Archive for category: Education

Information and stories on education.

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The Millennium Development Goals Results Show Success

The Millennium Development Goals Deadline Has Arrived
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) laid out eight specific targets to reduce extreme poverty and improve the living conditions of billions of people worldwide, from 2000-2015. The anticipated deadline has arrived and the results are positive, with a final report calling this “the most successful anti-poverty movement in history.”

Since 1990, the number of people living in extreme poverty has declined by more than half, falling from 1.9 billion to 836 million. In addition, according to the report the proportion of undernourished people in developing regions fell by almost half, from 23.3 percent in 1990-1992 to 12.9 percent in 2014-2016.

Below are more updated figures of the success of the MDGs:

  • Water: The target was met of halving the proportion of people who lack access to improved sources of water. Since 1990, 2.6 billion people have gained access to better water sources.
  • Mortality Rate: The under-five mortality rate has declined by more than half, from 12.7 million to less than 6 million and maternal mortality is down 45 percent worldwide.
  • Diseases: New HIV infections decreased by about 40 percent, from 2000 to 2013. In the same time period, tuberculosis prevention, treatment, and diagnosis solutions have saved the lives of 37 million. Since 2000, 6.2 million deaths of mostly children under 5 were prevented from malaria.
  • Education: The primary school enrollment rate in the developing regions has reached 91 percent with the number of children out of school dropping from 100 million to an estimated 57 million. There are also many more girls going to school compared to 15 years ago with an estimated two-thirds of developing countries closing the gender gap in education.

Despite significant gains, there are still issues to be addressed. The report indicates that gender equality, maternal health and extreme poverty and hunger remain problems in the effort to improve lives across the world.

Coming up this month, the global community will convene at the United Nations for a summit to establish a new development agenda and to adopt a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will provide a blueprint for policy and funding for the next 15 years.

– Paula Acevedo

Sources:  United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Foundation Blog,
Photo: Flickr

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New Orleans: 10 Years After Hurricane Katrina

On August 23, 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated a region known for having a good time, especially on Mardi Gras. Ten years later, experts are looking beyond the beads and glitter, wishing to improve demographic and social discrepancies that were present before Katrina.

Before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, concentrated poverty was mostly overlooked with 40 percent of individuals residing in New Orleans living at or below the poverty line.

Out of the people who evacuated in the wake of the category 5 hurricane, a majority of the poor without means of transportation were left to wait out the storm as 80 percent of the city was submerged.

As of 2013, the poverty rate in the city of New Orleans has decreased to 27 percent, but with a drop in the city’s overall population since before Katrina, this number remains unchanged.

Fortunately, data shows that the number of the city’s poor residents has dropped from 39 percent in 2000 to 30 percent between 2009-2013.

Since Katrina, $71 billion in federal funds has improved both levees and created an improved disaster management plan to help improve the city and learn from the mistakes for future natural disasters.

Now, the city’s focus is to continue improving and finding different solutions to make the city great once again. This starts with educating the children.

Before Katrina hit, New Orleans had one of the worst school systems in the country.

Due to a majority of public schools being converted into charter schools after Katrina, New Orleans outperforms the rest of the state in terms of high school graduation rate, rising from 54 percent in 2004 to 73 percent in 2014.

With students having a greater chance of graduating from high school, future students will have a greater chance of attending college and preventing their families from becoming impoverished.

In the words of Allison Plyer, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, “Greater New Orleans is in some ways rebuilding better than before.”

– Alexandra Korman

Sources: Brookings, Forbes, The Washington Post, USA Today

Photo: Unsplash

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The Basic Education Coalition: Education for All

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Education plays a vital role in transforming a developing country into a fully developed nation. By educating the youth, countries are able to ensure a stronger future and promote innovation in their own communities, thus making them more globally competitive and increasing the overall quality of life.

The Basic Education Coalition is “an independent, non-profit organization working to ensure children around the world have access to quality basic education.” Working together with 17 other organizations, the Basic Education Coalition will be a key player in the development of the developing world and the bettering of children’s lives throughout the world.

In 2000, several global leaders founded the Basic Education Coalition with the established goal of Education for All (EFA), with the goal that “all children receive an education that enriches their lives, expands their opportunities, and empowers them to participate in society.” In order to set more distinct goals for themselves, the EFA developed six goals which were then endorsed by several member countries and their leaders.

One EFA goal is to expand and improve the comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for disadvantaged children. The key aspect in this is the provision of both care and education. Often, children in extreme poverty are made to worry about where their next meal will come from, if their parents will come home and if they will be able to survive.

By providing care to these children, these troubles somewhat disappear and they are able to focus on their education, and on being children. Childhood is where a lot of a people’s personality is formed and if the global community raises kind and education-loving children, we are only creating a stronger future for ourselves.

Another key goal of EFA is “eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender parity in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality.”

In many developing countries with relatively accessible education platforms, there is a huge gender disparity with boys being much more educated than girls. In the future, this will only lead to increases in population growth, domestic violence and lower self-esteem and self-respect for many women in the developing world.

When young girls are provided with a strong education they are able to gain the confidence to run their own businesses, innovate, support their families and make decisions that benefit their futures.

This has become an increasing focus in the global community and many NGOs have been created solely to help women and girls in developing countries to gain the confidence and education to support themselves.

Some of the other EFA goals include a 50 percent improvement in levels of adult literacy levels by 2015, compulsory education for children, especially girls, and ensuring equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programs.

By teaming up with global leaders and several different countries throughout the world, the Basic Education Coalition has created a buddy system in which every nation must make sure that their counterparts are doing well. By working together, the youth of the world will be able to grow up in a totally different, and much better, world than our own.

– Sumita Tellakat

Sources: Basic Ed, Interaction
Photo: Huffington Post

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Kenyan-Educated Student Receives a BTEC Award

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Last week, a Kenyan-educated student at Braeside High School, George Benson Lyimo, was given the award for “Outstanding BTEC International Student of the Year 2015” at the National BTEC Awards in London. Among more than 800 nominations, Lyimo received the award that recognizes top performers among more than one million students studying business and technology.

The school where Lyimo is educated originally struggled with providing a quality primary education for kids. According to UNICEF, enrollment levels for primary school rose nine years ago from 5.9 million children in school to 7.5 million in the time span of four years. The primary school completion rate also increased at this time from 62 percent to almost 80 percent.

To pursue a better education in Kenya, the award winner left his home in Tanzania in 2012 to earn a specialized diploma from the Pearson-owned Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC). He said that he feels lucky to have received a good education because some areas in Kenya and Tanzania are still developing their education systems.

“In the country I come from, not so many people are privileged and my hopes for the future are that I can go and make Tanzania a better place. I want to give back to the world. I want to make the world a better place,” Lyimo said.

The young student’s dreams may be well in his reach.

Lyimo received this award for his courage and dedication to his studies. The judges praised the student for leaving home to pursue business and technology and for ultimately performing very well in school. Lyimo earned top marks in his classes, receiving a triple-starred distinction. According to his teachers, he was quiet, but motivated in class.

“George was quite a shy character, but clearly had a determination and interest, particularly in technology,” Lyimo’s high school’s Executive Headteacher Andy Hill said.

He was creative and innovative as a business student, launching his own social network called Texeer.com. He aided the school’s IT department, although he had no previous computer training. Lyimo seems to have a knack for business computing.

Lyimo will put his talent to good use. The high school graduate will go on to student business and computing at Huddersfield University in the United Kingdom.

Not only did Lyimo excel in classes, but he also contributed to charitable organizations. He organized events to support children’s education in Kenya.

In conjunction with his business and technology diploma and his charity work, Lyimo feels that he has grown as a businessman and a person. “My BTEC has helped me understand so much about creating new things to solve new problems and meet the needs of current and future generations,” he said.

In response to all of his hard work, one of his classmates said this: “He’s an all-around amazing person, and I don’t think I know anyone who deserves this award more than he does.”

– Fallon Lineberger

Sources: Standard Digital News, UNICEF
Photo: FE Week

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Teen Creates Mobile Learning Centers

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Technology has helped create a learning landscape that expands the access of education to citizens living in rural villages and children living in poverty. Enrollment numbers are rising, but children are not learning enough when they enter school. Some children are not able to attend school or drop out because their families face financial challenges that keep them from learning and sometimes have to join the workforce.

Mobile phones help increase literacy rates in developing countries by providing access to reading materials. There are 123 million youth who cannot read or write and most of them do not have any access to books. Schools in Sub-Saharan Africa lack the resources to have textbooks for their students.

UNESCO found that many parents read stories to their children from mobile phones and that it helps empower women as they read six times more than men on their mobile devices.

Liza Villanueva, an Anaheim resident, had another idea for mobile learning: a mobile learning bus that travels between cities.

She created an international foundation to help children in rural villages without access to education in the Philippines through a Girl Scout Project. Her community service requirement through the Girl Scout’s Gold Award created an opportunity for Villanueva to invest her time in helping children. Therefore, the iDream Express was created in the Philippines with the support of local churches volunteering to keep the program running to provide access to education in the Philippines.

Villanueva, who is getting ready for her freshman year in college, travels to the Philippines to visit her family. She found out many of the children on the street were not attending school and developed the learning center to provide access to education for these children.

The organization is only a year old, but Villanueva says that there are about 30 children who show up at the different locations for education from the iDream Express. One challenge is that many children wander from city to city because of their living conditions on the street, which makes it hard to keep track of who is showing up to fulfill educational needs.

“I feel that every country is in need of mobile learning centers because education is not accessible, provided for, or enforced everywhere,” says Villanueva. “I plan to expand iDream Express globally, but next in line are Mexico and India.”

The Philippines ranks 80th in the world in access to basic knowledge. 88.2 percent of people are enrolled in primary school, and 75.8 percent are enrolled in upper secondary education. There are still six million young people who are not enrolled in school in the Philippines.

To help Villanueva expand education in the Philippines and around the world, you can donate to the cause on the iDream Express Crowdrise page.

– Donald Gering

Sources: GSMA, The Guardian, OC Register, Social Progress Imperative, UNESCO
Photo: YASC

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Solar Powered Classrooms Coming to Kenya

Solar Powered Classrooms Coming to Kenya
Kenya currently ranks 101st in the world in access to basic information, which includes literacy rates, primary and secondary school enrollments, and gender parity in secondary enrollment. In addition, only 39 percent of the population has internet access.

Safaricom Foundation, an African telco, is looking to change the current landscape by providing every student a school with a room full of computers to boost education in Kenya.

A 20-by-9-foot classroom can hold up to 40 students and be equipped with 11 desktop computers. Each classroom comes with monitors, a server, and a projector. The building is made from local materials to boost local revenues while providing a building with educational value.

Aleutia is a company which builds computers for schools and clinics that are powered by solar panels at a cost of about $20,000. They are currently building solar powered classrooms in 47 villages around Kenya. $10,000 goes toward structural costs and the other $10,000 goes toward the equipment. The solar panels come pre-installed in order to reduce costs.

Two classrooms can be preloaded onto a 40-foot flatbed truck.

Aleutia’s founder, Mike Rosenberg, wants to create local micro-grids that will power communities and allow the power to transfer as needed. So if the school has extra power available it can be transferred to a clinic building that is using more power.

Kenya has made significant progress since 1999 to ensure that more children are getting an education and becoming more literate. They spend on average 6.7 percent of their GNP on education, which is an increase from 5.4 percent in 1999. However, one million children are still not attending school.

Primary education in Kenya is free, but families do not have the money or resources to provide for their children to excel in school and compete globally. The classrooms from Aleutia and Safaricom can reduce the costs for families and help Kenyan children become more competitive on the global level by providing them with resources not available to other parts of the world.

An estimated 20,000 kids will benefit from the classrooms in 47 Kenyan counties that are gaining energy from the sun to provide internet access and learning resources to students.

– Donald Gering

Sources: Fast Company, Good News Network, Social Progress Imperative, UNESCO
Photo: Google Images

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Improving Education Levels for Women in the Middle East

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Women in the Middle East are subjected to extreme patriarchal systems that often deprive them of their human rights and their dignity. In 1995, Dr. Golnar Mehrah a UNICEF education consultant published a report titled “Girls drop out of primary school in the Middle East and North Africa.”

In his report, Dr. Mehrah set out to discover why despite the fact that girls’ enrollment rates had increased significantly since 1985, girls were dropping out before the 5th grade. In this report, he found that there existed a gender disparity in the enrollment of girls in primary school in the Middle East and North Africa. The primary reason for both male and female dropouts in the Middle East and North Africa region was poverty.

Their parents pulled them from school in order to help with domestic and agricultural tasks. In many cases, there were a lack of basic programs for students such as an available teacher for a given grade. In some villages in the Middle East and North Africa regions lack educators past a certain grade level making it difficult for students to be promoted to the next grade.

A report by the Population Reference Bureau on the Middle East and North Africa region sheds light on the challenges that women face in the region. Two key factors highlighted in the report was the MENA culture and the oil based economy. The report shows a clear gender biased toward men in the region.

In the report, women were asked if they could only afford to send one child to a university and they had a son and a daughter who would it be. An overwhelming majority of the women said they would pay for their son over their daughter to go to school. The statistics were shocking with 39 percent in favor of the son going on to higher education and only 8 percent in favor of the daughters.

There is a clear son preference in Middle Eastern culture that has privileged them with certain advantages in their society. In certain places in the MENA region this gender biased is enforced by a set of codified laws. This trend is slowly changing with the rise of women activists in Islamic society who demand better treatment for women.

Recently a news report from U.S. News and World Report shows a rise in enrollment rates for women in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa region as of 2014. The current global score for the Middle East and North Africa region is 31 which is actually higher than the global average of 30.

As foreign aid and development enter the region, many MENA countries are seeing the economic benefits of breaking away from rigid tradition and encouraging women’s participation in education. Egypt, in particular, is making great strides toward women’s education.

– Robert Cross

Sources: Public Reference Bureau, UNICEF Report, US News and World Report
Photo: Open Equal Free

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Kenyan Schoolgirls Dedicate a Poem to Water

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Kenyan schoolgirls wrote a poem about water; it meant two beautiful things. One, the girls were receiving a quality education. And, two, their community was given access to healthy sanitation.

“Dear Water” expresses the gratitude the girls have for the newly drilled borehole in their community, which has made their community cleaner and safer. In the poem, the girls describe the great lengths they used to travel to get water, time that would take away from their education. Now, the new source of water has given them more time for studies, eliminated preventable diseases and made a huge difference in many lives.

According to World Vision, a child under five dies every 90 seconds due to diarrhea caused by contaminated water and poor sanitation. Easily accessible and clean water eliminates avoidable deaths. Providing healthy sanitation for people around the world must become a priority in order to break the cycle of extreme poverty.

After gaining access to clean water, the girls were nothing but grateful. Beautifully written and recited, the poem proves the power of quality education. Education also has the power to break the cycle of poverty and contributes to a sustainable lifestyle for many girls. Secondary education reduces the rates of child marriage, therefore lowering the risk of HIV and AIDS in girls and provides the opportunity for girls to work and earn a wage.

Clean water is vital to healthy living and accurately depicted in “Dear Water” as a blessing. Clean water prevents diseases, ensures hydration and provides quality sanitation. When placed directly in a community, it eliminates the need to walk miles and miles to reach it, freeing valuable time for school and guaranteeing that children receive an education, which in addition to healthy sanitation is a key component in ending global poverty.

– Sarah Sheppard

Sources: Global Citizen, World Vision, YouTube,
Photo: World Vision

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How Education Affects Wealth and Prosperity in the United States

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Fifteen-years-ago, education was a golden ticket to a good secure job in the United States. The idea was to go to school, get a four-year degree and land a good career. College education was just that: education. Disciplines did not matter as much as the actual degree.

Times have changed. Increased pressure from other countries has created strong competition and graduating Americans are not given preference over other people anymore. Employers are looking for the skill sets necessary to complete the job and they are not afraid to outsource to get it.

Specialization has become more and more trendy and two-year degrees and specific training courses have surged in popularity. A May 2015 study from Georgetown University suggests that college graduates will earn $1 million more than high school graduates.

This is not new as it has been widely known for a while. The kicker though, the highest paying majors earn $3.4 million more that those with the lowest paying majors.

The study suggested that STEM related fields heavily out paid social sciences. For example, a bachelor’s degree in engineering or architecture earns an average of $83k annually over the course of their career, while a graduate degree holder in education earns $60k over their career on average.

The relationship is quite complex. Another influencing factor was whether graduates worked in the for-profit, nonprofit or public sector; which industry they worked for; and whether they participated in professional development after they had started their careers. Educators working business jobs, for example, would make more than an engineer working as a teacher.

As time has gone by, humanity studies have declined and business and STEM degrees are on the rise in America. This is heavily influenced by what is in demand in the labor market. Business degrees make up 26 percent of college-educated workers. Although humanity majors are down, liberal arts and humanity class enrollment has gone up due to more rigorous general education requirements.

Attainment is another major finding in the study. Among the 15 major groups, biology and life sciences majors are most likely to earn a graduate degree, while communications and journalism majors are the least likely to earn a graduate degree. Fifty-eight percent of biology and life sciences majors earn a graduate degree, compared to 21 percent of communications and journalism majors.

Better counseling and mentorship programs are needed to help future students become fully educated about the degrees they decide to pursue before enrolling. An August 2015 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis looked at how college degrees affected a person’s income and ability to manage financial hardships such as the recession. They analyzed data from 1992 to 2013 to determine trends, reporting wealth and income correlations with racial and ethnic groups.

They found that regardless of skin color or ethnicity, the median net worth of families headed by someone with a four-year degree was 3.6 to 9.8 times larger than families headed by less-educated persons. However, when it came to race, the landscape looked a lot different in terms of handling recessions.

Asians and Caucasians who had four year degrees withstood economic recessions better than their uneducated counterparts and typically accumulated more wealth over the long run. Blacks and Hispanics fared worse. The study concluded that Hispanic and black families with degrees typically fared “significantly worse” than those without degrees. College-educated Hispanic and black families experienced declines in wealth during and after the economic collapse of 2008.

The higher education system in the United States has been continuously scrutinized for not doing enough to provide opportunities for minorities. This is an easy narrative to blame for all the problems. The reality is much more complex. Racism does affect mental health and has led to many problems in society that affect economics and social welfare but there is still much unknown according to the study.

The U.S. must fund more studies and strategize better on how to deal with these imbalances. Further research is needed to understand why there are such disparities in wealth among racial and ethnic groups.

– Adnan Khalid

Sources: Center on Education and the Workforce, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Photo: Rainbow Educational Consulting

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Syrian Brain Freeze: An Uneducated Generation

The Syrian refugee crisis is one of the largest humanitarian crises of our time. Since the conflict began almost five years ago, more than seven million Syrians have been displaced and four million are living in refugee camps in neighboring countries. Among those four million, one million are children.

Syria had one of the best education rates in all of the Middle East before conflict erupted during the Arab Spring. Almost all of Syrian children were enrolled in primary school, and literacy rates were above 94 percent. That all changed once violence consumed the nation.

Basic education enrollment in Syria went from 100 percent to an average of 50 percent, but heavy conflict zones such as Aleppo have seen enrollment rates as low as 6 percent.

Syria is a vortex of intertwining complex problems, such as war and violence, that has leading nations and nongovernment organizations preoccupied with exerting their most valuable resources into their main objective: preserving human life and dignity.

The consequence of this is that other important issues such as education, sanitation and economic development are being neglected. Together, they will have dire consequences on the future of Syria.

An entire generation of Syrians may go uneducated. According to Save the Children, three million Syrian children overall are out of school. That means three million youth are deprived of economic opportunities, and more are susceptible to be recruited by radical and extremist groups that promise them a future of prosperity.

The violence has decimated educational facilities around Syria as well. It is estimated that to repair or replace damaged facilities, it would cost an estimated 2 billion GBP. More importantly, the resulting uneducated population will impact the future Syrian economy in a large way.

It is estimated that the future economy will lose 5.4 percent of its GDP because of the lack of skilled workers. This equates to almost 1.5 billion GBP.

There is hope, though. The United Nations had called for $224 million to ensure that the Syrian youth receive education. The United Nations also passed two resolutions to help aid reach its destination faster: resolution 2165 and 2191, which, among other things, authorized United Nations aid operations into Syria from neighboring countries without requiring the consent of the Syrian government.

Private companies such as Pearson, one of the largest publishers of education books in the world, are donating money to help educate the children. Pearson is planning to spend 1 million euros to help find solutions for Syria’s refugee education crisis and another 500,000 euros to support two education centers in Amman, Jordan.

With so many parents attempting to send their children to school, private schools with their subsidized programs are attempting to fill the void. While some may question the ethics behind building private institutions to provide humanitarian aid, Rob Williams, Chief Executive of War Child U.K.—a campaign that works to protect children in war—believes they might help.

He says that “there is evidence that private solutions can be quicker and the cost per pupil lower than with government solutions.” A combination of public and private projects will help quickly address a huge growing problem.

It may not be a permanent solution, but at the moment all resources available must be allocated to providing the necessary aid to end the conflict. The United States must also contribute and urge other nations to end the conflict and protect the children. An educated Syria will be better equipped to deal with the uncertain future.

– Adnan Khalid

Sources: The Guardian, Save the Children 1, Save the Children 2, Save the Children 3, United Nations
Photo: Flickr