Archive for category: Education

Information and stories on education.

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Developing Countries Need to Raise Enrollment of Disabled Children

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A new report released last week by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has detailed how an estimated 500,000 children with physical and mental disabilities are not enrolled within South Africa’s primary education system.

The monitoring group underscores within their report the growing trend worldwide of children with disabilities failing to become enrolled in primary education programs, specifically in developing countries and regions grappling with conflict.

The report was compiled based on individual interviews with 70 parents across South Africa; researchers traveled throughout KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Gauteng and the Northern and Western Capes in late 2014.

In reference to South Africa, the report asserts, “Although the government claims it has achieved the MDG of enrolling all children in primary schools by 2015, HRW found that in reality, across South Africa many children with disabilities are not in school.”

The report also details the failure of many primary schools to accommodate disabled students and provide adequate educational services, as well as inherent discrimination against certain students through the application of additional fees.

Hannah Kuper, the co-director of the International Centre for Evidence in Disability at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, argued in a recent interview, “Many, if not most, of disabled children are not enrolled in schools in developing countries. We need to raise awareness that disabled children have the right to attend school, and that including them often involves only small changes in the school or teaching methods, or even just in attitudes.”

She offered potential solutions for this problem in detail — “The first thing that we need is more data in order to know how to enroll children with disabilities in school. We need to know which children are most excluded and why, in order to see how to overcome these barriers. And we need to know what works best to address the needs of disabled children when they are in school, so that they can have the best education possible.”

The Malawian Ministry of Education announced that they had successfully mainstreamed over 90,000 disabled children into their primary school systems as part of their Inclusive Education Program. The program has also offered funding for structural modifications to schools, including the installation of ramps and handicap restrooms compatible with disabled students.

The author of the HRW report, Elin Martínez, questioned the complacency of the South African government in discriminating against education opportunities for disabled children. “The South African government needs to admit that it is not providing quality education to all of its children – in fact, no schooling at all to many who have disabilities.”

Qinisela, a South African mother of an eight-year-old with Down’s Syndrome, told HRW researchers, “We tried to put him in a [mainstream] school but they said they couldn’t put him in that school because he has disabilities […] because of Down’s Syndrome he isn’t like other children so they [said they] can’t teach him. At the therapy, they promised to phone if there’s a space in a special school. I’ve been waiting since last year.”

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were designed by the United Nations to replace the near completed Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), will be put into place next year and include several regulations intended to improve the lives of disabled children, specifically within primary education and employment.

South Africa has attempted to remain active in the push disability advocacy, as they adopted policies to prohibit the exclusion of disabled children from primary education in 2001 and were one of the first countries to ratify the United Nations Disability Rights Convention in 2007. Despite these significant policy advancements, many officials have expressed concerns about disabled children’s access to primary education not just in South Africa, but across the developing world.

Jo Bourne, the Chief of Education for UNICEF, warned in a press statement, “Despite recent progress, there are still some 59 million primary-age children and 65 million adolescents out of school—often children living in poverty, girls, children with disabilities, children from ethnic minorities, children living in conflict or those engaged in child labour. These children and young people are among the most disadvantaged citizens from across the developing world and are not only excluded from the opportunity of education and learning for their own individual development, they are missing out on the opportunity to contribute to their communities and economies when they reach adulthood.”

– James Thornton

Sources: Malawi Nyasa Times, The Guardian
Photo: The Guardian

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Youth Employment Solutions Come with Ambitious New Goals

youth_employment
A world in which every youth has access to employment may sound a little far-fetched, but this is just what global organization Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) strives to achieve.

Acknowledging International Youth Day, which comes around every August 12, the S4YE coalition is initiating a five-year strategy which will focus on the specific challenges that youth face in receiving employment across the world.

S4YE is a global coalition made up of civil society actors, government officials, foundations, private sector entities, international organizations and young people endeavoring to help the 600 million youth who are unemployed and simultaneously not receiving education or any kind of additional training across the globe.

“In 2014 nearly 500 million young people around the world are unemployed, inactive, underemployed, or engaged in insecure employment,” states the S4YE.

Tackling such an issue will not be easy, but strides are being taken to make a difference. Over the course of a 15-year initiative, the organization’s first ambitious strategy is to support 150 million youth worldwide by 2030.

Although unemployment is an issue affecting an astronomical amount of people, S4YE is specifically focusing on areas where it is a national priority including the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia.

According to an article by the World Bank, the addition of a billion more people entering the workforce in the coming decade means that at least five million more jobs will need to be created each month to meet the demands. If this cannot be done, youth will find themselves in a place of inopportunity, which will only lead to social and political instability.

The magnitude of the problem is grave; if nothing changes for the unemployed youth—with 1 million more youth in Africa and India turning 15 each year—the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population will fall into poverty.

S4YE identifies some of the challenges of accomplishing total youth employment, which include developing a skilled workforce, creating well-functioning markets and ensuring a stable middle-class consumer base. Essentially, traditional models of engagement may be abandoned to guarantee that millions will have the opportunity to escape poverty.

Despite the inherent obstacles, it is S4YE’s vision to see a world where all youth have access to job opportunities that empower them, so they are able to share their prosperity with the world.

Potential solutions for these challenges have also been identified and include leveraging public and private investments for job creation, research and evaluation to design an education based training, and finally, leadership is needed to identify what strategies are and aren’t working, implementing them into the design of future policies and investments.

As our world population continues to climb, it is up to organizations like S4YE to generate creative solutions to keep pace with a rapidly expanding presence and ensure that every human has an opportunity for a life well lived.

– Nikki Schaffer

Sources: S4YE, World Bank
Photo: Twitter

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Smartphones for Education Globally

smartphones_for_EducationEveryone knows that education plays a critical role in unlocking a successful future, but that education does not need to be earned in a schoolhouse. Especially if the closest schoolhouse is several miles away and lacking pencils and paper. Online classes are not particularly new; online degrees became available in the United States in the mid-’90s however as technology began to flourish so did the popularity of distant learning programs.

Online courses have become appealing to international students, and especially those in developing countries because they are available anywhere in the world that where there is internet access and they are affordable. The Khan Academy — one of the most successful online schools — claims that 30 percent of their students are non-American.

The argument has been made that online courses are not as revolutionary to developing countries as they have been predicted to be. Opponents contend that because the necessary technology, a tablet or smartphone, and the bandwidth or Internet access, is not currently available in economically struggling countries, it makes more sense to direct aid towards building schools or encourage the governments of developing countries to focus their agendas on improving their countries educational institutions.

But what if instead of focusing on the traditional avenues to increasing education, philanthropists and governments got on board with investing in smartphones for education?

While online classes have the potential to bridge the education gap between wealthy and poor countries, the missing piece is access to the necessary online learning tools, namely a tablet or phone and bandwidth. edX is a non-profit organization that offers free courses for students.

The courses range from high school to university level and beyond. While the courses are free, they provide options to receive certifications for a small fee, which all goes towards creating a financially sustainable organization. Professors from across the U.S. including several who from Harvard, Berkeley and MIT teach the classes.

Anant Agarwal is the leader of this massively open online courses (MOOC) organization. He predicts that once governments realize that high-quality online learning content is available through organizations such as edX, that they will begin investing in the infrastructure necessary for their citizens to access this wealth of information.

It is more economical for governments or NGOs to provide students with the technology for online classes than to build the roads or buildings to make attending a physical school accessible. Even in the developing world, the majority of people already own a cell phone and some even a smartphone. 62 percent of Nigerians surveyed by Global Attitudes said they owned a cellphone and 27 percent of them reported owning a smartphone. While this is nowhere near the 64 percent of Americans who own smartphones, it is a start.

Governments and NGOs should consider investing in providing the necessary technology for students to participate in online classes as a means of gaining their education. Students will be able to access a higher level and standard of education and lift themselves out of poverty by fulfilling the requirements for a successful career and future through online courses.

– Brittney Dimond

Sources: The Verge, College Classes, CE
Photo: Baltic Grid

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Education and the Sustainable Development Goals

Education and the Sustainable Development GoalsLong idolized were the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight targets created and adopted by the United Nations in 2000. Central to their aim was the eradication of global poverty by improving maternal health and access to clean water, food and education while reducing the number of people living on under $1.25 a day across the developing world.

However, the days of the Millennium Development Goals are over. They expired this year after 15 years mixed with success and failure. A new set of global development goals is now on the horizon: the Sustainable Development Goals. Once again, there will be a specific goal tailored to improve equal education access for all. But before delving into how that goal is currently shaping up, it is worth examining how education fared with the Millennium Development Goals.

Goal two of The Millennium Development Goals aimed to achieve universal primary education. The goal only had one target: “ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.”

Unfortunately, this target was not met. On the bright side, the number of children globally that now attend primary school has risen dramatically since 1990. Enrollment in the developing world has risen to 91 percent, but the goal was for universal primary education, meaning all children everywhere. There is also still a fairly large gender gap in some areas. Of the 57 million kids out of school, 33 million are in Sub-Saharan Africa and 55 percent of those 33 million children are girls.

So where are the Sustainable Development Goals heading in terms of education development in the next 15 years? First off, education gets another specific goal for itself. The target this time is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all,” not all that different from the Millennium Development Goal before it.

The Sustainable Development Goals’ “vision is to transform lives through education, recognizing the important role of education as a main driver of development.” Looking to continue with the progress created by the Millennium Development Goals, goal four of the Sustainable Development Goals will look to expand access to all by providing 12 years of free, publicly-funded, high-quality equal education. Nine of these years will be compulsory.

Particular emphasis is put on the quality of education going forward. By increasing quality of education, the 100-year education gap between the developed and developing has the potential to be reduced. Another benefit of an improvement in the quality of education is that it will improve learning outcomes. How can this be done? By “strengthening inputs, processes and evaluation of outcomes and mechanisms to measure progress.”

Another facet to quality education is ensuring that the teachers are well trained, empowered, motivated and supported. This ensures a higher level of quality when it comes to education.

Often seen as a gateway out of poverty, education is an extremely important issue when it comes to development in the developing world. It will be interesting to track the evolution of the Sustainable Development Goals’ development toward a fully-fledged goal. Hopefully, it can continue the inroads created by the Millennium Development Goals and improve education for the millions of children without it.

– Gregory Baker

Sources: UNDP, UNESCO UN Millennium Goals, UN Sustainable Development,
Photo: Flickr

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Feeding Children in Egypt to Boost Attendance Rates

Attending School = Having Food in Egypt
In June 2015, the European Union funded a project for the World Food Programme (WFP) that encourages 100,000 children in Egypt to attend school.

The four-year project, called Enhancing Access of Children to Education and Fighting Child Labour aims to offer children, especially girls, incentives to pursue education.

Fifteen percent of children in Egypt eventually end up working to help support their families. The WFP’s goal of feeding children in Egypt to boost attendance rates involves providing snacks and take-home rations for children who maintain an 80 percent school attendance rate.

The daily in-school snack, date bars, offers valuable vitamins and minerals for students. For most children, the bars are their first meal of the day. The take-home rations of rice and oil equal the value of what children could earn from a month of work.

By using food incentives, WFP hopes to encourage parents to send children to school instead of out to work. In addition, they hope to break the patriarchal idea where young girls are solely expected to stay home and be married.

“The concept they have is the girl is going to get married and stay home, so if they need to get one of their children educated, they’re going to focus on the boys. With our project, we focus on the girls because we feel we are their chance to get an education,” says Amina Al Korey, communications officer for WFP in Egypt.

The girls get first priority registering for the community schools supported by the WFP and supervised by the Egyptian Ministry of Education. Boys can be admitted but only if spots still remain.

Larry Summers, former World Bank chief economist says, “Investment in girls’ education may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world.”

Girls who attend school will make up to 25 percent more in wages in the future, be healthier and more capable of supporting a family, and could even save malnourished children, simply by being given a secondary education.

Al Korey says, “Whenever I speak to the girls, they’re always just so enthusiastic about actually going to school. They don’t just feel good about getting an education and getting a chance to take a different path.”

WFP also plans to support mothers with income-generating projects, such as breeding goats, making soaps and selling and growing vegetables.

Lubna Alaman, WFP’s representative and county director in Egypt, says, “Through partnerships like this, WFP hopes to make a child’s simplest dream come true.”

At the conclusion of the four-year project, WFP hopes to see more girls excited about pursuing an education and bettering their future.

– Kelsey Parrotte

Sources: Takepart, WFP
Photo: Flickr

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Philanthropy University Works to Empower Social Workers

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Education has always been heralded as a champion of peace and understanding. Worldwide, people from all walks of life understand that education is one of the best ways to provide better opportunities for their children, socially and economically.

A new nonprofit organization named Philanthropy University has attempted to combine both like no other has before. The organization offers leaders opportunities to strengthen their skills and grow their network of peers and mentors, ultimately gaining skills that will help them make a more meaningful and lasting impact in the world today.

Amr Al-Dabbagh, the founder of Philanthropy U shared his excitement for the project.

“Imagine a workforce of social change professionals who are primed, positioned and skilled to impact the lives of millions of people and effectively change the world with their work. This is the vision of Philanthropy University.”

The program offers free, dynamic courses online in leadership and management. Currently, courses on essential nonprofit strategies and global social entrepreneurship are starting late September.

Courses last 5-8 weeks and require a commitment of 2-3 hours watching videos, reading articles, participating in class discussion, and completing individual and/or team assignments.

The courses are taught by renowned instructors and reviewed by Philanthropy U’s curriculum and advisory committees—which contains educators from prominent schools such as Stanford and UC Berkeley.

The university is the first institution of its kind, providing free non-credit online education. Although the courses are not considered college or academic credit, learners can receive a Statement of Accomplishment upon the completion of any course.

Complete all seven courses to earn a certificate in social sector leadership from Berkeley Haas—the second-oldest business school in the United States nestled on the campus of the University of California Berkeley.

Such programs demonstrate the beauty of humanity, as free education drives social work and the selfless qualities needed to effect positive change in today’s volatile world. More than 10,000 learners have already registered to be in Philanthropy University’s inaugural session: will you be one of them?

– Adnan Khalid

Sources: Jakarta Post, Philanthropy University 1, Philanthropy University 2, Philanthropy University 3
Photo: Google Images

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GlobeSmart Focuses on Cross-Culture Effectiveness

GlobeSmart

Child Family Health International (CFHI), a nonprofit organization working to broaden students’ perspectives about global health and initiatives in community health, announced a partnership with Aperian Global on Aug. 23.

Aperian Global, one of the leading organizations in the world, focuses on assisting individuals and organizations to become more efficient at working on a global scale.

Specifically, CFHI will benefit from GlobeSmart, an online cultural tool developed by Aperian Global. Those who utilize the tool will be provided with information on how to effectively interact with people from all over the world.

GlobeSmart also includes the GlobeSmart Profile, a survey that gives users the ability to compare their preferred interaction styles with those of other cultures and colleagues. The tool then provides them with ideas on how to modify their behavior to be successful when interacting with global associates.

The partnership is substantial for CFHI because GlobeSmart will allow the nonprofit to better understand the culture of countries where its Global Health Education Programs take place.

The purpose of the programs is to understand how health and other policies work at the community level, allowing participants to be the ‘trenches’ of global health, in that they work with community-based clinical and public health delivery.

CFHI offers more than 30 programs in nine countries, including Bolivia, Ecuador, India, Uganda, South Africa and the Philippines. Since 1992, more than 8,000 have participated in the programs.

– Matt Wotus

Sources: Benzinga, CFHI

Photo: Pixabay

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Malawi: Education Over Marriage

Malawi: Education Over Marriage
A minute is all it takes for 28 young girls around the world to be married off as child brides, adding up to 15 million underage brides per year. One of the main reasons for young marriage is to relieve the bride’s family of having to support her, which some struggle to do. As a result, the cycle of poverty continues with those girls having to abandon school and years later, their own underage daughters get married.

A child’s place is at school learning, making friends and playing. They are usually emotionally and physically unprepared for marriage, making them susceptible to domestic abuse and life-threatening pregnancies and births.

Until Feb. 2015, Malawi had one of the highest rates of child marriage, with 50 percent of girls being married before the age of 18. This changed in Feb. 2015, when President Peter Mutharika signed a law raising the marriage age from 15 to 18. To show the commitment to enforcing the law, 300 child marriages were annulled and kids were sent back to school earlier this month. Despite the progress, there is a loophole where parents can provide consent for 16-year-old girls to marry.

The fight to pass this law has been a process with Malawi’s Stop Child Marriage campaign beginning in 2011 by Girls Empowerment Network (Genet) and Let Girls Lead. They trained 200 girls in the Chiradzulo District of southern Malawi to become advocates. The advocates lobbied 60 village chiefs to change laws and establish by-laws to protect teen girls from marriage and sexual initiation practices.

The bylaws force men who marry girls under 21 to give up land and pay a fee of seven goats, a major economic penalty in the region. The bylaws also imposed social sanctions such as three months of janitorial service in a local health clinic for parents who marry their underage daughters.

Genet had hoped the election of the first woman president, Joyce Banda, would raise the marriage age, but she didn’t. Then in 2014, when Peter Mutharika was elected, Genet advocated extensively with his minister of gender, Patricia Kaliati. Fortunately, President Mutharika believes in the empowerment of financially independent women and signed the law.

Although it is difficult to break cultural beliefs and traditions, especially in rural areas, progress is being made at the government level. The local education campaigns will play a key role in educating and spreading the word about the new law, especially in places where people may be less educated regarding the law.

One strong advocate, Memory Banda, 18, was able to finish school, but her younger sister wasn’t as lucky. Memory’s younger sister was married at 11 to a man in his early 30s. This led her to speak up and help in leading the campaign to pass the law. Memory’s sister is now 16 with three children. In March, Memory spoke at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women for herself, her sister and the 70 million girls married as kids.

– Paula Acevedo

Sources: Global Citizen, The Guardian
Photo: Flickr

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Engage Emerging Nations, Improve Education Spending

Engage Emerging Nations, Improve Education Spending
Global Education is a hot topic. It has been a part of the Millennium Development Goals and the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. There was a recent Education Summit in Olso, Norway, in July. Education was also part of the discussions at the International Conference on Financing for Development.

Education leaders believed that there was a downturn in funding and supporting quality education for boys and girls around the world. However, after this year’s attention to education, this trend may be behind us. Mobilizing donors has had positive results. The financing committees work to enable traditional donors, private philanthropy and emerging nations.

One of the biggest game-changers is the Emerging Nations. They have a lot of potential to improve education standards and bring education to more people. The Global Partnership for Education brings together its developing nations partners and constituents before board meetings. The countries come together and exchange ideas and practices that work or didn’t work for them, allowing knowledge to spread more easily. It also gives the board an idea of how to tackle problems and how to approach education in these areas.

The meetings show that emerging nations are engaging in educational discussions and want to invest in the improvement. That is why it is important to mobilize these nations to spend on education. Show them where and how their money will be most effective.

Developing Nations are said to be growing economically more than developed nations. They will account for 65 percent of global growth up until 2020. It is important to reach out to them on such an important topic such as education. These countries have the resources to better education not just for their citizens, but for all global citizens by donating to global education. They can be the ones to close the $39 billion deficit in global education financing. The emerging nations are the ones that will benefit the most from education spending.

– Katherine Hewitt

Sources: Devex, Global Partnership, ICEF
Photo: Higher Education Development

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Environmental Education as an Agent of Change in the Developing World

Environmental Education as an Agent of Change in the Developing World
It is no secret that Earth is facing a massive environmental crisis. Changes to the environment have resulted in climate change that has affected weather across the world. Pollution sickens children and creates thick layers of smog that envelop entire cities.

Climate change hits hardest in the developing world, where it kills 8.4 million people a year, which is more than HIV/AIDs and malaria kill. Many in developing countries still use more traditional fuel sources like wood and coal instead of cleaner energy. The issue has dropped off the agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals, the successors of the Millennium Development Goals that expire this year.

What is the answer to all this doom and gloom? While there might not be a one-off solution to climate change, education on the issues facing the planet is certainly a big step in the right direction. Sadly, a recent study found that 40 percent of adults on earth are not aware of the idea of climate change. Lack of education also hits home in Africa and Asia, where people “are more likely to consider global warming a personal threat if they notice changes in the local temperature.”

It is often only by sensing a change in temperature that people deem climate change a threat. In Malawi, the local language does not have a word for the phenomenon. One way to combat climate change through education might be to explain the forces moving behind the slight temperature changes that people sense in order to make them understand the issue on a bigger, global scale. Knowledge on the subject can have an impact on a range of decisions that individuals might make – which crops to plant or where to place a new port, for example.

Environmental education can provide people with the necessary knowledge, behavior changes and skills that are needed in order to successfully carry out climate change mitigation and adaptation: it “can enable individuals and communities to make informed decisions and take action for climate-resilient sustainable development.”

The education of women and girls about the issues related to climate change is important. Recent studies have shown that when this happens, communities “are better able to adapt and thus be less vulnerable to extreme weather events and climate change.” When women are educated, they and their families are less likely to be vulnerable to death or injury during natural disasters.

More education on the specifics and intricacies of how natural environments function and change is needed in the developing world. Along with this, more knowledge must be spread on how individuals have an impact on their climate and the environment around them. With more of this in curriculae around the world, the effects of climate change might lessen.

Environmental education is an untapped resource when it comes to combating climate change. Those behind creating policy have not yet really utilized education as a sector that can fight climate change. Over the course of time, education has been used as a tool for social change. Today is no different – the planet needs a change in ideas and attitudes, and education is a way by which these changes can begin to sprout.

– Greg Baker

Sources: Washington Post, Brookings, AllAfrica, IPS News
Photo: UC San Diego News Center