Archive for category: Education

Information and stories on education.

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YouTube Star Builds School in Africa

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It started with a few funny homemade videos posted onto YouTube by a teenager in high school. However, overnight, YouTuber Kevin Wu’s videos shot up half a million views. From then, Wu, known by his YouTube name Kevjumba, would become one of YouTube’s leading cyber-celebrities. His comedy videos gathered millions of views. Today, 4 million people are subscribed to Kevjumba’s channel. His subscribers are roughly equal to the population of New Zealand.

Despite enormous success and fame, Wu has been using his influence for helping those in need, namely by helping to build a school in Kenya. Wu’s involvement in school’s construction began when a The Supply, a non-profit organization, posted a video of students in Nairobi challenging Kevjumba to teach one of their classes. Wu then received a flood of tweets urging him to go to Kenya. Soon enough, this American YouTube star was on his way to Africa.

According to Wu, his trip to Nairobi was life-changing because he learned from The Supply about the 1 billion people living in slums today and witnessed children living in the slums around Nairobi. Wu decided that he would partner with The Supply and commit to aiding the friends he made in Kenya. Wu had already created a charity YouTube channel called Jumbafund where views were generating ad revenue that Wu would donate to charities. Wu decided that he would direct all the funds from his charity channel to The Supply to help fund education for students in Kenya.

After uploading videos about his experience in Nairobi, which generated over 2 million views, Wu was able begin a project to raise funds for The Supply to build a school in Lenana, Kenya. When Wu turned 21, he and partners launched a campaign to urge people to donate 21 dollars to the construction of the school. With $50,000 raised, funding for the school’s construction is now complete. Kevjumba High School is the first secondary school in Lenana, Kenya. It now serves many of the students that Wu met while visiting Kenya.

Kevjumba has revolutionized  charity by using YouTube as a platform to truly aid those who need it. This is because Kevjumba’s viewers play a key part in generating the funds to build the school. Each click and each view plays a part in sustaining the school and providing opportunities for children in poverty to have an education. Furthermore, Kevjumba’s popular videos encourage viewers to donate directly. Kevjumba proves that with just a viral video and a compelling cause, anybody can make a difference in the world.

– Grace Zhao

Sources: The Huffington Post, Forbes, Kevjumba.com, PR Newser
Photo: KevJumba

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Top 5 Poverty Prevention Tactics

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Global poverty can seem to many to be an insurmountable task. However, much progress has already been made to lift people out of poverty. According to The Global Citizen organization, global poverty has effected 1.3 billion individuals, a number which is actually 52% lower than statistics in the 1980s.

Development practitioners recognize that global poverty can be minimized by addressing other areas including reproductive health, HIV prevention, education, women’s empowerment, and gender equality. UNFPA states that poverty is a multidimensional issue that deprives people of education, resources, services, opportunities, and economic opportunities. UNFPA states that investments to address global poverty should “…[empower] individual women and men with education, equal opportunities and the means to determine the number, timing and spacing of their children – [which] could create the conditions to allow the poor to break out of the poverty trap.”

Reproductive health and HIV prevention can both act as poverty prevention tactics. Reproductive health education, family planning resources, and widely accessible contraception can decrease fertility rates by providing families with the knowledge and tools to space out pregnancies. Furthermore, improved healthcare can reduce population growth because families recognize that they do not need to have as many children to ensure that at least 2 of them survive to adulthood.

 

HIV prevention is also an important poverty prevention tool because  helpful for when men and women know the dangers of HIV, they are able to use protection and are able to prevent the spread of the disease not only from partner to partner, but also from partners to undesired pregnancies and children. By learning how to protect oneself from HIV, individuals are able to prevent untimely deaths as well as preventing the disease to spread within a community, states The ONE organization. By lowering fertility rates through an education in reproductive health and by preventing the spread of HIV through an education in HIV prevention, communities will thrive due to a lower healthier population level.

The third poverty prevention tactic is education. Education is a very important factor in preventing global poverty, for providing an education to young boys and girls will help prevent undesired child marriage as well as early teen pregnancies which can lead to maternal death. An education helps boys and girls obtain the proper knowledge to keep themselves safe, healthy, and helps to plant the seeds of inspiration. Once obtaining an education, these individuals can create sustaining businesses which produce and return economic gains into their communities. By providing an education, individuals are able to thrive and break through the barriers of global poverty by creating strong businesses which will help the economy thrive and will lead to a stable community environment.

The fourth and fifth poverty prevention tactics are women empowerment and gender equality. Women empowerment is a positive prevention tactic because women who are encouraged to attend school and receive an education are more likely to defeat child marriage, are able to marry latter in life, and are able to have less children which lowers population rates. Women who have an education are more likely to work after receiving an education, which boosts the economy and provides a sustainable household for a family. Gender equality offers similar benefits, for if women are able to obtain an education and receive equal pay in employment, both the man and women are able to create a sustainable home for their children. By providing a sustainable environment, the child is able to attend school and is able to receive employment opportunities, continuing this positive cycle.

Through these five poverty prevention tactics, developing countries are able to defeat global poverty and are able to create sustainable economies, healthy environments, and equal opportunities.

– Grace Beal

Sources: Global Citizen, UN FPA, ONE Campaign
Photo: Ambergris Today

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3 Key Responsibilities to Fight Poverty

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Poverty. Can you define this seven letter word? Many individuals can define it, and most would say that poverty is the state of being extremely poor. Yet, how many of these individuals would know the facts behind global poverty and would know what it took to prevent or fight against such a global epidemic? Many individuals are so focused on their own personal lives that they do not notice what lies beyond their own every day life. Yet, global poverty effects everyone and reducing this epidemic could benefit everyone as well.

A dollar and twenty five cents. This is the amount of money in which 1.3 billion individuals live off of every day and possibly even less than this amount, states The World Bank. This is a staggering amount of people living off of less than a dollar a day! Yet as The Global Citizen organization has stated “ In the last 30 years, the proportion of the world’s population that live below this line has halved-from 52% in 1980, to 25% today. That’s a decline from 1.9 billion people down to 1.3 billion people”. There is a notable difference seen today with this decline in global poverty, yet if individuals do not keep putting their efforts towards this cause, the percentage could once again rise to staggering levels.

So how can an individual make a difference, one may question. There are three key responsibilities to help fight against global poverty. The first is through charitable donations. A single individual can make a large difference on numerous lives through charitable donations, states Columbia University. By donating funds towards global poverty, The Millennium Promise explains, an individual can help numerous others obtain food, clean water and power, a healthy living environment, technology and the seeds for innovation, education, gender equality, the proper health care for women and their children, and finally can help plant the seeds for businesses and entrepreneurship to create future stability. These may seem easy to obtain, but without help from numerous donors, it would not be nearly impossible to accomplish these goals.

The second key responsibility to help prevent global poverty is to follow through on the government’s promise to help aid millions who are suffering from global poverty. By following through on their existing commitments to help aid these struggling individuals, it proves that there are individuals who care about fighting to eliminate global poverty, states The Borgen Project. There are many ways in which to contact your government leaders such as writing to your political leaders, organizing letter writing campaigns, writing to your local newspapers and magazines, by calling your political representatives stating your wish in that they support the fight against global poverty, and finally by joining existing networks such as The Borgen Project, The Millennium Campaign, or The Global Citizens Organization.

Finally the third key responsibility is education. By educating yourself on the subject of Global Poverty, you can also educate others. Educating the public may seen like a difficult task, yet it has proven to be a highly successful global poverty prevention tactic. By educating the public, you can help spread the word of prevention and can help lead the fight against global poverty. By educating others, you can help lead to numerous donations against the spread of global poverty, and can also help spread the word of prevention even further. When you educate an individual on this topic, another individual can continue to spread the word, and it leads to the creation of a chain reaction. By doing so, you can lead numerous individuals to make donations, contact their leaders, and to continue the chain of educating others on this crucial subject.

Overall, by making donations to global poverty prevention organizations, contacting your political leaders, and by educating others, you are helping to end poverty. By taking on these three key responsibilities, an individual has started their own personal fight against global poverty and has joined in the movement with numerous others to end this global epidemic.

– Grace Beal

Sources: World Bank, Global Citizen, Columbia University, The Borgen Project
Photo: The Guardian

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How to Solve Poverty

How to Solve Poverty
The following is not a definite plan for how to solve poverty. There are many causes and factors to consider that promote and sustain impoverishment, thus there are also myriad of solutions. By embracing all possibilities related to global education and technology, we can put a sizable, irreparable dent into poverty.

 

How to Solve Poverty

 

Education for women: 70% of all women in the world live in poverty, and over 32 million women are considered “missing.” Poor health conditions, famine, and social injustice contribute greatly to the problem. Women work some of the most difficult but crucial hours worldwide, yet earn pennies on the dollar for their effort. This leads to desperation and informal employment which opens the door to problems like human trafficking. When women receive education, the results are indisputable: lower fertility and infant mortality rates, less instance of sexually transmitted disease, and a greater chance of employment and contributions to local economies. The benefits of female education are much broader than male education.

Using Positive Deviance: Somewhere in every community lives a person or a family that is not poor for a reason. Finding those positive deviants in the community and letting others around them learn from their experience is becoming a very popular approach in places. Lewiston Elementary in Utah is one of 300 schools to be nationally recognized for outstanding academics, despite the fact that half of their students are poor and 10% speak English as a second language. The kids consistently exceed what is expected of them all due to how they are taught, which includes, “…small group instruction; an evidence-based reading curriculum; progress monitoring; parent involvement; and instructional coaching.” Other schools have begun to take note of Lewiston’s success.

Entertainment Education: One might not immediately see the correlation between entertainment and poverty, but when considering impoverished or uneducated children, it becomes highly apparent. Education is clearly a poverty deterrent, thus using the media to promote education in communities in ways that will entertain can have major impacts. A well known example of this is the television program Sesame Street, watched the world over by young, hungry minds. Other prosocial programs and themes have been used with great results in the developing world, ranging from simple radio programs to a project called Soul City which has been running in South Africa for years. One organization leading the way with entertainment education is Population Media Center.

– David Smith

Sources: Women and Poverty, Learning The Lessons of Sesame Street
Photo: Infosur Hoy

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Malala Wages War on Illiteracy, Poverty and Terror

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“They thought that the bullet would silence us. But they failed. And out of that silence came thousands of voices…Let us pick up our books and our pens. They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen, can change the world. Education is the only solution.” These were the words spoken by Malala Yousafzai in her address to the UN Youth Assembly on July 12th, falling on her 16th birthday. In October, a Taliban gunman boarded Malala’s school bus in Pakistan’s northwestern Swat Valley and shot her in the head. The Taliban decided death was to be her consequence for campaigning on behalf of girls’ education. She survived, however, and in doing so has brought the issue of women’s education to the attention of the world.

After the shooting, Malala was flown from Pakistan to the U.K. for treatment and recovery, and now resides in Birmingham, England. Her appearance at the UN headquarters was her first public speech since October’s incident. She told the UN that the Taliban’s attack did not change her aims or stop her ambitions as they hoped, but has rather made her more determined. Malala called on politicians to take urgent action to ensure every child has the right to an education. “I want education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all the terrorists and extremists,” said Malala.

Aid agencies agree that girls’ access to education in Pakistan is a real concern. The country ranks among the lowest in terms of girls’ enrollment, government spending, and literacy. Malala explained she was fighting for the rights of women because “they are the ones who suffer the most”. Unesco and Save the Children released a report which found that 95% of the 28.5 million children who are not receiving a primary school education live in low and lower-middle income countries: 44% in sub-Saharan Africa, 19% in south and west Asia and 14% in the Arab states. Girls make up 55% of these children without education and are often the victims of rape and other sexual violence that comes with armed conflict.

Adnan Rasheed, a senior Pakistani Taliban leader, recently sent a letter to Malala in which he does not apologize, but says he wished the attack “had never happened”. Rasheed further suggests that all that the Taliban opposes is western education. Despite this claim, there are currently 1,000 closed schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan due to arson attacks and threats. The Taliban have long argued that only schools used as army bases are attacked, however schools have been shut down hundreds of miles from any Pakistani army presence.

According to Gordon Brown, a United Nations Special Envoy on Global Education, in just the last few weeks alone 14 young women were killed when the bus carrying them from college was firebombed, a school principal was shot dead and his colleagues maimed in broad daylight at a prize giving ceremony held in the playground of an all-girls school in Karachi, and a teacher was gunned down in front of her son while driving to teach at an all-female college.

Illiteracy, particularly among girls, will hold back Pakistan’s development efforts if current education trends continue. It is also known that young people denied an education fall prey to extremist propaganda. Following the attack, Malala set up the ‘Malala Fund’, and presented a petition which included more than three million signatures to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, demanding education for all. The Malala Fund launches in the fall of 2013, and will focus on helping girls go to school and raise their voices for the right to education. Donations to the Malala Fund can be made at https://www.stayclassy.org/checkout/donation?eid=25976.

Malala has shown millions of young girls that it is possible to stand up to the Taliban. Young people are insisting that education is a universal right. Malala has sparked a revolution and a modern civil rights struggle is now underway.

– Ali Warlich
Sources: BBC, CNN, The Malala Fund, BBC

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Homework, Not Housework

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Malala Yousafzai’s speech at the UN called for “free, compulsory education all over the world for every child.” Her speech was a reminder that back in her home country of Pakistan several million children are unable to attend school, exploited for their labor, and abused.

The most recent annual State of Pakistan’s Children report—published by the Islamabad-based NGO Society for the Protect and Rights of the Child (SPARC)—found that, out of 120 countries, Pakistan has the second largest number of children not attending school. 5.1 million Pakistani children ages 5 through 9 are not attending an educational institution. A large portion of these children end up in the workplace.

Child labor is a widely accepted social norm in Pakistan for both boys and girls. These children are denied their rights to education, protection, health, and development, and are also highly susceptible to abuse and exploitation. Figures on the exact number of child laborers in Pakistan are somewhat unreliable, with estimates ranging from 3.3 million to 12 million.

According to an estimate from The International Labor Organization, one quarter of these children are involved in the worst forms of child labor—slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, the use of children for committing crimes, and work that is harmful to the health and safety of children. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics 2010-11 Labor Force Survey estimates the number of child workers to be around 4.29% of the country’s children ages 10 through 14.

The only major law relating to child labor is the Employment of Children Act 1991, which regulates child labor for children under 14 years of age and prohibits it in specific occupations. However, the law is rarely enforced, especially in the area of domestic labor.

Earlier this month an incident was reported in which a wealthy employer had beaten her 13-year-old servant to death after he dropped a jug. The incident was widely covered by the media and confirmed by the police in the area. Such stories are not unusual. According to SahibaIrfan Khan, the program officer at SPARC, thousands of children working as domestic servants are deprived of their basic right to education and are often subjected to abuse and violence.

Other data compiled by the organization shows at least 18 confirmed cases of severe torture and abuse of child domestic laborers. 13 of these children died as a direct result of the violence inflicted upon them at the hands of their employers.

– Scarlet Shelton

Sources: IRIN, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics
Photo: Dawn

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USAID Summer Start in Liberia to Educate 480 Students

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In Liberia, adults have received an average of only 2.5 years of schooling in their lifetime. According to the CIA World Factbook, approximately 85% of Liberian citizens are unemployed, and 80% live below the poverty line. In 2012, GDP per capita was only $700, making Liberia ranked 224 of 229 nations for GDP. But since the country held peaceful elections in 2005 the economic situation has been slowly improving with the help of private overseas investors in the mining and agriculture industries. More than ever, Liberia needs successful students who can run these industries to help pull the nation out of its extreme poverty. That’s why the USAID Excellence in Higher Education for Liberian Development Project (EHELD) was created in 2011.

The project aims specifically at helping faculty at Cuttington University and the University of Liberia to develop high quality agriculture and engineering programs for its students, attracting students to the programs, and working with local business leaders to create employer linkages for the students.

Currently the EHELD team is holding its yearly USAID Summer Start program for high school students that runs from July 15 – 26. The programs, which will focus on experiential learning, are being held at 6 different high schools, accommodating 80 students each. The programs, which will be taught by a team from the University of Michigan, Peace Corps Volunteers, and faculty of Cuttington University and the University of Liberia, will teach important life skills such as computer science and math, while also providing career counseling in agriculture and engineering.

In addition, the EHELD summer programs are partnering with the Cuttington University Upward Bound program to run at the same time under the same leadership. The Upward Bound program will specifically focus on educating 10th -12th graders, while the summer start program will focus on incoming engineering and agriculture students at Cuttington University and the University of Liberia and returning summer start students.

Superintendent of Bomi County (where the high schools are located) Samuel Browne spoke during the camps opening ceremonies, urging the students to appreciate the opportunity and take full advantage of it and telling them the “sky is the limit” when it comes to education.

USAID-EHELD is also currently providing scholarships for over 100 talented engineering and agriculture students at the two universities.

– Emma McKay

Sources: Nation Master, All Africa, Nation Master
Photo: Harvard News

What are CDA’s Collaborative Learning Projects?

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Without getting too technical, collaborative learning is essentially a highly applicable, catchall term for just about anything involving group efforts seeking a shared solution.  The inclusive nature of it fosters greater understanding of the issues at hand, inviting different ideas and problem solving methods.  There are no concrete answers to problems, only a continual coming together for improvement.  

We see collaborative learning in pockets in the developing world, sometimes fostered by nonprofit groups.  The goals of alleviating global poverty, having accessible and quality education for all, and possessing the right tools and technology to actualize that progress are all shared by many groups including those in the nonprofit sector.  However, it can be said that of these well meaning groups not everyone is exactly on the same page.  This is where the CDA Collaborative Learning Projects group steps in to amplify the effectiveness of active nonprofits and aid groups.  Think of them as NPO consultants.

By pouring over the experiences, findings, and work of a collection of organizations with shared goals and functions, CDA can pinpoint what could’ve been done better.  Based in Cambridge, MA, a small staff of highly trained professionals from government ranks, humanitarian groups, development organizations, and the private sector form these highly poignant assessments.  They’re funded by world governments and international agencies and championed for their pragmatic approaches to obstinate issues like global poverty alleviation.  CDA is most known for their “Do Not Harm” (DNH) conflict assessment approach, which helps actors in the field gauge how their effort affect societal conflicts where they work.  The goal of DNH is to ensure peace and as little sociocultural kerfuffle as possible.

The innovative approach CDA employs is rooted in fieldwork and not theory, combining the experiences of many aid organizations into a broad knowledge base.  The experience is obtained in the field by workers who author case studies which are later analyzed.  When a given amount of case studies are explored, CDA calls on aid groups for workshops where findings are shared and feedback is encouraged.  Tools like handbooks are developed to help in the field next time.

In January 2013, a report from IRIN News indicated that busy aid workers make time to speak with and most importantly listen to their beneficiaries.  One worker interviewed in Lebanon said that it took three weeks of listening to get an honest perspective from the community.  Responses like this from 6,000 aid workers operating in 20 nations were pooled and released in a CDA account entitled “Time to Listen.”  Results indicated that while their assistance was noted and appreciated by their respective communities, it wasn’t as potentially effective as it could be.  For instance, the arrival of supplies is a valued, momentous event for communities.  However, the manner in which it’s delivered is what dispirited them; it became very impersonal and fostered feelings of dependency from the community rather than cooperation with benefactors.  Aid was just dispensed with no thought to ask what the beneficiaries wanted.

If communities were part of the process, CDA posited that aid would’ve been streamlined, transparent, and correctly targeted.  Collaboration also would’ve allowed for future planning once projects concluded, eliminating feelings of desertion.  Many communities asked for less and wanted to eradicate notions of dependency.   Another issue is the misappropriation of funds.  With donors, there exists an idea that funding must be focused which earmarks money only for certain things.  Once the money makes it to the community, it can’t be applied to local priorities due to predetermined conditions.  “Time To Listen” calls for just that so that the proper aid is doled out, money is saved and spent correctly, and most importantly key emotional connections are made and partnerships between benefactor and beneficiary strengthened.  People don’t want money thrown at them, they want to play an equal part in the solution to poverty.

– David Smith

Sources: Oregon State, CDA, Time to Listen
Photo: Calvin

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What Malala Means to Women Worldwide

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In a piece on the Huffington Post website on July 8, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon highlighted the young Pakistani girl Malala Yousafzai as an example of the empowering effect of education.

Malala entered the public domain in 2009 when she was in a BBC documentary about life under the Taliban. Three years later, in October 2012, she was shot in the head by a member of the Taliban who boarded her school bus because of her fight for girls’ education. The story gained international recognition. Since then Malala has been named one of TIME magazine’s most influential people of 2013, and has continued to advocate for girls’ education. On July 12, Malala was joined by hundreds of students from more than 80 countries in a unique Youth Assembly where they demanded quality education for children across the globe.

Ban Ki-Moon contended that violent actions against Malala, her teachers, and her fellow students prove how frightened extremists are of empowering women. For every year of schooling she attends, a girl’s future earnings increase by 20%. Ban asserts that Malala and her colleagues are teaching the world the lesson that “education is the pathway to saving lives, building peace, and empowering young people.”

With this in mind the Secretary-General enacted the “Global Education First” Initiative, a program with the goal of getting all children in schools with an improved quality of education that prepares them to grow up to be global citizens. The 57 million children out of primary school deserve a proper education because education is a fundamental human right.

July 12 marks the United Nations’ Malala Day, where Malala addressed over 500 youth at the UN and celebrated her birthday. The Secretary-General recognized in his article for the Huffington Post the importance of the courageous actions of students like Malala, and how the education which they advocate for is crucial for development and growth in the global system.

– Martin Drake

Source: Huffington Post, BBC
Photo: Mid Day

5 Quotes About Changing the World Through Education

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Education is another one of the things we tend to take for granted in this country. In fact we even frequently complain about having to spend so many hours a day and so many years of our lives in a classroom. But so many other people in the world never have the opportunity to enter the classroom let alone. These next 5 quotes are from some of the biggest proponents for providing everyone in the world a chance to get a good, and safe, education.

“I can promise you that women working together – linked, informed and educated – can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.” – Isabelle Allende

“Education…beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of conditions of men – the balance wheel of the social machinery…It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich; it prevents being poor.” – Horace Mann

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela

“From better health to increased wealth, education is the catalyst of a better future for millions of children, youth and adults. No country has ever climbed the socioeconomic development ladder without steady investments in education.” – Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO

“‘I wish for a better life. I wish for food for my children. I wish that sexual abuse and exploitation in schools would stop.’ This is the dream of the African girl.” – Leymah Gbowee

– Chelsea Evans

Sources: Good Reads, UN
Sources: Global Higher Education

 

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