Archive for category: Education

Information and stories on education.

Top 10 Reasons Why Female Education is Important

Top 10 Reasons Why Female Education is Important
From Cairo to Beijing, offering quality and universal education to young girls promotes progress for society as a whole. Carla Koppell of the United States Agency for International Development, better known as USAID, even called female education a “silver bullet” for empowerment and progress. To better understand the far-reaching effects of a few books and a classroom, here are the top 10 reasons why female education is important.

The Unmatched Importance of Female Education

  1. Increased Literacy: Of the 163 million illiterate youth across the globe, nearly 63 percent are female. Offering all children education will prop up literacy rates, pushing forward development in struggling regions.
  2. Human Trafficking: Women are most vulnerable to trafficking when they are undereducated and poor, according to the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking. Through providing young girls with opportunities and fundamental skills, this billion-dollar industry can be significantly undermined.
  3. Political Representation: Across the globe, women are underrepresented as voters and restricted from political involvement. The United Nations Women’s programmes on leadership and participation suggests that civic education, training and all around empowerment will ease this gap.
  4. Thriving Babies: According to the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative, children of educated mothers are twice as likely to survive past the age of five. Foreign aid for schoolhouses and curriculum development could greatly benefit the East African country of Burundi, where nearly 16,000 children die per year.
  5. Safe Sex: A girl who completes primary school is three times less likely to contract HIV. With these statistics in mind, The World Bank calls education a “window of hope” in preventing the spread of AIDS among today’s children.
  6. Later Marriage: As suggested by the United Nations Population Fund, in underdeveloped countries, one in every three girls is married before reaching the age of 18. In a region where a girl receives seven or more years of education, the wedding date is delayed by four years.
  7. Smaller Families: Increased participation in school reduces fertility rates over time. In Mali, women with secondary education or higher have an average of three children. Counterparts with no education have an average of seven children.
  8. Income Potential: Education also empowers a woman’s wallet by boosting her earning capabilities. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, also known as UNESCO, a single year of primary education has shown to increase a girl’s wages later in life by 20 percent.
  9. Thriving GDP: Gross domestic product also soars when both girls and boys are being offered educational opportunities. When 10 percent more women attend school, GDP increases by three percent on average.
  10. Poverty Reduction: When women are provided with equal rights and equal access to education, they go on to participate in business and economic activity. Increased earning power and income combat against current and future poverty through feeding, clothing and providing for entire families.

The sustainability and progress of all regions depend on the success of women across the globe. As President Obama said while addressing the United Nations General Assembly in 2012, “The future must not belong to those who bully women. It must be shaped by girls who go to school and those who stand for a world where our daughters can live their dreams just like our sons.”

– Lauren Stepp

Sources: PRB, U.N. Women, CFR, World Bank

Photo: Flickr

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Education: A Key Combatant of Poverty in Cameroon

Poverty in Cameroon
A recent trend in propositions to combat poverty in Cameroon has been to create more technical schools and training programs that will tailor education to more specific job fields. By so doing, recent graduates may find work as soon as they finish their education.

Like many African nations, Cameroon has a considerable number of natural resources and an untapped population of over 23 million people. The stagnation of economic potential has contributed heavily to increasing levels of national poverty in Cameroon.

Cameroon’s youth demographic consists of half of the population, thus representing a growing labor force that is a potential asset to the global market. However, the nation’s tertiary education system continues to emphasize traditional academic disciplines, leaving students unprepared to respond to economic change.

About 43 percent of Cameroon’s population has an incomplete or no formal education, and 67 percent of the working-age population has received no additional training at all. Unemployment is vastly higher among youth as compared to older demographics across all levels and types of education.

According to Cameroon’s Growth and Employment Strategic Paper, the government has proposed an investment program that essentially states the government will work closely with private industries that have the potential for significant growth and job creation. Such areas include tourism, communication technologies and infrastructure. Investments like these will hopefully boost the impact of human resources on the development of these industries’ productivity.

However, only so much can be done with the current number of schools in Cameroon. There are only two engineering and technology universities and two agriculture universities located in Buea (South West Cameroon) and Dschang (Western Cameroon).

This lack of availability of educational facilities not only hurts the economy, it is also detrimental to the nation’s healthcare system. The disease is a high contributor to death and poverty in Cameroon. In 2013, more than 10,000 people were diagnosed with malaria in the town of Maroua alone. Local newspapers estimated that about 1,000 people died as a result of the disease.

Furthermore, it is estimated there are two doctors for every 10,000 people in Cameroon. Many medical cases are handled by individuals who have inadequate medical training. With such a shortage of medical professionals, the accessibility of a medical education is prudent to maintaining and increasing economic development, which will help alleviate poverty in Cameroon.

Adequate funding is lacking to improve the healthcare situation, wherein 2014 there were an estimated 657,000 people with HIV/AIDS.

Cameroon has great potential; however, poverty still affects 40 percent of the population. Cameroon is looking to improve the status quo by creating more engineering, technology and medical schools to help future generations escape the cycle of poverty.

– Veronica Ung-Kono

Photo: Flickr

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Teaching Self-Reliance Worldwide

Self_Reliance_Worldwide
The ultimate goal of charitable aid for the poor should be to help recipients become self-reliant. Teaching self-reliance worldwide means that individuals will no longer need to depend on outside sources to live without the immediate threat of disease and starvation. Achieving self-reliance leads to stability and sustainability.

Many programs try to accomplish this vision by teaching families valuable skills such as efficient farming techniques and literacy. Evidence has shown that these methods are less costly and have a more permanent influence on the communities where they are implemented.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints teaches self-reliance worldwide.  It attempts to help struggling families achieve this goal by teaching them effective ways to seek employment, manage their time and money, start small businesses and develop leadership qualities.

Volunteers travel to countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe to teach free classes and help their students achieve personal goals. These volunteers range from college students to elderly couples, each of them donating up to two years of their lives to support these struggling communities.

The success stories of this program are as diverse as its students. One participant from Ghana, Irene, is a single mother of four children. She uses an old hand cranked sewing machine as her primary source of income. Carrying the sewing machine on her head, Irene goes from house to house and offers to sew traditional Ghanian dresses.

Irene says the classes help her learn how to network and communicate with customers. It has also helped her learn new business strategies, such as going to a busier public place to advertise her services. Most importantly, the classes have taught her how to manage her money and set aside amounts for future growth.

Although she has not even finished the program, Irene has said that her income has already grown noticeably. The economic benefits of teaching self-reliance worldwide could be staggering.

Another student, Susy, uses a small van to transport neighborhood children to and from school. Her business is still small, but LDS’ Self-Reliance has opened her eyes to many aspects of business management, such as record keeping and improving capital. Susy now has plans to work toward buying a larger van to transport more children. She also hopes to expand her business to include day care services.

The employment techniques offered in the Self Reliance classes have also proved incredibly useful. One student, Rafael, had been unemployed for seven months before setting foot in the Self Reliance Center. Volunteers taught him the importance of accruing multiple sources of information, making as many contacts as possible and setting up interviews.

Within six days, Rafael had found a job. “It was a miracle,” he says in an interview produced by the Self Reliance program. “My wife is very happy… I can now provide for our home and our children.”

– Emiliano Perez

Photo: Wikipedia

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Education Reform in Liberia: Repairing a Broken System

Education_LiberiaNew efforts on education reform are being implemented by the Liberian government through the recently developed Partnership Schools for Liberia.

Across Africa, bolstering public education infrastructure can be one of the best ways for governments to fight poverty in their own countries. UNESCO’s recent Education for All Global Monitoring Report cited that income jumps 10 percent for every grade finished and a country’s Gross Domestic Product benefits 0.37 percent.

As a global deficit of 69 million children out of primary school continues to grow in low-income countries, poverty threatens the societies in these nations.

Helping children to obtain basic reading skills has the potential to lift 171 million people out of poverty, almost double the primary school deficit. These results show the multiplying effect that education can have on income levels.

Liberia has recently taken steps towards education reform after being ravaged by Ebola. The African Business Review cites that “42 percent of children are out of school, and only 20 percent of children enrolled in primary school complete secondary school.”

These statistics are relatively high compared to education levels around the time of the Liberian civil war. Before the Ebola outbreak greatly affected the country, the Liberian Department of Education had enlisted the help of USAID to rebuild the school systems and replenish the trained workforce.

The aid organization cites that their “education programs focus on improving the quality of teaching and learning (especially in early grade reading and math) and increasing equitable access to safe learning opportunities for girls, as well as for youth who missed out on education due to the prolonged civil conflict.”

The relief efforts led to the passing of the Education Reform Act in 2011. The programs within the act looked to strengthen the degraded Liberian school system and provide the new framework more centralization with a way to gauge efficiency.

This year, the Ministry of Education will roll out a new program called the Partnership Schools for Liberia in September. The head of the Ministry of Education, George Kronnisanyon Werner, spoke to Medium last month about the change.

The project will take developing ideas from developed countries around the world and local African nations like South Africa and Kenya in order to design a system that, Werner says, can “adapt to our unique context.” Schools will be set up in conjunction with social organizations like NGOs, but funded by the public sector.

Initially, 120 schools will be opened in late 2016 so that methods and models can be tested before the program is implemented on a large scale. Werner hopes to “generate evidence before we scale further” so that funds are spent efficiently and results are guaranteed when expansion to the entire country is considered.

The Partnership Schools for the Liberia program looks to put the Liberian government in place to reduce the number of children out of primary school. With this tool at Minister of Education George Werner’s fingertips, he hopes to get one step closer to his mission “to provide every child, regardless of family background or income, access to high-quality education.”

– Jacob Hess

Photo: Flickr

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Mobile Schools in Mongolia: Expanding Enrollment

mobile schools in Mongolia

Since 2010, Mongolia has experienced a substantial and significant increase in the enrollment of kindergarten aged children, largely due to mobile schools through which thousands of nomadic children are given access to an early education.

Large strides have been made in Mongolia over the past decades to make a successful shift from a planned economy to a market democracy. However, despite this progress, the World Bank reported in 2008 that 35 percent of the population still lived below the poverty line.

The Mongolian Government and various humanitarian organizations addressed this issue by developing a number of resolutions to improve the living situations of the population. Many of these initiatives have been focused on educational development.

One such program is the Early Childhood Education Project of 2012 which aims to provide all young children with access to education. The components of this project are confronted with a unique cultural challenge. Mongolia is the least densely populated country on earth with roughly 1.7 people per square kilometer. A large portion of this population is nomadic and during the summer months, they reside in an area for only 2-3 weeks. Under these dispersed and fluid conditions, the young children of these nomadic families would never be able to attend a typical kindergarten.

In order to accommodate this common nomadic lifestyle, “mobile ger kindergartens” were developed. UNICEF Mongolia and Save the Children UK piloted these mobile schools in Mongolia in 1994, but their development accelerated when the Mongolian government and other organizations stepped in to assist with funding.

Tsendsuren Tumee, UNICEF Mongolia’s Early Childhood Development Officer, has reported, “Since 2012 more than 2600 children have attended ger kindergartens in Khuvsgul province . . . this year we established 10 more ger-kindergartens in the area with the help of the Government of Monaco providing nearly 280 children aged 2-5 with early childhood education programs and services. Access to early childhood has helped many children to develop to their full potential and perform better at schools.”

In addition to their benefits to young students, these mobile schools in Mongolia are cheaper to operate than their stationary counterparts throughout the country. They also assist the parents of these children by allowing them to spend more time with their herds, thus elevating their productivity.

In the report by UNICEF Mongolia, a mother named Jargal expressed the beneficial influence that these schools have for her family personally: “Summer is busy time for herders. We need to work extra hard in preparation for the cold winter ahead. Knowing that our son is safe at the kindergarten, learning new things and making friends, we feel so happy and do our work without any concern.”

The World Bank has reported that the overall trajectory of this project is a positive one. With it, young children will be better prepared for higher levels of education and their parents will be enabled to produce more. In addition, there will be decreased pressure on the government and other humanitarian participants.

The World Bank opines that more mobile ger kindergartens are needed to service the nomadic community which accounts for 40 percent of the total population. However, many are optimistic about the progress that has been made. The Asian Development Bank commented, “Reforms, streamlining, and repairs – mixed with ample optimism and dedication – are propelling Mongolia’s education system toward achieving its goal of education for all.”

– Preston Rust

Photo: UNICEF

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Aziz Sancar Creates Girls in STEM Project

Aziz Sancar
Aziz Sancar is one of the three recipients of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Currently, he serves as a professor of biochemistry and physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

Though he has been teaching and researching at UNC since 1982, Sancar’s education began in his native Turkey. He grew up in a large family in a predominantly Kurdish region of Turkey.

His early life taught him that education for women and men in Turkey was not equal, particularly in the Kurdish areas of Turkey, where girls often married at the age of 13. In an interview with Yahoo, Sancar noted that education for girls was not emphasized as a priority.

Even as a whole, the Turkish nation seems to give less attention to girls’ education. UNC Global states that, per the World Economic Forum’s most recent Global Gender Gap Report, the illiteracy rate is 1.9 for males in Turkey, but 9.4 for women.

Sancar told UNC Global, “As someone from rural Turkey, I understand the power of education. I know what it has done in my life. I want all girls in Turkey and around the world to have the same opportunity I had.”

To this end, Sancar recently launched a program in cooperation with the Harriet Fulbright Institute called Girls in STEM Project. The initiative is designed to increase female students’ interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

UNC Global shared that the project would span seven Turkish cities and host a series of three-day conferences, with both Turkish students and Syrian refugee students participating.

The project’s website details that 700 girls in 6th grade will participate, at no cost, by registering online. The first 100 girls to register in each city involved will be accepted.

Sancar told UNC Global, “We hope this is a beginning,” Aziz Sancar said. “We want to close the gender gap in education and in the workforce in Turkey, and this is one way we can encourage that to begin, to inspire girls to get involved in STEM.”

– Katherine Hamblen

Photo: Wikimedia

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India Sets New, Higher Education Standards

Education Standards

On Mar. 28, 2016, figures for the New Delhi, India budget were released. They showed an increase in attention to education standards. According to the Times of India, the 2015 plan allocated 24 percent and emphasized attention to classroom infrastructure and model resources. This year, 2016, that number has increased to 25 percent, with a focus on quality education and teacher training programs.

Prioritizing the Quality of Education

Presented by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government, the annual budget of Rs 46,600 will extract 95 percent of its expenses from its own resources and five percent from the central government. These figures are according to Delhi Finance Minister and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia. Other notable allowances in the plan are housing and urban development, public transportation, road infrastructure, and women’s safety and empowerment projects.

That the education standard tops the list, however, says much about the district’s plans and India’s promising development as a whole. On Mar. 31, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a restructuring of India’s national education system. The policy will shift from access to education to educational quality. The World Bank ranked the country’s gross enrollment ratio (GER) at a rate of 114 percent in 2012.

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), both governmental programs to enhance access and quality to primary and secondary education, will receive improvements. Evaluation will be implemented to document grade-wise learning goals, target learning weaknesses, and improve teacher accountability.

The prime minister also announced the introduction of 800 vocational schools. These will be specified secondary school training that provide students with tools to compete in a competitive global market.

Help from Outside Organizations

There are disparities between school attendance, literacy rates, and adequate educational infrastructure within rural and non-rural schools. The improved education standards will seek to improve these disparities the most. The India Education Fund (IEF) is a U.S. based foundation with the mission for providing high standard education to millions of Indian children trapped in the cycle of multi-generation poverty due to lack of privilege and marginalization. The organization is an example of an international group founded with the mission of education equality in India.

With the help of outside organizations, the provision of scholarships and resources to those unable to utilize public education, and the improvements of quality and accountability from within, the Indian government hopes to address the needs of its next generation of learners.

Better Education for Better Quality of Life

Delhi’s budget increase in public education serves as a microcosm of India’s focus as a nation. With increased enrollment, gender diverse classrooms and educational accessibility in poorer areas, the country has made significant progress as an emerging player in the international stage. Data released from the Brookings institute demonstrate direct correlation between higher education standards, clean water, functioning toilets and improved quality of life.

India’s steadfast dedication to country-wide educational improvement shows promise for its citizens.

– Nora Harless

Photo: NY Times

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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