Archive for category: Education

Information and stories on education.

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Improving Access to Education in Africa

Access to Education in Africa
The Shule Foundation has two goals. The first of these goals is to expand access to education in Africa by building schools and not just classrooms. The second is to implement a unique self-sustaining model that will exceed the educational needs of all children. The Shule Foundation builds high-quality schools in rural villages across Africa, recycling surplus into scholarships for underserved students.

While many do have access to education in the world, there are still many problems which need to be addressed, especially in specific areas. Of the children that do get the opportunity to attend school, 250 million cannot read or write after four years. Fifty percent of the out-of-school children in the world live across Africa. The Shule Foundation was created to address the conditions of education across Africa including under-skilled teachers, limited resources, overcrowded classrooms, no electricity and a lack of nutrition.

The Shule Foundation believes education is a human right. The organization is dedicated to expanding access to quality education to children in Africa by providing various opportunities. Its goal is to improve the quality of education, increase family income, empower women and girls and produce a more financially stable population across Africa. The opportunities the campaign provides are funded through a few solutions.

The first solution is called the Kitalu Shule Project. The project aims to increase early childhood education and to build preschools that support early development. With this form of nourishment, better opportunities are created for children in the future.

The campaign’s plan is to build primary schools in Jeeja and Uganda and from there expand throughout Africa. The schools will provide the children with two meals a day, access to health care and better sanitary facilities.

The Miche (Seedling) Project is another favorable concept that the Shule Foundation has come up with. The organization planned a concept that starts with educating the community on farming, in turn yielding more crops that provide proceeds to build better schools. This is the Shule Foundation’s plan toward sustainability.

With this project, the Shule Foundation has turned 20 acres of land into efficient organic farms. Along with this successful step, the project will educate farmers on best crop practices, empower women and girls in the workforce, help raise funds for schools in different communities as well as provide food for the schools built.

The Shule Foundation does not just focus on increasing access to education in Africa; it also provides the concept and tools to work toward building schools and sustaining them. By introducing agricultural technologies, it will provide income to gain financial independence for not only the schools but also for families in communities across Africa.

– Brandi Gomez

Photo: Flickr

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Causes of Poverty in Kenya: The Relevance of Education

Causes of Poverty in Kenya: The Relevance of Education

There are three major causes of poverty in Kenya relating to a lack of adequate education, even though Kenya is a country that values education and recognizes its long-term benefits for the nation. Kenya is in dire need of assistance to rise above the poverty line, considering 45.9 percent of the population were below that line in 2005.

Kenya is a society that values education highly; in fact, 95.6 percent of youth were enrolled in basic education in 2000 and 108.9 percent were enrolled in 2015. The data exceeds 100 percent due to overage and underage Kenyans attending school. The influx in enrollment was partially caused by the abolishment of entry fees for primary schools in 2006.

However, the first of many causes of poverty in Kenya is the amount of funding the schools require from Kenyans and government officials to provide adequate materials and resources. Just this month, a Kenyan youth mentor named Michael Wanjala, who was raised in Nairobi, shared: “The thing that pushed me so much was one day when mom went to ask for a loan of 2,000 shillings to pay for my education…It was so hard. I had to go and ask for textbooks. I had to go and ask for a uniform, for shoes.”

Overpopulation is the second issue because the vast quantity of enrolled children today means there is a higher demand in resources for a well-equipped, productive learning environment.

Furthermore, a poor quality education is another one of the causes of poverty in Kenya. A high number of children are cramped together in classrooms, there are minimal teaching materials and each class has a single teacher. With a poor teacher to student ratio, children who learn differently end up getting left behind because the teacher does not have a chance to serve each child individually. Those children who are left behind remain enrolled in school until they can catch up, adding to the amount of resources needed, since there is not an even ratio of new students to graduated students.

The Ministry of Education has already established a Directorate of Quality Assurance and Standards under the Education Act of Kenya to begin the process of monitoring teachers’ performances and to improve the quality of Kenya’s basic education.

Simply because many Kenyan children attend school does not necessarily mean that they are benefitting from the experience as much as they could be. If they were provided with more schools, teachers, resources and extra funding for additional materials, then their attendance in primary schools would make a greater impact on the country’s poor. Kenya’s school system needs to match the demand caused by their large population so that children can obtain a quality education and – hopefully – be better equipped to lift themselves out of poverty and succeed in the future.

– Brianna White

Photo: Flickr

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Improvements in Global STEM Education for Girls

STEM Education

Women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields have been coming in a distant second to their male counterparts for the entirety of STEM’s history.

Since Marie Curie was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1903, only 17 women have won a Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry or medicine. This number is drastically lower than the 572 men who have won Nobel Prizes in that time.

Additionally, only 28 percent of researchers worldwide are women. This immense gender gap has motivated people across the world to alleviate the adversity women continue to face in the STEM world.

Among these is Irina Bokova, UNESCO Director-General, who has recognized that many countries hold girls back at a young age due to discrimination, biases and social norms and expectations.

Because girls are turned away from the quality STEM education that boys have access to, girls tend to lose interest in these subjects between early and late adolescence.

At the Cracking the Code: Girls’ Education in STEM conference in Bangkok from August 28-30, officials discussed this gender gap and the ways it can be improved.

Currently, only 35 percent of college students enrolled in STEM-related fields are female, which is undoubtedly low because of the lack of STEM opportunities for girls throughout primary and secondary school.

Progress has been made in some countries, known as “model countries”, that are fighting this gender gap. Malaysia has partnered with UNESCO to achieve gender parity, which has led to 57 percent of degrees in science-related fields being held by women.

Malaysia and UNESCO are working in the global south and several African countries to improve STEM education opportunities for girls. Schools across the globe are being encouraged to pay more attention to female students and provide curriculum and other learning materials that stray from the stereotypical masculinity of sciences.

Support for girls pursuing a STEM education starts at home. Family biases and gender norms are a big contributor to the low number of females in STEM-related fields.

Thus, it is increasingly important for families to encourage young girls to join science and math-related activities and clubs outside of the classroom. Science and math clubs, competitions and camps are a great source of empowerment for girls in STEM education.

While UNESCO and model countries are working to eliminate the gender gap in STEM, it takes the support of educators and role models globally to change the fate of female students.

– Kassidy Tarala

Photo: Flickr

 

 

Learn about the Protecting Girls Access to Education in Vulnerable Settings Act.

 

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A New Model for Education in Developing Countries

A New Model for Education in Developing CountriesIn most developing countries, the majority of children do not finish primary school. For example, only 50 percent complete fifth grade in Ghana, and less than half of them can understand a simple paragraph.

Programs working to achieve the Millennium Development Goals have had great success in increasing school enrollment in developing countries, but many still do not finish school. Obstacles to children completing their education include the difficulty of getting to school and paying for uniforms, books and examination fees.

Another significant factor is the opportunity cost. That is, when a child goes to school instead of working, their family is missing out on an opportunity to bring in extra income. Most of these children will work in agriculture or trade, not in the formal sector. Continuing past primary school does not provide any economic benefit for them or their families.

Education in developing countries tends to adopt traditional western ideals, focusing on literacy, math, social studies and science. For most children, however, these topics are irrelevant to their lives and do not help them improve their real-life circumstances. A new educational model called “school for life” focuses on building the students’ ability to improve their lives. The curriculum focuses on entrepreneurship, health education and empowerment.

Within the realm of entrepreneurship, the curriculum teaches financial management, market analysis and interpersonal skills. Students are also taught how to identify business opportunities and effectively turn them into a revenue stream.

Since many of these children live without access to proper healthcare, teaching them how they can protect their own health is crucial. Many common health issues, such as malaria, dysentery, respiratory infections and nutrition-related illnesses are preventable by simply making small lifestyle changes.

Rote learning dominates education in developing countries, which encourages memorization instead of creativity. The most powerful resource is empowered people, and education systems can unlock this asset for their country with this innovative approach to education. The “school for life” system promotes interactive exercises instead of lectures, so that students have an opportunity to practise desired skills and learn to think critically. For example, students may work on a project to improve the cleanliness of their school. This activity allows students to develop practical skills like planning, collaboration, delegation of tasks and leadership.

A pilot version of the “school for life” curriculum has been adopted in Escuela Nueva in Colombia. If schools switch the focus from improving standardized test scores to empowering students to improve their lives, education can become a powerful tool for lifting people out of poverty.

– Kristen Nixon
Photo: Flickr

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The Success of Private Education in Pakistan

Private Education in PakistanAs in many other nations, private education in Pakistan is filling the gaps created by a struggling public-school system. Public education is a dismal scene; despite being a nation with a school-aged population of 47.8 million, a full 64 percent of public schools are deemed to be in unsatisfactory conditions. This is a relatively unsurprising number considering the newest public schools built in urban areas are anywhere from 40 to 60 years old. Furthermore, many students are unable to enroll in public schools simply due to their scarcity, evidenced by the 10 percent decrease in the number of public primary schools from 2011 to 2016.

With all this in mind, it is of no surprise that 37 percent of the nation’s educational institutions are private. Even more significant is the fact that this private 37 percent is somehow serving 42 percent of the nation’s total population of enrolled students and employing 48 percent of all teachers. Even so, the obvious reality is that private education is often expensive, thus making it out of reach for the most vulnerable and impoverished children. Consequently, a new subset of private education has further entered the scene: low-cost private schools.

Such is where Nasra Public Schools comes in. Despite its misleading name, it is indeed a low-cost private educational institution, and was founded in 1949 in a bungalow living room. Today, it has expanded into a system of private schools that boasts five campuses and serves 11,000 students. By 2020, it is projected to expand to 14 campuses, and will potentially expand further to 70 campuses across the nation.

Nasra is committed to low-cost, high quality private education. It does so through a contained monthly fee, meaning that fees have a maximum limit in the effort to maintain financial accessibility for low-income families. This works extremely well, as an astounding 79 percent of Nasra students are from homes that make less than four dollars a day. Additionally, Nasra rents campus locations rather than purchasing land- diluting infrastructural costs, which is ultimately what allows them to continually expand.

The system employs a staff of roughly 1,000, and teaches in English, a huge draw for the school. Further, it partners with various well-established institutions, such as the British Council and Pakistan’s COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, to provide the necessary technological resources and to create the most modern curricula it can. It also provides various extracurricular activities, such as student council, arts programs, cricket and table tennis, the latter two being supported through a partnership with the British Council’s International Inspirational Program.

Yet, it is still necessary to note that Nasra schools are not currently located throughout the nation, although such is the intention for the future. There is still a myriad of students who cannot afford to enroll in even low-cost institutions, an issue largely due to transportation fees. In many cases, urban and rural alike, students’ transportation fees would exceed that of school fees themselves, effectively making even low-cost private schooling inaccessible as well. Thus, the work of Nasra and its potential for expansion is even more essential; more Nasra schools spread throughout the nation would mean more educational opportunities for those that most desperately need them.

– Kailee Nardi

Photo: Flickr

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3 Benefits of LEGO Education in Africa

3 Benefits of LEGO Education in AfricaPlay Well Africa is an organization that donates used LEGOs to several countries in Africa. Through these donations, schools are able to enrich education through a proven learning tool.

LEGO as an education tool has been seen to improve the quality of learning in classrooms. Through LEGO, children are able to better express creativity, work as a team and solve problems.

Through Play Well Africa, LEGO education is able to benefit students in three ways:

Increase critical thinking skills

Learning with LEGOs requires critical thinking skills which are developed more through LEGO projects and challenges. For example, when building a project without instructions, it requires the students to consider structure and forces in order to create a stable solution.

In a 2001 study, a group of preschoolers were followed to assess the outcome of early block learning. The study showed that the students who participated in early block learning scored higher on standardized math tests starting in seventh grade.

While the effects of LEGO education may not be immediately seen, over time critical thinking skills develop and serve the children well.

Strengthen team building and communication

While LEGO building can be seen as an individual task, students tend to fare well when working on LEGO projects together. When working in a group, students must learn to communicate effectively to build a high-quality design.

A 2006 study used LEGO building materials to act as a medium for communication between autistic children. They were split into two groups, one using LEGO therapy and the other using more traditional therapy. In the end, both groups improved significantly in social skills; however, LEGO participants improved more than those not using LEGO.

LEGO has proven itself to be an effective means of not only building social skills, but helping improve social interaction as well.

Encourage long-term growth

LEGO is seen as an effective learning tool in schools through improving creativity, critical thinking skills, teamwork and problem solving. Through fostering these important learning skills, it allows permanent solutions to come about in underdeveloped countries.

As students grow and utilize these skills, they learn new ways to help their community grow into a more stable environment. While LEGO does an effective job building successful students, it also helps to create powerful members of the community.

Students benefit in multiple ways from Play Well Africa donating used LEGOs to schools. They not only grow as learners, but as active members in their community. While Play Well Africa currently only works with three countries, they are looking to expand in the near future.

– Rebekah Covey
Photo: Flickr

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Teaching Impoverished Women Solar Panel Engineering

Teaching Impoverished Women Solar Panel EngineeringA business partnership between law firm Hogan Lovells and Barefoot College seeks to help women in the developing world rise out of poverty by offering programs in solar panel engineering. Barefoot College, founded in 1972, is a college built by and for the rural poor, whose main objective is “to demystify and decentralise technology and put new tools in the hands of the rural poor with a singular objective of spreading self-sufficiency and sustainability.” This initiative, conducted in partnership with Hogan Lovells, focuses on teaching impoverished women solar panel engineering. The objective is for these women to bring the technology back to their villages and provide a renewable light source to destitute rural areas.

The project estimates it will bring clean, renewable power to over 200,000 people by training 400 women at five centres in Latin America, Africa and the Pacific Islands. Since 2008, when the initiative started, the college estimates it has trained 1084 women, or ‘solar mamas’ as they call them, from 83 different countries in solar panel installation and maintenance. Hogan Lovells is now providing Barefoot with pro bono legal advice and financial backing to help with the most recent expansion of the program.

Although a majority of the women are illiterate, through sign language and color-coded textbooks they are taught how to create, install and maintain solar panels for their community. Not only does this help bring a renewable power source to thousands of destitute villages, but by teaching impoverished women solar panel engineering, it helps to develop gender equality in these regions. The ‘solar mamas’ become respected community advisers and hold a high position as the installers and maintainers of a village’s main power source.

Installing solar panels also brings an array of other benefits to poor, rural, areas. It replaces the use of toxic kerosene, allowing children to study at night with the use of lamps, and family incomes tend to rise, since they pay less than what they paid for kerosene, batteries, candles, etc. Barefoot estimates that it has replaced over 500 million litres of the highly toxic and flammable kerosene since the program started.

Barefoot College and its ‘solar mama’ initiative in cooperation with Hogan Lovells is an example of the innovative progress made by non-governmental institutions in the race to meet the U.N’s Sustainable Development Goals. By training impoverished women in solar panel engineering, Barefoot, in a single program, addresses seven of the 17 goals, including tackling poverty, promoting gender equality and developing affordable and clean energy. It is an example to be followed.

– Alan Garcia-Ramos

Photo: Flickr

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Harvard Program Teaches the Importance of Global Education

Importance of Global EducationThere are several nonprofit organizations whose missions are to better education in developing countries so that every student has access to equal opportunities. A lot of these programs include funding for teacher associations to ensure that schools are not just well equipped with supplies, but with qualified teachers as well. The Harvard Graduate School of Education is one university whose graduates are qualified to teach any group of students around the world. Their program teaches the importance of global education and prepares students who have an interest in teaching internationally.

The program is called the International Education Policy (IEP) and its aim is to teach students a wide variety of understanding so that graduates can help multiple groups of students around the world. Students learn things from how to improve girls’ education to ways to deliver HIV/AIDS education. Students also learn to design their own innovative programs for schools and how to effectively use those programs to improve the quality of education. Other things that the students learn is how to promote peace, teach about relevant issues and empower students.

Some IEP graduates work with nonprofit organizations such as UNICEF, Save the Children and the World Bank. As education specialists within these organizations, they are policy makers for education worldwide. Some graduates also act as social entrepreneurs and create their own organizations to help with global education.

One graduate of the program, Sara Ahmed, co-founded the Elm International School in Alexandria, Egypt. Ahmed started the school with three goals that she wanted the school to meet. She wanted it to be a student centered environment, use technology as a tool and be internationally minded while still being locally rooted. Ahmed said in an interview, conducted by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, “I wanted a school that I would dream of for my own children.”

Another graduate, Jeff Decelles, started a program called Ragball International, which is based in South Africa. This program takes soccer balls that are created with thrown away plastic by local youths and sells them internationally. The youths making the ragballs also participate in a program that teaches them how to save and set financial goals. The program also teaches students the importance of recycling and re-enforcing the positive impact that reusing has on the environment.

There are many more positive steps that graduates of the IEP program are making towards global education. The most important outcome of this program is that it promotes the importance of global education. With more teachers equipped with knowledge and initiative to make a difference in global education, they can help improve education for students worldwide.

– Deanna Wetmore

Photo: Google

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How Online Education Can Alleviate Global Poverty

Online Education

Information technology and the ever-increasing access to it has been a product of the 21st century. It has been both a blessing and a curse to the modern world, but does it also have an opportunity to give rise to global access to education? Some argue that the faults of an online education lead students to abuse internet access when “learning” subjects, while others see it as a tool to springboard educational opportunities for both young people as well as those whose community’s systems for education may not have adequate resources.

Massively open online courses, or MOOCs, have recently been made more readily available for online education. With these, students can take courses on several areas of discipline at a variety of different levels, ranging from single courses in business and finance to a more extensive series of courses on web design.

An online education platform utilizing MOOCs, Coursera, has been a forerunner in this type of educational experience by making these courses available for free to any student with access to a computer or smartphone. Co-founder Daphne Koller has made it her mission to enable impoverished communities by making these classes available as a “real course” experience, as opposed to a watered down or less intuitive version that a naysayer may argue is the downfall of online education.

These courses also provide a legitimate certificate that can act as college credit or be presented to a potential employer once a course or set of courses is finished. Koller contends that an online education not only makes courses more accessible, but is also a more enriched way of learning. The courses employ interactive techniques and self- and peer- evaluation during the lesson, where otherwise a student may be complacent or simply not paying attention.

So, students can enjoy a flexible and valuable education online from essentially anywhere in the world, but what does this mean for the future of global poverty?

Platforms such as these not only provide insight into education experiences through models of self-evaluation, self-tutoring, and accessibility, but also open doors for entrepreneurial self-starters. People with the drive to lift themselves out of poverty situations through their own ingenuity and passion would be able to do so, as long as this tool is made available. With seemingly limitless and fast-paced technology advances, online education has the potential to revolutionize the educational experience as a whole and enable more people to take advantage of the power of knowledge.

– Casey Hess

Photo: Flickr

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Addressing the Curacao Poverty Rate

Curacao Poverty RateOn October 10, 2010, after centuries operating as a deep-water port for the Dutch, the small Caribbean island of Curacao gained autonomy as a state in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. 80 percent of the country’s debt was forgiven by the Dutch, and most government positions were undertaken by local citizens. For many who lived on the island, 10/10/10 marked the dawn of a new era of opportunity. “We were confident that we were going to have this perfect future,” said political analyst Michiel van der Veur.

Enthusiasm was short lived. Soon after gaining autonomy, the assassination of politician Helman Wiels plunged the island into turmoil. Between 2012 and 2013, Curacao had four prime ministers, greatly increasing the instability. As a country plagued with such unrest, it should be no wonder that the Curacao poverty rate is over 25 percent.

A small island country located in the Caribbean, much of the economy in Curacao is based around tourism and is thus highly sensitive to fluxes in the world market. Most of the country’s necessities are imported, leading to large trade deficits.

The Curacao poverty rate is likely increased by the country’s “brain drain” problem. Like many other developing island nations, citizens who are ambitious and educated often leave, moving to other countries with better opportunities for people with their skill sets.

However, Curacao has committed itself to addressing the country’s widespread poverty. With the support and assistance of the U.N. Development Program, Curacao has created a National Development Plan (NDP), which will focus on improving the economy through a series of steps from 2015 to 2030.

The NDP focuses on five themes to accomplish its goal: education, economy, sustainability, national identity and good governance. As diminishing the Curacao poverty rate is a priority, economy is one of the most important themes. In order to accomplish this, Curacao will focus on structural reform, government support, sectoral growth, supporting investments and broadening ownership of industry and land.

With the NDP, Curacao has taken a significant step towards strengthening the economy and the country as a whole. While there is much work to do, the country’s history as a long time trading center and large deep water port point to a high probability of success.

– Connor S. Keowen

Photo: Flickr