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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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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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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

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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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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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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