Archive for category: Education

Information and stories on education.

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Making Strides Through Peace Education in Rwanda

Peace Education in Rwanda
In the wake of the 1994 genocide, peace education in Rwanda teaches children from different ethnic backgrounds how to reconcile their differences and empathize with one another.

In classrooms filled with children of both Tutsi and Hutu ethnicities, conflict is frequent. Although many of these children are too young to remember the genocide that claimed the lives of nearly one million Rwandans, primarily Tutsis, they live with the after-effects of the trauma that their families endured.

Many children grew up hearing one-sided or incomplete narratives. Others suffer more tangible losses: the death of a parent, or a family member in jail, and the resulting economic difficulties.

At school, children directly impacted by the genocide often become targets for bullying. Students who receive government compensation meet daily resentment. Classmates scorn genocide orphans who cannot afford clothes. There is no outright fighting; the methods of intimidation are more subtle. Notebooks thrown in toilets, name-calling and anonymous letters filled with threats are not uncommon.

The UK-based NGO International Alert helps to bring students from different ethnic backgrounds together in Peace Clubs. Here, they can better understand the conflict they witness in the classroom and discuss their individual narratives. International Alert supports similar clubs for adults, which bring victims and perpetrators together in conversation. However, those under 24 years old receive a special focus, since they make up 60% of the country’s population.

Peace Club members engage in critical thinking activities. They observe and interpret images with messages that are not always straightforward. Through plays, poems and acted-out scenes they examine prejudices and stereotypes, mapping out the route from conflict to reconciliation. They also learn about people who refused to commit atrocities during the genocide, treating them as role models.
The club is invested in creating strong connections between members and within the greater community. Club members work together through cooperative projects and volunteer to do community service for group members’ parents who are struggling.

A conflict-free classroom relies on empathic students, but also on a peace-centered system of learning. Aegis Trust, the organization that runs the Kigali Genocide Memorial, trains teachers for the best ways to approach and lead discussions about the genocide with their students.

This new peace education in Rwanda is directly in contrast to the old curriculum, which was designed to discriminate and to foster hatred and division among students. Out of fear, many teachers chose not to talk about the genocide at all, leaving the children to draw their own conclusions based on what they heard at home.

Aegis also comes into the classroom to offer day-long courses in peace-building. In the morning, they revisit the country’s history, learning about the ways that hate leads to violence and the necessity of reconciliation. In the afternoons, the students take a trip to the Genocide Memorial, an experience that is so horrifying that it leaves some of them in tears.

The students say that these sessions make a clear difference in the overall attitude of the school. Students, regardless of their ethnicity, began to treat one another with compassion and to support those with physical needs. Anti-genocide clubs formed. The teens and young adults spoke with one another about what they learned.

In 2015, the Rwandan government launched the Peace Education Program, which incorporates peace into every subject taught in the schools. Aegis continues to advise teachers on the best way to overcome suspicion in the classroom. They also try to instill in their students the ability to trust in the future.

Only education can give them that future. As Rwandan Minister of Education Hon. Dr. Vincent Biruta said, “Education is our only hope that atrocities will not happen again.” As a result, peace education in Rwanda continues to open up a much-needed dialogue about past conflict.

– Emilia Otte

Photo: Google

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Causes of Poverty in Turkey

Causes of Poverty in TurkeyPoverty in Turkey? Despite seeing rapid growth and development as a nation, Turkey continues to face a recurring problem with poverty amongst its citizens. Though the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) has nearly tripled in the past ten years, according to the United Nations’ Human Development Report, many of Turkey’s citizens are not seeing this growth and are caught by the causes of poverty in Turkey.

The Daily Sabah, a Turkish newspaper based in Istanbul, reported in May that the monthly poverty threshold increased by nearly 500 Turkish liras to reach just shy of 5,000 liras (or $1,400). This threshold delineates the monthly expenses of a family of four. If their household income falls below the threshold they will be unable to afford housing, clothes, food, heat, electricity or other utilities.

 

Poverty in Turkey Data

 

Data released by the Turkish Statistical Institute indicates that the severe material deprivation rate – a statistic similar to the monthly poverty threshold that tracks families’ abilities to afford at least several basic material essentials such as food and heating – increased from 29.4 percent in 2014 to 30.3 percent in 2015 (the last two years with available studies).

The causes of poverty in Turkey, as an opinion piece by Turkish novelist Kaya Genc claims, lay partly on the shoulders of Turkey’s track record of huge income inequality. Genc notes that the top 20 percent of Turkish families hold over 45 percent of the country’s GDP, while the bottom 20 percent have just over six percent of the GDP.

The Rural Poverty Portal notes that, in 2014, the majority of people in poverty in Turkey lived in rural areas, where the rate was over 35 percent below the poverty threshold to merely 22 percent in urban areas. This rural-urban inequality stems from several factors:

  • Average rural family size is nearly double that of urban families.
  • Environmental issues like climate change, soil erosion and continued issues with overgrazing livestock – all of which greatly affect agriculture, which is the livelihood of the vast majority of rural families.
  • Low literacy rates and limited education
  • A continued lack of welfare and social security for the rural poor.

Genc theorizes that this inequality can likely trace its roots back to longstanding negative attitudes of Turkey’s poor, both rural and urban, by its upper classes. Genc writes: “For decades, Turkey’s poor were characterized as backward, conservative, religious-minded people who represented the worst of the society.” Despite the country’s wealth increasing overall, Turkey’s wealth inequalities must be addressed to get at the root causes of poverty in Turkey.

– Erik Halberg

Photo: Flickr

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The Educational Challenges of the Dominican Stateless

Educational Challenges of the Dominican Stateless
The Dominican Republic denies thousands of children access to education due to nationality laws rendering them stateless. The educational challenges of the Dominican stateless, many of them of Haitian descent, are both varied and continuous.

Since the 1990s, many Dominicans of Haitian descent have encountered difficulties proving their citizenship. A court ruling in 2013 exacerbated these struggles by retroactively declaring immigrants and their descendants to be noncitizens from 1929 forward. This left generations of Dominican people unable to receive healthcare, education or employment, most of which require proof of citizenship.

A report from the Georgetown Law Human Rights Institute gathered information about the educational challenges of the Dominican stateless through interviews and analysis of the Dominican Republic’s education policies. According to the report, schools refuse to enroll students or administer state examinations without birth certificates or proof of nationality. Bureaucratic hurdles and arbitrary enforcement of the nationality law stall the efforts to remedy this.

A consequence of the Dominican stateless’ inability to attain an education is a lack of high-quality jobs. The Guardian discusses how many migrant descendants work in menial jobs like domestic work by force. Employers also often subject them to abuse or long hours due to the lack of legal protections.

The educational challenges of the Dominican stateless especially affect young people. Yolanda Alcino, a young Dominican descended from Haitian migrants, told The Guardian how she and other Dominican stateless are “discriminated against, and without education, without work, life is more difficult in almost every way.”

In response to this issue, Dominican stateless have protested for their rights. Young people have met with government officials and developed petitions that implore the government to uphold equal rights.

International governments and organizations have also condemned the Dominican Republic for its actions and inaction. As reported in Refugees Deeply, although the country has adopted the New York Declaration, it has not honored the Declaration’s requirement of providing education to all youth.

The domestic and international response to the educational challenges of the Dominican stateless has helped influence the Dominican Republic to modify nationality laws. According to Refugees Deeply, the country will acknowledge the children of undocumented immigrants as citizens if they have a verified birth certificate or go through the process of naturalization.

Despite this, the processes have the same problems: they require too much time and are arbitrarily applied. With the legal, vocational, economic and educational challenges of the Dominican stateless, the Dominican Republic has a lot to remedy.

– Cortney Rowe

Photo: Pixabay

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The Impact of the Radio Education Program for Lake Chad

Radio Education Program for Lake Chad
Within the Lake Chad basin of Africa, there is a crisis occurring. This crisis includes the increasing rates of famine, floods and militia groups such as Boko Haram which threaten the lives of individuals across Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria. This situation has displaced 1.3 million children and has made it difficult for students to access schools. However, a new program initiated by UNICEF and Education in Emergencies is providing a radio education program for Lake Chad that will give over 200,000 children potential access to education.

Conflict in Lake Chad has been occurring since 2009, with Boko Haram leading attacks against civilians and using violence to ban schooling. In the past eight years, Boko Haram has closed over 1,200 schools and has murdered over 600 teachers, as well as forcing 19,000 educators to flee. With many schools destroyed and more facing threats, children have no way to safely access education.

The occupancy of Boko Haram, although the primary threat to students, is not the only challenge when it comes to accessing schools. Children also encounter difficulty in mobility due to the rainy season, which causes flooding. This threat is all in combination with overarching threats of famine and water-borne diseases. These factors work together to make achieving an education almost impossible.

The UNICEF-designed radio education program for Lake Chad is an essential service that will educate children in the most rural areas of the country. This innovative program will feature 144 lessons on literacy, numeracy and other critical information. These lessons will be broadcast in French as well as in the local languages of Kanouri, Fulfulde and Hausa. This tool will reach children that have no other way to access schooling.

A significant aspect of this program is that it will be accredited by the governments of Cameroon and Niger. This point means the children using this program will not fall behind in their schooling and may have the potential to receive a certificate validating their success.

The radio education program for Lake Chad will also be bringing communities together, as UNICEF will be encouraging radio listening groups to help children get the most out of each broadcast. This measure will also ensure that adults will allow children to use existing radios and help with guided listening.

Despite the circumstances that currently prevent children from attending school, humanitarian organizations continue to find a way to keep these students learning. This radio education program will provide quality lessons to children that may have otherwise been denied an education entirely, ensuring that education will remain a priority for even the most vulnerable populations.

– Kelly Hayes

Photo: Google

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The Riecken Foundation: Building Libraries and Stability

Riecken Foundation
The need for educational opportunities in Central America has not gone unnoticed. The Riecken Foundation was established to address this need.  Since building its first library (the first of 65), the organization has paved the way for literacy and access to knowledge in Honduras and Guatemala.

For nearly 20 years, the Riecken Foundation has been building a network of community libraries across Honduras and Guatemala in often underserved, rural areas. Following a unique organizational model, the foundation has found long-term success by establishing libraries under strong community governance.

The foundation was born in 2000 out of the efforts of Susan Riecken and Allen Anderson. In the 1960s, Anderson worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, and his experiences in Honduras stayed with him over the years. Upon his retirement from venture capitalism, Anderson partnered with Riecken to address the educational needs of Honduran and Guatemalan villages and to promote literacy in developing parts of the world.

Educational opportunity is limited in Honduras and Guatemala and contributes to poverty in both countries. Nearly one in five Hondurans live in extreme poverty, and, for many Honduran students, the chance of dropping out of school or repeating a grade is high. In Guatemala, 23% of the population lives in extreme poverty. Educational quality is poor, and, as a result, fewer than half of students meet national standards by sixth grade.

The Riecken Foundation exists to address these issues and much more. A Riecken community library provides a village with access to books and other free resources, such as technology, youth programs and technical workshops that would otherwise be unavailable.

While other rural libraries might suffer as a result of mismanagement or neglect, a Riecken community library is strengthened by leadership from engaged volunteer citizens who are supported by their municipal government and the Riecken Foundation. It is this collaboration that often ensures the success of a Riecken community library.

For those in rural areas, the library becomes a place to explore diverse ideas and develop community projects. The community is directly involved in the success of their library, and their active engagement in its success creates a sense of prideful ownership over it.

The Riecken Foundation has found that the libraries promote literacy and a better understanding of local government institutions and transparency. It is with this understanding, along with greater access to knowledge and resources, that rural villages in Honduras and Guatemala can begin to move away from poverty and toward a stable environment that fosters growth and prosperity.

– Jennifer Faulkner

Photo: Flickr

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Indonesian Education System for Disabled Needs Improvement

Indonesian Education System
In Indonesia, education is a privilege to which not all children have access. Based on a have-and-have-not system, the Indonesian education system is severely underfunded for those without financial security.

Children from financially stable families have a variety of schools to choose from, including both public and private. However, children from poorer families have few to no affordable options for education. Their available options only include public primary schools.

Because quality education is offered to such a small sector of the population, the knowledge gap is widening between the wealthy and the poor. Unfortunately, a large number of these uneducated Indonesians are students with disabilities.

Disabled students have an especially difficult time accessing education because the Indonesian government provides them two options for education: enrollment at special-needs schools, or schools with inclusive programs that are willing to accept students with disabilities. Both of these options are unlikely to provide a quality education to disabled students.

Special-needs schools do not teach curriculums that cater to students with various disabilities, so students with physical disabilities are taught the same curriculum as students with learning disabilities, even though they are capable of learning at the same pace as their able-bodied peers.

Similarly, not all schools are accepting of students with disabilities. Most of them lack the physical facilities necessary for these students, and many teachers have little to no experience working with disabled children.

Thus, it is important that decision-makers within the education system increase awareness in order to accept students with disabilities currently being denied an education by the majority of institutions throughout Indonesia.

Indonesians with disabilities who do not receive proper education experience unique problems throughout the entirety of their lives. According to a recent study at the University of Indonesia, nearly 70% of disabled children do not receive an education and the ones who do only have a 66.8% chance of finishing primary school.

This is reflected later in life as only 64.9% of people with disabilities have a chance of getting a job. The gap between people who can afford to receive a quality education and people with disabilities continues throughout these people’s lives as the educated obtain successful, well-paying jobs and people with disabilities do not.

Help for these people begins with raising awareness and normalizing students with disabilities in a typical Indonesian classroom setting. Inclusive education is making its way through the Indonesian education system as more and more schools are accepting and tolerant of these students.
By improving the availability of education to students, it becomes possible to obtain jobs later in life, regardless of disability status.

However, inclusive education is accessible to only a small portion of the disabled community, so it is important that lawmakers and teachers alike learn about various disabilities and provide effective education for each individual.

Because disabled students rarely interact with peers without disabilities in the classroom, the two groups become separated and remain so throughout their lives, including in the workplace. Many jobs are unavailable to people with disabilities because employers lack knowledge of disabilities and are unwilling to hire disabled individuals.

By allowing students with and without disabilities equal opportunities in the Indonesian education system, the workplace becomes much more abundant in job opportunities for Indonesians with disabilities. This is because people become more aware of disabilities and more accepting of them in the workforce.

Education conditions for Indonesians with disabilities continue to improve, but the opportunities remain slim. With significant effort, it is likely that disabled individuals will one day have access to the Indonesian education system leading to greater opportunities in the workplace.

– Kassidy Tarala
Photo: Flickr

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Inarguable Link: Child Mortality and Maternal Education

Child Mortality and Maternal Education
The link between child mortality and maternal education is clear: educating mothers directly impacts the health of their babies. Even small improvements in maternal education help to fight child mortality that causes 16,000 deaths each day, primarily in developing countries. This stresses the global need for equality in education- particularly in accounting for the needs of women and mothers who are disproportionately denied educational opportunities around the world.

In 2011, 6.1 million children under the age of five died of preventable causes in low- and middle-income countries. An estimated 49% of those deaths were preventable had the mothers of the children received a secondary school education. Even when mothers only acquire a primary school education, they reduce the chances of their children dying from diarrhea by eight percent and malaria by 22%. UNESCO explains that when a baby is born to a literate mother, he or she is 50% more likely to live past five years old.

Many similar figures are available, all with the same key findings: as maternal education increases, child mortality decreases. Malnutrition, lack of immunization, preventable illnesses and birth complications–responsible for millions of premature child deaths around the world every year–are significantly reduced by redirecting the relationship between child mortality and maternal education.

Literacy and education provide mothers with knowledge of sanitation, nutrition, health and safety to better care for their children. For example, literate mothers are more likely to purify water and seek out healthcare if they notice their child getting sick. Mothers who can read and write are 23% more likely than illiterate mothers to acquire the help of a birth attendant, avoiding birthing complications that perpetuate heightened rates of child mortality.

The relationship between child mortality and maternal education represents a global health inequity. Women make up an estimated two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adult population, and 60% of countries do not provide equal access to education for males and females. Child mortality is most common in low income and developing nations.

The World Health Organization explains that there are eleven times more child deaths under the age of five in low-income countries than in high-income countries as of 2015.

This means that equality for all people in access to education is viable as a way to fight poverty and combat child mortality. UNESCO emphasizes that “there are few more dramatic illustrations of the power of education” than its ability to save lives when gender equality is enhanced. The United Nations summarizes that gender equality in education “raises economic productivity, reduces poverty, lowers infant and maternal mortality and helps improve nutritional status and health” emphasizing equality as a necessity for sustainable development.

Improving maternal education remains both a key obstacle and a prospect for fighting these global inequities. The 53% global drop in deaths under the age of five from 1990 to 2015 reiterates that recent advancements successfully decreased child mortality and related issues.

This reaffirms that redirecting the link between child mortality and maternal education to a poverty reduction force is possible. Education is key to such a necessary development for mothers and their children.

– Cleo Krejci

Photo: Flickr

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Five Ways to End Global Poverty From Home

End Global Poverty From Home
In September 2000, the United Nations put forth the Millennium Development Goals, eight objectives intended to be completed by 2015. The goals demanded that leaders dedicate themselves to fighting poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. By 2015, the Millennium Goals had reduced extreme poverty rates from 52% to 15%. While the World Bank estimates that, by 2030, it would be possible to end global poverty, such an endeavor would require efforts by not only world leaders, but by average citizens as well. Although it may seem daunting, there are plenty of ways to end global poverty from home. Here are five:

Get Educated
Nelson Mandela once said that “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Indeed, ample education about the impacts of global poverty and organizations looking to alleviate it proves conducive to enabling advocacy and ending the situation. Through reading informational documents such as “Ending Poverty – Why it Matters” provided by the United Nations, contacting aid organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross and learning about global poverty overall, you can begin the work of bettering the global community.

Call Congress
Each week, the United States Congress tallies issues that constituents contact them about. With the support of as few as 10 people, leaders tend to support bills. This tactic is instrumental in ensuring the elimination of global poverty: by taking 30 seconds out of your day to call Congress in support of proposed bills to provide foreign aid, you can make a substantial impact on the lives of thousands throughout the world.

Go on FreeRice.com
Funded by the World Food Programme, www.freerice.com provides online quizzes ranging in topic from math to foreign language vocabulary, from chemistry to SAT preparation. For every question you answer correctly, the World Food Programme donates ten grains of rice to vulnerable individuals in need of food. Not only does this website provide ample amounts of fun—it also allows you to end global poverty from home.

Sponsor a Child through Global Organizations
Organizations like Children International allow you to sponsor specific children throughout the globe. For a monthly gift of only $32 a month—an amount that proves negligible for many individuals—you can provide a child with access to life-changing benefits like medical care, educational support, and life-skills and job training prior to graduation. In response, you will also learn about your child and will have the opportunity to visit them.

Attend an Event
In communities around the country, groups such as the Aga Khan Foundation constantly host events to demonstrate their support for global poverty reduction tactics. Through events such as walks/runs, golf outings and galas, you can enjoy yourself and also take part in actions that end global poverty. While you certainly need to leave home to have fun at these events, registering simply requires the click of a button.

Ultimately, by participating in these five things, you can help end global poverty from home. Through ongoing dedication and the beneficence of citizens who care about the world around them, caring individuals can help make the goal of ending global poverty by 2030 into a reality.

– Emily Chazen

Photo: Flickr

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The Importance of Free and Compulsory Education in the Congo

education in the congo
Situated in central Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is home to people belonging to over 200 African ethnic groups, with the majority identifying amongst the Bantu peoples. Though only comprising 2.25% of its GDP, education in the Congo remains a significant priority. In fact, education maintains such significance that the country’s constitution provides for free and compulsory primary school education.

Since 2007, the Congo has experienced massive growth in the number of students completing their primary school education. Although only 52.9% of young children completed their primary school education ten years ago, through rapid improvement and additional funding, the nation secured 66.8% of the population’s completion in 2013. In fact, much of this change related to girls’ access to education: while only 42.8% of girls completed primary school in 2007, that rate climbed to 60% by 2013. Essentially, then, education in the Congo prioritizes the needs of all students, regardless of their gender.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has assisted the Congo in implementing the BEAR Project. The project’s overarching goals are to help young people receive technical vocational education and training in order to enter the job market and to improve equity and access to educational opportunities. Dividing $10 million amongst five African nations, the BEAR project, which lasted five years, ultimately had a tremendously positive impact on the Congo; it actually managed to reach over 200 young people there, ensuring that they had access to basic educational necessities.

The Congo provides students with a variety of opportunities in terms of their education. Though all students begin in primary school, students can ultimately decide whether to pursue a secondary education or a vocational education. This sort of choice allows them to decide whether they would prefer to explore trades or academia, giving them a tremendous amount of intellectual freedom.

The structure of education in the Congo is further conducive to higher education. Though the nation maintains many privately and publicly funded polytechnic colleges and specialized universities, there are four main state-run institutions: the Universities of Goma, Kinshasa, Kongo and Lubumbashi. The oldest—the University of Lubumbashi, founded in 1955—prides itself on offering courses in departments such as agronomy, economics, medicine, law, psychology, medicine and commerce.

Clearly, the Congo prides itself on maintaining quality education for students and for striving to provide its young people with equal opportunities. Though the system itself remains imperfect, continued funding and an emphasis on education will undeniably have significant economic and social benefits.

– Emily Chazen

Photo: Flickr

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New Strides in Girls’ Education in Saudi Arabia

Girls' Education in Saudi Arabia
With the first private school for girls opening in 1956 and the first public school opening around 1960, the history of girls’ education in Saudi Arabia is relatively brief. And though some gender disparity remains in the country’s adult literacy rate, the education gender gap is rapidly closing due to new kingdom-wide objectives.

Though just 91.84% of women are literate versus 96.95% of men, the disparity is significantly smaller among the youth population, with both male and female literacy hovering around 99%—an astounding rise from the two percent female literacy rate in the 1970s.

Primary, middle and secondary schools are free and open to both boys and girls. Though boys enroll at a slightly higher rate than girls—99% versus 96.35%—the education system is well on its way to gender equality, in spite of the kingdom’s reputation for severe treatment of women.

Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plan drives these advancements. Implemented under King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the plan aims to structure the kingdom’s social, political and fiscal future—and recognizes women’s potential to bolster the workforce. Many citizens have adopted this point of view, as well as the idea that all children, regardless of sex, gain greater opportunities to contribute as adults when they have access to quality education.

In service of these values, Vision 2030 aims to foster an educational environment congruous with the demands of the evolving job market. Schools also now prioritize students’ ability to meet personal goals.

Though public schools are divided by gender, leaders strive to improve and diversify the educational system for both girls and boys. The upcoming school year will bring an exciting new opportunity for girls in Saudi Arabia: physical education classes.

Some citizens of Saudi Arabia oppose women’s access to sports, as they are considered masculine activities, but many others are satisfied with the development. Hatoon al-Fassi, a Saudi women’s historian, anticipates that the motion will help girls to build bodily autonomy.

Advancements in girls’ education in Saudi Arabia have indeed empowered women to pursue their own potential. Beyond secondary school, many Saudi women earn advanced degrees. Data from 2015 shows that women account for 51.8% of students at Saudi Universities. Around 551,000 women are enrolled in undergraduate programs, with 24,498 in graduate programs and 1,744 pursuing PhDs. An additional 35,537 study abroad in 57 countries.

Women in Saudi Arabia faced many obstacles to get to where they are today. With the continued support of many citizens and leaders, the disparity between men and women is bound to dissolve.

– Madeline Forwerck

Photo: Google

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