in Switzerland is compulsory for all who reside in the country, regardless of legal residency status. Though it varies by canton, most children have mandatory education for 9 to 11 years. Children begin schooling anywhere from ages 4 to 6 and must stay in school until about the age of 15. Education is typically more sympathetic to the individual in Switzerland. Switzerland has adopted the idea that every child learns differently and requires different support structures within school.
  6. Formal, Vocational and Apprenticeship Training: After their compulsory education, children have the option to continue on with formal education or begin vocational and apprenticeship training. Even though attending a university is comparably more affordable in Switzerland than in other countries, many students opt for vocational and apprenticeship education. Apprenticeships and vocational training can last anywhere from two to four years and can equate to a bachelor’s or associate’s degree. This depends on the duration and weekly hours of involvement in the individual’s education.
  7. Specialized Education: Special education in Switzerland is a right. Specialized education professionals give individuals living with special needs free support until the age of 20. The cantons vary but typically offer special needs students access to both mainstream schools and special needs schools. The European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education (EASIE) assesses children before entering the special education system. It does this in order to determine and advise parents on what may be best for their child. Switzerland joined the EASIE in 2000 in an attempt to better integrate its special needs citizens into mainstream society.
  8. Free Schooling: Schooling is free—kind of. Though compulsory education is free, it does equate to higher taxes for citizens. Further, schools often ask many parents to help with providing school utensils for the classrooms. Many argue that Switzerland’s excellent educational system is because of the country’s vast amount of wealth and higher tax rates. After all, in 2019, a global report listed Switzerland as the wealthiest country in the world, accounting for 2.3 percent of the world’s top 1 percent of global wealth.

Switzerland’s educational system is the ultimate goal for what education should be across the world. These eight facts about education in Switzerland show how the country is striving to create a more learned and prosperous future for its youth. Switzerland is a fantastic example of a country that has met the fourth goal on the global goals for sustainable development: quality education.

– Emma Hodge
Photo: Flickr

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4 Books on Poverty: The Power Of Words

Books on Poverty

Listed below are four fiction and non-fiction books on poverty. The novels not only share interesting stories and plots, but they also demonstrate the injustice of poverty and remind the readers of the importance of fighting back and helping people overcome these odds.

4 Books on Poverty

  1. Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers
    Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a non-fiction novel by Katherine Boo — Pulitzer Prize winner and staff writer for The New Yorker. Her novel sheds light on families trying to better their lives in a makeshift settlement in Annawadi, while the rest of India begins to flourish. Boo spent three years in India personally gathering stories about the struggles these families faced. The novel begins by revealing the harsh truth of living in slum life; families make money by selling rich people’s garbage while facing adversity like wrongful imprisonment. Boo also shows how corruption in institutions like hospitals, charities and the education system threatens poor communities. Behind the Beautiful Forevers won the National Book award in 2012. The novel has been added to the common core and the teachings continue to be shared in high schools everywhere.

  2. NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names
    We Need New Names     is a fictional novel written by Zimbabwean author, NoViolet Bulawayo. Bulawayo’s novel is about a young girl’s journey out of Zimbabwe and into the United States. The book focuses on life in Zimbabwe in the early 2000s. At that time, the country was in a political upheaval; the young girl and her family were forced to move to a new village after their home was bulldozed by the government. The book tells of the obstacles of living in a poverty-stricken country, and the family’s need to get out and start a new life.

  3. Robert D. Kaplan’s Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea
    Kaplan’s Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea is a non-fiction novel that explores the ethnic, religious and class conflicts of people in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea in the 1980s. Kaplan studies the reasons for famine in the region and offers both a forward and afterward, which explains how the region has developed since the famine in the 80s.

  4. Nicholas D. Kristof’s and Sheryl WuDunn’s Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
    Half the Sky is a non-fiction novel about the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. The novel introduces struggling women throughout Africa and Asia, some of which share their tragic experiences of being sold into sex slavery and suffering dangerous injuries during childbirth. The novel also gives hope to the audience by sharing how these women overcame the obstacles of living as a woman in poverty to lead fulfilled, successful lives.

Not only do these four books on poverty entertain their readers with interesting stories, but they also emphasize the importance of fighting back and helping to end poverty by sharing the harsh reality of living in a poverty-stricken community.

– Juliette Lopez
Photo: Flickr