Archive for category: Education

Information and stories on education.

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: A Literary Success

Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, nonfiction and short story writer sets the stage for African literature and young women everywhere. She is both a prominent feminist and one of the most prominent authors of African Literature, as reported by Vogue and The Times Literary Supplement.

Ten Facts About Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  1. Adichie was born on 15 September 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria, the fifth of six children to Igbo parents, Grace Ifeoma and James Nwoye Adichie.
  2. Adichie’s father, who is now retired, worked at the University of Nigeria, located in Nsukka. He was Nigeria’s first professor of statistics, and later became Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. Her mother was the first female registrar at the same institution.
  3. At the age of nineteen, Adichie left for the United States. She received a scholarship to study communication at Drexel University in Philadelphia for two years, and she went on to pursue a degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University.
  4. Adichie completed a master’s degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, as reported by Harvard.
  5. During her senior year at Eastern, Adichie started working on her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, which was released in October 2003. The book has received wide critical acclaim; according to Adichie’s personal site, it was shortlisted for the Orange Fiction Prize and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book.
  6. Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun is set before and during the Biafran War. It was published in August 2006 in the United Kingdom and in September 2006 in the United States.
  7. Adichie’s third book, The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), is a collection of short stories.
  8. Her latest Novel Americanhah, was published around the world in 2013, and has received numerous accolades, including winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and The Chicago tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction; and being named on of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year.
  9. Adichie’s 2009 TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” has had more than eight million views.
  10. Reported in Vogue, Adichie loves teaching, and claims, “I want to make it valid, to dream about books and writing. Because in Nigeria it’s very hard; people will say to you, what do you mean, ‘writing’? Nigerians are a very, very practical people. And while I admire practicality, I feel we need to make a space for dreaminess.”

– Megan Hadley

Photo: Flickr

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Girl Rising Works to Advance Girls’ Education

Girl Rising
Girl Rising is a campaign to both improve and bring awareness to global education for girls. One of the primary ways they attract attention to this issue is through storytelling in the form of film.

In 2013, the film “Girl Rising” was released. It follows the stories of nine girls from impoverished countries around the world: Haiti, Sierra Leone, Peru, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Egypt and Cambodia.

Each girl’s story has a well-known narrator. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, the cast includes Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Liam Neeson and Cate Blanchett. Many of the actors involved do separate philanthropic work related to educating and empowering women.

The film was directed by the Academy Award-winning director Richard Robbins, who also came up with the idea for the film. He made sure that the focus of the movie remained on the stories of the protagonists.

To help the girls communicate, Robbins told Huffington Post, he implored the film’s writers to spend time with the girls in order to effectively tell their stories. While the film “Girl Rising” came before the current campaign to spread awareness for girls’ education, Robbins says, over the course of making the film, it became “clear that we needed to build an organization that was capable of working in all the ways the film alone could not.”

Girl Rising now partners with NGOs including CARE and Room to Read in their mission to bring education to girls globally.

In collaboration with the Pearson Foundation, Girl Rising also offers a curriculum that educators can use to bring awareness to the issue of education for girls who have difficulty accessing it on their own. Factors that contribute to this lack of access are poverty, a reaffirmation of a cult of domesticity for women and foregoing education in order to get married and have children.

Girl Rising is also currently carrying out a campaign called ENGAGE, or Empowering Next Generations to Advance Girls’ Education. ENGAGE is a “USAID-supported public-private partnership” which is “working in India, Nigeria and The Democratic Republic of the Congo, pairing storytelling with local social action campaigns.”

The website for Girl Rising offers multiple options for those interested in getting involved in the cause, be it anything from donating money, to using Girl Rising’s curriculum in their schools, to raising awareness by organizing a viewing of the Girl Rising film.

– Katherine Hamblen

Sources: Girl Rising, LA Times, Huffington Post
Photo: Vimeo

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The UN Unites Gender Equality and Global Education

Gender Equality
International Women’s Day 2016 rekindled awareness of the progress of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly the fifth goal to achieve gender equality.

While the number of impoverished women has decreased by 50 percent since 1995 and 90 percent of girls attend primary school, the lack of access to secondary school and the prevailing workplace gender gap beg the question: How will gender equality be achieved by 2030?

Fast Company reported that in North Africa and the Middle East, millennial women have as few employment opportunities as did their mothers and grandmothers and they are three times less likely to run a business than their male counterparts. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president of the Republic of Liberia, estimated that full gender equality will require a minimum of 80 years.

One of the surest catalysts to accelerate gender equality is to give women and girls better access to education. Educated women lead healthier lives, provide for their families and better contribute to society. Consequently, in order for the world to complete the fifth SDG, it must achieve worldwide quality education as well.

“Education is key to opening up so many opportunities for girls. We can’t emphasize that enough,” Terri McCullough, director of No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, told Bustle.

On March 8, the U.N. Statistical Commission met with the Economic and Social Council and the U.N. General Assembly to discuss electing gender equality as a global education indicator.

Indicators enable world leaders to monitor the progress of the SDGs within their countries to ensure the goals remain on track. Both gender equality and global education require reaching out to the 510 million women who remain illiterate.

If approved, the official statement would read, “Extent to which (i) global citizenship education and (ii) education for sustainable development, including gender equality and human rights, are mainstreamed at all levels in (a) national education policies, (b) curricula, (c) teacher education and (d) student assessment.”

Establishing gender equality as a global education indicator will help countries analyze each factor of global education and pinpoint where progress is lacking. One major barrier between women and education is negative cultural perception of educated females.

In order to help more girls receive an education, countries must change the public opinion of girls and education. The Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report launched an Instagram campaign to investigate the pervasiveness of gender bias in textbooks worldwide. GEM Report will also host a side-event at the May 2016 Women Deliver Conference to improve training for female teachers.

The balance of gender equality and education benefits men as well as women. Mandisa Shields of The Daily Orange pointed out that when women are not qualified to work in the fields of their choice, men are required to fill the vacant positions, weakening the labor force. As a result, countries suffer both academically and economically.

The ultimate goal of each country is absolute eradication of global poverty, a goal that depends on the full completions of the other SDGs. At the announcement of the SDGs, Irish president Michael Higgins told the U.N., “We cannot achieve the new Sustainable Development Goals if we do not achieve gender equality.”

– Sarah Prellwitz

Sources: Daily Orange, EFA Report, Bustle, Fast Company, Irish Aid

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World Leaders Meet to Discuss Global Education Aims

World Leaders in DubaiLeaders from the private and public sectors came together in Dubai on March 12-13 to discuss tactics for improving global education in the fourth annual Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF).

During the two-day event, speakers lectured on a variety of topics pertinent to the advancement of global education. These included such timely topics as the need for education to combat the spread of terrorism, and the lack of access to education for refugees, such as the three million children currently out of school due to war in Syria.

Workshops and debates were also held to challenge attendees to consider the practicality of solutions.

The Varkey Foundation, a nonprofit organization with the goal of improving education for underprivileged children, convened educators, academics, nonprofit leaders and government leaders, including 22 education ministers.

The aim of the Varkey Foundation is involving everyone in producing real-world global education solutions.

“The main topic will be rethinking collective responsibility for public education. This is in the context that there are still half a billion children in failing schools all around the world,” Varkey CEO Vikas Pota told Education Journal prior to the summit.

Sunny Varkey, Founder of the Varkey Foundation, did an interview with the online magazine Teach UAE. In that article he states, “it is not only important to find more money to overcome the crisis, but my belief is that by pooling our creativity, generosity, and persistence, we can collectively overcome this education crisis. If we work together – government, business and civil society – we have it in our power to finally give every child their birthright: a good education.”

Notable among the speakers at this year’s summit were: Tariq Al Gurg, CEO, Dubai Cares, UAE, as well as Sir Martin Sorrel, Group Chief Executive of WPP and Irina Bokova, Director General of UNESCO. According to the UNESCO website, Bokova spoke to the need for stronger education systems and the importance of strong teachers.

Bokova also spoke of the importance of education in combating radicalism. “Education is a vital tool also in the fight against violent extremism, to counter radicalisation‎.”

The GESF summit also featured a Global Teacher Prize. The winner was picked from a list of 50 which were drawn from thousands of nominations from countries around the world. According to the Education Journal, the idea behind this was to nominate an exceptional teacher in order to highlight the importance of educators.

The winner of the prize at this year’s summit was Hanan Al-Hroub, a female Palestinian teacher. The prize includes an award of $1 million.

The MENA Herald reported that The Varkey Foundation initiated three new alliances for promoting global education which met for the first time at the GESF 2016 Summit: the Alliance on Girls’ Education, the Alliance on Teachers and the Alliance on Innovation. Alliance partners include government leaders and representatives from UNESCO, Harvard University and Amazon.

They will produce their findings and recommendations at next year’s summit.

– Katherine Hamblen

Sources: Financial Express, TeachUAE, Education Journal, UNESCO, MENA Herald, The Herald
Photo: Education Journal Me

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Differences Between Senators and Congressmen

Legislature
Within the legislature of the federal government, there are two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. Senators and Congressman work within these two lawmaking bodies. Both are representative voices for their constituents, but their roles differ in terms of  length, power and apportionment. Here are some key facts on the differences between Senators and Congressmen.

House of Representatives

  1. Each state represented in Congress is entitled to at least one representative, but the number per state is determined according to population. Under the constitutional rule regarding the size of the House, “the number of Representatives shall not exceed one of every thirty Thousand.”
  2. There are currently 435 Congressional seats.
  3. A Congressperson’s term lasts two years.
  4. The minimum age for a member of the House is 25 and the elected official must have been a U.S. citizen for at least seven years.
  5. The six non-voting members in Congress are the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands. Although these districts are unable to vote, they may vote in a House committee and introduce legislation.
  6. In the legislature, only the House of Representatives can introduce spending bills.

Senate

  1. Each state has a total of two senators, regardless of the state’s size. For this reason, there are always 100 senators during a given period.
  2. A senator’s term lasts six years. Only one-third of the Senate seats are elected every two years. That way, only 33 or 34 seats are up for election at a given time.
  3. The minimum age for a senator is 30, and that person must be a U.S. citizen for at least nine years.
  4. The Senate has sole power of approval for foreign treatises and cabinet and judicial nominations, including appointments to the Supreme Court.
  5. The Senate is headed by the Vice President, who only votes in case of a tie.

– Nora Harless

Sources: Diffen.com, USGovInfo
Photo: Flickr

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International Aid Organizations Improve Global Education

Global Education

To foster growth in developing countries, there has to be a focus on global education. Many children and adolescents are out of school worldwide, often due to poverty, conflict or financial deprivation. Approximately 24 million children globally will never see the inside of a classroom, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.

Five international aid organizations have stepped up to expand worldwide access to educational opportunities: The World Bank, Global Partnership for Education, United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund, Global Education First Initiative and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The World Bank currently plays a significant role in providing educational access across the globe. Since its creation in 1944, the organization has invested $69 billion globally in more than 1,500 educational projects.

Recently, the World Bank laid out the “Learning for All” plan, an education strategy focused on ensuring that all children and youth receive learning opportunities by 2020. The organization plans to double its investment in global public education by 2020, spending approximately $5 billion to improve education in developing nations

“The truth is that most educational systems are not serving the poorest children well,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in an interview with Reuters. “With nearly a billion people remaining trapped in extreme poverty today, sustained efforts to improve learning for children will unlock huge amounts of human potential for years to come.”

The Global Partnership for Education works to develop effective and sustainable education systems across the globe by collaborating with national governments and development partners.

“The Global Partnership for Education supports developing countries to ensure that every child receives a quality basic education, prioritizing the poorest, most vulnerable and those living in fragile and conflict-affected countries,” the organization’s website states.

If all students in developing countries received basic reading skills, 171 million people worldwide could be lifted out of poverty, according to the organization.

Created in 2012 by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the Global Education First Initiative aims to strengthen global education through political advocacy.

The initiative works to reach three priority goals: ensuring that every child is in school, improving the quality of learning worldwide and fostering global citizenship through education.

“Without universal education, in other words, winning the war against illiteracy and ignorance, we cannot also win the war against disease, squalor, and unemployment. Without universal and high standard education we can only go so far but not far enough in breaking the cycle of poverty,” U.N. Special Envoy for Education Gordon Brown said in a statement on the organization’s website.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was established in 1945 to foster peace, poverty eradication, lasting development and intercultural dialogue across the globe. Education is one of the primary ways the organization aims to reach its goals.

“As a human right in itself, education is also fundamental to realizing other rights, and an enabler for reaching all the Millennium Development Goals. It plays an essential role in reducing mortality and morbidity rates; eradicating poverty and hunger; strengthening resilience to natural hazards and ending abuse, violence and armed conflict,” Olav Seim, Director of the Education for All Global Partnerships Team said in a UNESCO press release.

With headquarters in Paris and 52 other field offices, including regional bureaus in Bangkok, Beirut, Dakar and Santiago, the organization works worldwide to foster educational opportunities.

The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is a U.N. program that aims to provide long-term humanitarian and developmental assistance to children in developing countries.

Founded in 1946, the organization aims to ensure that children have access to quality education opportunities regardless of their gender, ethnicity or life circumstances.

UNICEF works to get children back to school after emergency situations or disasters and provides educational initiatives to give children in remote areas, as well as children with disabilities or those facing social exclusion, access to education.

The organization recently launched the “Let Us Learn” campaign, with the aim of bringing educational opportunities to the world’s most vulnerable children, focusing on Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Liberia, Madagascar and Nepal.

– Lauren Lewis

Sources: Global Partnership for Education 1, Global Partnership for Education 2, Global Partnership for Education 3, Reuters, U.N. Global Education First Initiative, UNESCO 1, UNICEF 1, UNICEF 2, UNICEF 3, UNESCO 2, UNESCO 3, UNESCO 4, UNESCO Institute for Statistics, World Bank 1, World Bank 2, World Bank 3
Photo: Flickr

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Opportunities Open Up for Girls in South Sudan

South Sudan
The Global Partnership for Education, an organization that builds education systems in developing and war-torn countries, is collaborating with USAID to focus on education for girls in South Sudan.

Educational opportunities are extremely limited for girls due to a combination of cultural biases and armed conflict.

“The situation is especially alarming since women and girls in South Sudan are more likely to die during childbirth than complete primary education,” according to the Education National Statistics Booklet 2012 and the South Sudan Statistical Yearbook.

The world’s newest country, South Sudan, is in a time of crisis. Not only are basic services such as education fragmented but children are at risk of forced labor, extreme poverty and are subjected to the violence around them.

A six-year program funded by the British government, Girls’ Education South Sudan (GESS), operates on the belief that educating girls is an important aspect of relieving severe poverty in communities. It began in April 2013 and will continue until September 2018 to raise awareness about the issue, provide financial support and work with policymakers.

With the support of organizations like GESS, Global Partnership seeks to build 25 girl-friendly schools in South Sudan’s neediest regions. Out of 10,000 anticipated students, 3,000 are expected to be girls.

In order to remedy the cultural aspects that serve as a barrier to girls’ education, separate wash facilities will be provided for them and teachers will receive training to foster a gender-sensitive environment. In addition, the national curriculum will be revised and new textbooks provided.

“A focus on education in these countries promotes peacebuilding and conflict mitigation, and can foster economic growth,” explained Global Partnership.

Since joining the Global Partnership in 2012, South Sudan has received a $36.1 million grant for the education program that is implemented by UNICEF South Sudan. Additionally, a $66 million grant was provided by USAID. Establishing education systems is helping to provide a sense of stability and hope for the future for South Sudan.

– Emily Ednoff

Sources: Global Partnership for Education, GESS
Photo: Flickr

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Five Reasons Educating Women Fights Poverty

Educating WomenGender parity in education around the globe has not yet been achieved but great strides are being made toward that goal.

Regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia remain challenges, as boys in these regions are still more than one-and-a-half times more likely to complete their secondary education than girls. Organizations such as UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank keep track of statistics like these in their quest to provide education to girls and women in need.

Data from these types of organizations also illustrates the greater benefits of educating women. Here are five major reasons that educating women benefits everyone:

1. Educated women tend to have smaller, healthier families. Women who stay in school longer are likely to be older when they marry and when they have their first child. Education provides more access to information about family planning and educated women are more likely to have fewer children. Additionally, women learn about immunizations and general medical care for their children. They may also learn how to treat preventable diseases and learn hygiene practices to keep their children healthy.

2. Educated women are more likely to contribute to the economy. The more women participate in a country’s workforce, the healthier its GDP becomes — and every year of additional education increases a person’s capacity to be productive in the workforce. Families also increase their income when both parents contribute, which leads to more families rising out of poverty. UNESCO data shows that if girls enjoyed the same access to education that boys do, per capita income would increase by 23 percent over 40 years.

3. Education combats the problem of hunger. Women who receive more education are older and have more access to life-saving information by the time they begin having children. They are more likely to recognize the signs of malnutrition and to recognize proper nutrition that will prevent their children from becoming malnourished or stunted.

4. Educating women counters the threat of violence and terrorism. If lacking education, both women and men are more likely to be less tolerant of those who look different, who speak a different language or practice a different religion. Increasing tolerance in communities that were previously under-educated serves to spread that tolerance around the world and women are in a prime position to promote this in further generations as caretakers of their own children.

5. Educated women are more likely to have educated children. Once they have experienced the benefits of education for themselves, women are likely to want their children to have the same benefits. This perpetuates the trends of smaller, healthier families, healthier economies and better-informed world citizens.

Not only is educating women one of the most efficient ways for aid organizations to make an impact on gender equality, it also benefits the greater community in terms of prosperity, health and peace.

– Katie Curlee Hamblen

Sources: Bloomberg, UNGEI, UNESCO, World Bank

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Human-Centered Designs for Poverty-Related Challenges

Kenya_Africa_health_povertyJocelyn Wyatt is the executive director of IDEO.org, a sister nonprofit to IDEO, a design and innovation firm. Wyatt was recently interviewed by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business on how human-centered designs help lift people out of poverty.

IDEO.org tackles world challenges through design by partnering with nongovernmental organizations, governments, foundations and nonprofits and then going to areas where human-centered designs can solve poverty-related challenges.

Wyatt says in the interview that IDEO.org does a lot of qualitative research by spending time with those who are severely impoverished in order to figure out what they are willing to pay for services that could really improve their lives. The IDEO.org team then brainstorms creative solutions to these problems.

“The way it improves lives is that the solutions we’re creating—instead of being things that are immediately discarded or not sustainable—are solutions that people actually use,” Wyatt says in the interview.

One project that IDEO.org is working on is tackling reproductive health in Zambia and Kenya. They are working with Marie Stopes International, a global nonprofit for sexual and reproductive services, to help adolescent and unmarried girls who are not yet ready to have their first child. Typically, Wyatt says, programs focus more on mothers and birth-spacing and on women stopping having children once they’ve reached the number they want to have.

However, this project has a three-part solution. The first part is a communications campaign, where characters known as the “Divine Divas” educate young girls about different forms of contraceptives. The second part is a peer-to-peer outreach program for girls to share what they know about contraceptives and local clinics. The third part is designing the actual clinic. The purpose of the project is to reduce instances of unplanned pregnancy.

A large part of the human-centered design is learning to have empathy, Wyatt says. The IDEO.org team is trained in connecting to, relating to and asking questions of the girls and making them feel comfortable. IDEO.org also works in a range of different sectors to help alleviate poverty, including agriculture, water, sanitation, health, finances and childhood development.

By shifting the focus to human-centered, practical solutions, organizations can more efficiently and sustainably address issues and bring about change.

– Kerri Whelan

Sources: University of Pennsylvania, IDEO 1, Marie Stopes, IDEO 2

Photo: Flickr

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The Cost of Education in South Africa

The-Cost-of-Education-in-South-Africa
South Africa’s education system is badly managed and poorly equipped, with students performing far behind their African peers, according to World Policy Blog.

With the government failing to provide children with a decent education, private and fee-paying schools are becoming more popular. But not everyone can afford to access these superior schools. The City Press decided to calculate the cost of sending your child to one of these schools up to grade 12 in South Africa and here is what they found:

  • Private school costs approximately $225,700.
  • An upper-income school was estimated to cost around $41,000.
  • An average fee-paying school costs more than $15,000.

These figures were calculated based on a child who starts school in 2016 and finishes in 2028 — and include every necessity such as stationary, supplies, uniforms and boarding costs.

South Africa has struggled to provide affordable quality public education, but low-cost private schools are now on the rise and are providing alternatives to the high cost of education in South Africa.

Instead of private schools only available to the elite, low-cost private schools are providing education to middle and lower-income families who feel the state education system is failing their children. According to the Economist, there are some low-cost private schools that cost as little as $1 per week.

Due to inadequate public schools, these low-cost private schools have a much bigger share of primary school pupils in developing countries than in developed ones. Elsewhere in Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana, in particular, have also seen a large increase in the number of low-cost private schools opening, according to World Policy Blog.

Although the South African government has been criticized for not doing enough to address the issues with their education system, the expansion of these low-cost private schools provides the possibility of quality education to students who cannot afford to attend elite private schools or even the average fee-paying government schools.

– Jordan Connell

Sources: Business Tech, The Economist, World Policy Blog
Photo: Google Images