Clint:
This is The Borgen Project podcast. I am your host, Clint Borgen, the founder and president of The Borgen Project. And I have a special guest today. We have our very own chief of staff at The Borgen Project, Lynsey Alexander. And Lynsey, you are joining us as a native of the United Kingdom. And I am going to put you on the spot. Yes. Because we have a lot of meetings focused on The Borgen Project work and global poverty, but I’ve always been curious, what was Lynsey’s childhood like? It’s one of those things I can’t really bring up to you in a meeting, right? Or bring up in general. So I’m going to, while I have you on the podcast, give me the low down on what it was like growing up in the United Kingdom.
Lynsey:
Absolutely. So I guess growing up in the U.K., I grew up in the South East of the country in a little, little town between Brighton and London. So for those of you that know this sort of area, it was a little place called Hayward Heath. Not a great deal happens there, to be fair, and not a lot did. Regular childhood, went to primary school, went to secondary school, went to college, and then joined the workforce from there. I worked with the National Health Service for a long time in the U.K., and that was before I came to join The Borgen Project.
Clint:
Very good. And you’ve been kicking butt for us for quite a number of years now, so we really appreciate all the great work you do, and you’re definitely one of the workhorses of the organization that takes on a wide range of challenges we’re facing.
So it’s great to have you on the podcast today. And you’ll be a somewhat regular host as well. We’ll have you on when there’s different things going on that we want to highlight and mention. So today we are talking about global education and I will let you lead off with that and we’ll go from there.
Lynsey:
This week we’re going to be talking about education, the benefits of education for all and
what sort of happens when people aren’t able to get an education? What happens to themselves, the community, and sort of the future prospects for them as well? And I think this sort of ties in nicely because this sort of week, it was the International Day of Education. So unfortunately around the world at the moment, 58 million primary school aged children are not attending school. Now, obviously that’s not then setting them up for the future. And we’ll talk a little bit more about what that sort of means and what that means going ahead.
But it’s not also just getting children into school, it’s also then the quality of the education that they’re getting. So 260 million people are not getting good quality education. There’s also unfortunately still a lot of gender discrimination in schools and that contributes to the illiteracy of over 500 million women in adulthood as well. So I’m sure we’re all very aware, having an education gives you access to sort of lots of other things sort of going forward in your life. But what are some of the other things that you’re aware of Clint, sort of that lack of education that does for a person, you know, their future and sort of the poverty aspect, I suppose.
Clint:
Well, this is a long one. I mean, it literally ranges from things like you live longer, the more education you have up to a certain point, there’s all sorts of debt on this. Part of that could be directly traced to the fact that you most likely will be earning more if you, you know, someone who only has education up to sixth grade versus a graduate from high school. They’re potentially, well, the data shows they’ll earn more throughout their life. So that obviously could be part of the, why the health factors come into play and why your life expectancy drops the lower your education level is, unfortunately. Yeah. And we see everything from issues like, you know, child marriage comes into education and people not having, it just impacts all aspects of society for sure.
Lynsey:
To come in off of what you’re saying. I mean, we’ve got some sort of stats that we’ve put together as well for the listeners. And I mean, 2020, 5 million children under the age of five died, but children with mothers with at least 12 years of education are 30% less likely to die before the age of five. I mean, that’s pretty shocking, isn’t it, really? I mean, just something basic that most of us from the U.S., the U.K. take for granted going to school, getting an education, potentially, as a child, you don’t enjoy going to school and you just do it.
But there’s something like that where potentially your children aren’t dying just from you attending school. It’s not something that people tend to think about, is it really?
Clint:
No, and it’s kind of interesting. Nelson Mandela, he was all about education. Anyone who’s kind of involved with these issues remotely gets pretty into education, but he has this famous quote, that education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. And it just kind of lifts people out of poverty, is what it kind of comes down to.
So the more people have access to education, the less susceptible they are to getting involved with a lot of different stuff or having a lot of different issues from health issues to a range of job opportunities, earning capabilities.
In terms of how it benefits like the U.S. and U.K. and other wealthy nations too, I always think, so there’s like a lot of very specific things like the more people are not struggling around the world, the more economic opportunities that creates for U.S. companies and businesses to market their products in those parts of the world and kind of rising tide lists all is one obvious reason why education matters.
But there’s also like some kind of very specific stuff. And I’ll give you an example. So Dr. Caitlin Kuriko, which I’m probably mispronouncing, I greatly apologize to her, recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work that led to the vaccine for solving COVID. So like the COVID vaccine is directly related to this one person. She is from Hungary, which when she was growing up would have been a struggling area, but evidently she was able to get an education and go on and become, you know, get a doctor and basically help develop a vaccine which stopped COVID very quickly. Otherwise we might all be dealing with the effects still of COVID at the scale we saw when it first came. So, you know, it’s kind of anecdotal, but I mean there’s just when you have a huge percentage of the world that doesn’t have access to education, you’re really taking people off the table who could be helping to solve and address a lot of the challenges the world was facing. So that’s one very obvious benefit for sure.
Lynsey:
Yeah, absolutely. So I suppose it’s people not being able to reach their full potential because they haven’t really got the opportunity to get there, which is detrimental to potentially everybody. Because like you say, if the doctor hadn’t had that education and got that start, we’d all be in a very different place right now.
Clint:
And that applies to everything you can think of from anything good that’s been solved or accomplished. The world had started with some kid getting an education and going on and accomplishing whatever was been accomplished. So it just applies to every aspect of society education ultimately. So that’s a good thing.
Lynsey:
Okay. So we know sort of why we should be getting an education, why everybody should have access to it. So what’s actually being done out there to make sure people can get a good education? Is there any specific legislation as well that maybe The Borgen Project looks at?
Clint:
So in 2017, The Borgen Project helped pass the READ Act which it gets more girls access to education. We’re currently trying to get it reauthorized. So there’s a redact reauthorization bill we’re working on. It has passed in the Senate in November, November, which is awesome. But now we just gotta get it passed in the House. So on that 10 month calendar now, or the clock’s ticking to get it through the House in the next 10 months.
Those interested in helping, a real simple thing you can do is just go to our website, click on the get involved section and you’ll see a dropdown for emailing Congress. And you can just email your leaders really quickly through this, one of those good old-fashioned generic email leaders forms. That then gets sent to your two centers and one member representative, or the representative in this case, the centers are going to thank you if you fill us out. And then that goes to your representative letting them know their support for it.
So at this stage, we just got to make sure that these leaders know that there’s people in their district who care about this issue passing. And I’ve talked about this in past episodes, but literally a lot of times if we have five, six, seven, eight people in any given congressional district, particularly on the House side with smaller districts, that leader will end up co-sponsoring or supporting the bill. So if any one person listening does this and mobilizes five, six people to do it, that would be hugely helpful to making sure this bill passes again.
Lynsey:
Excellent. It’s a very, very quick and easy way to actually have an impact, without having to go to a country or do something specific, just from your laptop, you’re able to email and make a difference, which is brilliant.
For those team members as well that are in the U.K., I mean, obviously we can’t necessarily contact your MP about the READ Act, but there is as well the ability to contact your MP about Overseas Development Assistance and there will be programs in there looking at education as well.
So again, on our site, you can click on the links, literally put in your details and you’ll be able to email your MP as well. So like Clint said, the more contact they’re having from us, the better, the more they know that you care about these issues as well. That’s what we’re all about.
Clint:
And Lynsey you’ve been kind of tracking some of the, successes of the work USAID has done. And the USAID for folks who don’t know is the government agency in the U.S. federal government that handles getting resources and helping people in developing countries kind of comes down to as an overall, so they do the humanitarian relief work for the U.S.. But you’ve kind of been looking at some of the successes that have been going on through their education programs that you want to, you want to talk about.
Lynsey:
Yes I’ve been having a look at it, you know, when we were going to discuss this sort of on the podcast, having a look around and doing some research and to be honest, I was astounded by how many programs there are and how many countries are involved as well. And it comes from the very basic, we’re just setting up education programs, setting up curriculum, moving on then to sort of teaching the teachers. So making sure that the education they are getting then is actually of any sort of quality.
And then moving through to the testing side as well to make sure that that teaching is actually meeting a sort of required standard. The children are able to then leave school and be set up for the future as well.
So some of the sort of examples I found working in Pakistan to improve reading skills of 1.7 million students delivering the materials that they need for the classroom, basic provisions that we would sort of take for granted, you know, your books, your pens, your paper, things like desks and chairs as well to make sure you know…
Clint:
That’s a good example too, because that when the 9-11 commission came out, their report, they highlighted in particularly in Pakistan that a lot of these terrorist groups, the only way people get free education is by going to some of these extremist group schools. So for, you know, back to how this benefits other parts of the world by helping us in some of these regions, that’s a no brainer that if we can be providing a normal education and not something that’s very extremist driven in a country like Pakistan. Huge, huge benefit to you now to see it.
Lynsey:
Yeah, absolutely. And the particular program that I was reading about, I mean, say training for teachers, new techniques in training and encouraging schools to dedicate more time for things like reading. So really basic skills and making sure that the children are leaving school, able to read and write to a good standard as well.
Other programs over in Morocco too, again, similar things and where children aren’t able to read to sort of any sort of grade level. Insufficient teacher training, so really coming in and getting those basic things in place to make sure that the education is there for the future. Developing new curriculums, and one thing that seemed to be quite a consistent theme as well is you’ve also got to think, some of the countries that potentially are being worked in, there’s more than one language, so you’ve got to think about developing your curriculum in different languages as well to make sure that you are including all groups within the education system as well.
Then I did see some examples as well of sort of more higher levels of education. And there were a lot of programs that where also working with universities from the U S so setting up exchange programs with Michigan State University. And a particular program that I looked at this fell into sort of the COVID bracket as well, because students were taught skills, innovation skills and learning sort of STEM subjects as well. And innovations that can come from that.
But that was then all put into place once COVID hit. So those students were then at the forefront of, you know, creating solar powered hand sanitization stations. And those sorts of things couldn’t have been achieved. And obviously the impact that that would have for the local community as well. You know, it’s immense.
So really, some really great programs out there that are really sort of shaping the future for these children too.
Clint:
That’s great. There’s just been, we should say too, there’s more kids in school today than any time period in history. So this is one of those that there’s been a lot of success on. I mean, it’s ridiculous that not every kid has access to school, so I can’t ignore that fact, but there has been a tremendous amount of success and this becoming a higher priority globally and more kids having access to education for sure.
Well, Lynsey, I appreciate this info. This is great. We are doing a short episode today and we are going to share our new cowboy call to action for the audience.
So we wanted to do something that encourages the good folks listening to this podcast that might be interested in getting involved, giving a couple options to do so. We didn’t want to do like one of those obnoxious sort of like, you know, the appeals as nonprofits types can do. So we want something that’s a little, hopefully, funny. Hopefully people find it funny and interesting, but give us your feedback. We’ll send you out with the audio clip of this. It’s a Cowboys call to action, we’ll call it and any feedback you got sent to [email protected].
We are probably going to tweak with it a bit, but we’re just curious if this is better than us doing a very, more of a bleeding heart call to action. So we’re hoping this might be a nice work around to letting folks know ways to get involved without us being annoying and obnoxious. So without further ado, here it is.
Cowboy Call To Action:
If you’re tired of helplessly observing innocent people getting their teeth kicked in by war, famine, and poverty, and hear the call, you were put on this world, to improve this world. For over 20 years, The Borgen Project has been turning everyday people into remarkable superheroes.
Our volunteer corps are second to none and can work remotely from anywhere in the world. Now, before you convince yourself you ain’t got time, wander over to that section of your smartphone to tell you how many hours you spend staring at that little screen each week. Well, how about that?
You got plenty of time to be your best self and serve as an ambassador for the world’s poor. Still ain’t got the grit to commit? How about heading over to borgenproject.org to make a donation instead? That’ll take you less than two minutes and has a world of impact. Maybe skip that city folk latte and divert that money into a donation.
Sure, as the sun rises, The Borgon Project begins every day kicking butt.
We’ve only been able to do it because millions of people have volunteered, donated, and taken simple steps to right some wrongs. We’ll keep doing us, and you keep doing you.