Washington, D.C. – The film “Boko Haram: Journey from Evil” earned the top honor in the international documentary category from the prestigious New York Festivals World’s Best TV & Films.
The one-hour documentary on Nigeria, which competed against entries from more than 40 countries, was honored in Las Vegas April 10 during the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual convention. Award-winning British-Nigerian actor David Oyelowo, best known for his role as Martin Luther King Jr. in the 2014 film “Selma,” narrated the documentary.
Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiatives and jointly produced by Voice of America and Creative, the documentary profiles the heroic efforts of everyday Nigerians who are building up their communities in the face of attacks by Boko Haram, a terrorist group that has killed, kidnapped and displaced millions of people in Nigeria and surrounding countries.
“This compelling documentary was a collaboration among organizations that saw the power of telling the stories of resilience and hope,” said Leland Kruvant, President and CEO of Creative. “It is an honor to be part of this important project.”
VOA Producer Beth Mendelson traveled with her colleagues to Las Vegas to receive the award.
“My deep appreciation to the New York Festivals for this incredible recognition for the documentary,” said Mendelson at the award event in Las Vegas. “This was indeed a labor of love. You rarely in your professional career get an opportunity to produce a film that is so timely and has the global impact of Boko Haram: Journey from Evil.”
Joining Mendelson at the awards ceremony was photographer Fati Abubakar, who was profiled in the documentary. She traveled from Maiduguri, Borno State in Nigeria, which has been a focal point of Boko Haram attacks. Her portraits of the people of Borno demonstrate the resilience and strength of citizens and communities against Boko Haram.
“The documentary has captured the true image, literally and figuratively, of our community,” says Abubakar. “Our community has faced terror and achieved triumphs. We are living and thriving despite an eight-year conflict and I am very hopeful that we will rebuild. Thank you for sharing our stories with the world.”
In Nigeria, USAID is supporting education, economic, humanitarian assistance and stabilization projects, among other initiatives. Since 2014, USAID has made considerable impact against insurgent groups Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa to help counter and prevent the factors that allow violent extremism to flourish, including feelings of marginalization and lack of economic opportunity.
USAID is funding a project called the North East Regional Initiative that focuses on stabilization and building resilience in communities located in the Nigerian states of Borno, Yobe and Adawama. The documentary was produced as part of the North East Regional Initiative.
“Boko Haram: Journey from Evil” goes beyond the headlines to bring viewers an intimate portrait of life in Nigeria’s conflict-affected northeast. It follows the stories of an activist fighting for the return of the kidnapped Chibok girls, photographer Abubakar who documents hope, a huntress turned rescuer and a psychologist working to deprogram former fighters—each pushing back against the terror and destruction in their own way.
The documentary also provides a never-before-seen look inside Boko Haram’s ranks, where young boys are indoctrinated to become fighters and digressions are punishable by severe violence and death.
Students who fail to acquire basic reading skills by third grade are more likely to fall behind, fail or drop out of school. Experts say poverty, underqualified teachers, language challenges and lack of access to textbooks keep children from receiving a quality education.
“Early grade reading lays the foundation for continuous learning, future schooling, employment and overall economic success,” said Creative Associates International’s Karen Tietjen, Director of Instructional Systems and Governance, at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) conference on March 29.
On the panel session called “Rolling-out and Scaling-up: The Insiders’ View of Reading Reform,” Ministry of Education representatives from Senegal, Nigeria, Mozambique and Kenya took up the topic of national early grade reading reform in their countries.
After student assessments revealed a literacy crisis in their countries, the ministries of education partnered with the global development community to improve learning outcomes.
The panelists said early grade reading reform must look at curriculum development, teacher training and professional development, textbook printing and delivery, among other key aspects of a robust educational system. This will be most successful when reforms are spearheaded by local ministries of education, said Tietjen, who chaired the interactive panel discussion.
“At the end of the day, it is up to the individual ministries of education to make sure a reading reform program is implanted, accepted, developed and rolled-out throughout the country,” she said. “Trying to change a whole way of thinking and ensuring commitment to reading reform can be daunting.”
Despite the challenges, early grade reading programs in many African countries “are picking up the pace and education decision makers are taking hard questions head on,” said Tietjen.
“They have vision, support and the tools for change,” she added.
Panelists illustrated the reform process through case studies, including Northern Nigeria and Mozambique, explained below.
Nigeria has one of the highest numbers of out-of-school children in the world. It is also home to diverse populations and languages and ongoing conflict, including the Boko Haram insurgency in the northern parts of the country.
“In Nigeria, there are more than 500 languages, which is a big challenge in our education system – especially in choosing which language to use in the classroom,” said Margaret Lawani, Ph.D., Director of the Language Center at the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council. “Effects of the Boko Haram Insurgency and poverty add to learning barriers and keep children out of the classroom.”
Highlighting an education project called the Northern Education Initiative Plus, Lawani said the project uses the local language of Hausa, which is the “language of the environment” to boost learning outcomes. She outlined the education project’s reading reform strategy by ensuring government and community commitment to quality early grade reading learning and teaching materials, as well as equipping teachers to use the curriculum.
Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Nigerian government-led project is being implemented in formal and non-formal schools in the country’s Sokoto and Bauchi states, with the goal of improving reading skills for more than 2 million primary grade learners. It is led by Creative Associates International, in close partnership with Education Development Center, Florida State University and Overseas Strategic Consulting.
The project works hand-in-hand with the Ministry of Education to implement a Hausa early grade reading program for first to third grades called Mu Karanta, with a transition to English in fourth grade called Let’s Read!.
Learning materials are provided free of charge, ensuring every student has access to quality education regardless of their circumstance.
“Many parents in Bauchi and Sokoto can’t afford to pay for learning materials,” explained Lawani. “The Northern Education Initiative Plus project has distributed the Mu Karanta books free of charge and literacy issues are being addressed.”
Along with the mother tongue learning and teaching materials, the project works with government counterparts to improve planning, budgeting, governance, transparency and accountability and to mobilize community involvement in ensuring their children gain reading skills.
Lawani said that this community collaboration and ownership of reading reforms by federal, state and local government education officials is a critical factor in strengthening education systems, especially in a conflict and crisis-affected, multilingual environment like this.
Home to more than 20 languages, bilingual education is not a new phenomenon in Mozambique.
From 1993 to 1997, Mozambique’s National Institute for Education Development implemented the first-ever rollout of bilingual early grade reading reform in the country.
But since then, Mozambique has lacked a coordinated policy approach for both Portuguese and local language instruction, said Armindo Ngunga, Ph.D., Vice-Minister of the Ministry of Education and Human Development in Mozambique.
And despite the introduction of mother tongue language in the classroom, learning gains haven’t proved to be sustainable.
In fact, Mozambique faces one of the highest illiteracy rates in the Southern and East Africa regions. A recent early grade reading assessment found that more than 90 percent of second graders in two northern provinces of Nampula and Zambézia could not read two words in Portuguese, the national language.
“Today, there are serious literacy challenges in Mozambique,” said Ngunga. “We learned that kids are going to school but they aren’t learning.”
One reason for the poor performance is the difficulty in making the case for mother tongue or multilingual education, he explained.
“There are challenges in convincing decision makers who speak Portuguese and don’t speak mother tongue languages to prioritize multilingual education,” said Ngunga.
As a result, schools have gaps in resources like mother tongue learning materials, and teachers aren’t trained to effectively teach in multilingual environments.
Working alongside the Government of Mozambique to fill this learning and teaching gap, the five-year early grade literacy program called Let’s Read (Vamos Ler! in Portuguese) is building a bilingual education framework for national expansion. It aims to improve reading and writing skills for more than 800,000 students in 2,800 schools.
The program is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, and implemented by Creative Associates International, in close partnership with World Education, Inc., Overseas Strategic Consulting, American Institutes for Research and blueTreeGroup.
Ngunga emphasized that in order to achieve the goal of boosting literacy in the languages children hear, speak and read at home, the program needs close collaboration and strong partnerships with and among government stakeholders. He added that this reform could have larger benefits for the country, beyond education.
“Mozambique fought for its independence and won,” said Ngunga. “We have realized that we will not achieve economic independence without first achieving intellectual independence.”
To visit Creative’s CIES 2018 Special Report hub, click here. For a full schedule of Creative’s CIES 2018 panels, including panelists, times and locations, click here. In addition to the panel sessions, stop by booth 54 to engage with education experts and to learn more about Creative’s global projects. Follow us on Twitter @1977Creative for live updates.
The first several years of a child’s life have long-lasting implications on performance in school, social skills and health. The value of early childhood development is widely recognized in preparing children for school and beyond, but in many low-resource contexts, access to early learning opportunities is limited.
At the Comparative and International Education Society conference on March 29, experts on a panel titled “Building a Diverse Workforce for ECD in Low-Resource Contexts” said that part of the challenge is a lack of qualified teachers and facilitators.
Tassew Zewdie of Creative Associates International, former Chief of Party for the USAID Zambia Read to Succeed project, said in Zambia, the government has just in recent years started to make a push toward expanding early childhood development.
“Because early childhood education was not a priority for the Ministry of Education in Zambia earlier on, there is a very serious shortage of teachers,” he said. “The options for raising our children and giving them appropriate care and support is very limited.”
Drawing from experience in Zambia, Rwanda and Burkina Faso, panelists demonstrated how development programs are working to strengthen early childhood education and build up a cadre of teachers that can facilitate early development.
These initiatives, in collaboration with national and local governments, can meet the needs of young children, parents, communities and education systems.
In Lusaka, Zambia, Creative piloted an early childhood development program to support staff of the USAID Read to Succeed project and their children. The center, named Mimi’s Place after late Creative co-founder Mimi Tse, gave project staff a place to bring their young children where they could learn and play.
Mimi’s Place employs a methodology called “The Creative Way,” which seeks to instill a lifelong love of learning in young children. The stimulating and nurturing classroom environment and skilled staff promotes hands-on learning, exploration and the development of reading and math skills.
Zewdie said that while the center was small – serving about 20 children – every employee who would interact with the kids received extensive training on a standardized “toolkit,” from the senior teacher to kitchen staff.
“The Mimi’s Place teachers, even though they may have previous training, they need to be trained on the toolkit, focusing on areas that are unique to facilitating early childhood education centers,” he said. “After the center was established, these teachers started to serve as role models.”
Zewdie said that the Mimi’s Place staff brought new knowledge to the local “cluster” of teachers and also informed the Ministry of Education.
He added that other companies, such as hotels and banks, expressed interest in replicating the Mimi’s Place model for their own staff. And Creative plans to include similar early childhood education centers in other project locations outside of Zambia.
“Other teachers are benefitting from the experience of this center, parents are benefitting, and the Ministry of Education is benefitting because they come and learn,” Zewdie said. “And other companies have started to really think about establishing the same model for their employees.”
In Rwanda, the Junior Caregiver Program, funded by the U.K. Department for International Development, sought to support early childhood education through facilitator training focused on unemployed young women.
Two hundred women from four provinces were trained and placed in three-month internships, increasing employment and bringing best practices to early childhood education centers.
Jordan Detwiler-Michelson, International Project Coordinator at the Education Devleopment Center, said the training expanded on existing methodologies that prioritized literacy and numeracy to a more holistic approach that also focuses on motor skills, social emotional learning and conflict resolution.
“We discovered that the methodology gap is not that difficult to close,” he said. “In this case, we were able to train relatively inexperienced young women who were then able to use best practices in early childhood development in the classrooms.”
Carrie Lewis of the Education Development Center, said that in Burkina Faso, very few children receive early education, and only 21 percent of early childhood educators are qualified to teach, a majority of them having little or no literacy.
In response, the World Bank-funded Project to Improve Access to Quality Education is supporting community-based early childhood development centers called “bisongos,” and the Education Development Center has developed audio-based technology to improve instruction.
The Interactive Audio Instruction tools, used in several countries, create 30-minute audio lessons for the classroom driven by characters and stories that promote learning and engagement. The student lessons are complemented by audio lessons for the teachers themselves, which are done in groups and allow for distance learning.
“It uses the same type of methodology, the characters and the storylines, to mimic teaching challenges that they might find at the bisongos,” Lewis said of the teacher instruction. “The programs use the same methodology as the children, but they’re based on adult learning theory, so were looking at ways we can draw in the educators to work together to discuss, to review, to reflect.”
Lewis said that in a country with 60 percent illiteracy rate, programming has to adapt to be effective. Using audio-based lessons and other visual guides delivers information and training to illiterate and low-literacy instructors.
“We’re meeting facilitators where they are,” Lewis said.
To visit Creative’s CIES 2018 Special Report hub, click here. For a full schedule of Creative’s CIES 2018 panels, including panelists, times and locations, click here. In addition to the panel sessions, stop by booth 54 to engage with education experts and to learn more about Creative’s global projects. Follow us on Twitter @1977Creative for live updates.
To stem violent extremism, solutions must be tailored to local drivers and needs, said three Moroccan leaders on the frontlines of community-based efforts to counter violent extremism.
Hailing from neighborhoods with high levels of violent extremist activity and recruitment in the cities of Fès, Salé and Casablanca, the religious and civil society leaders have assessed local risk factors for violent extremism and implemented tailored interventions as part of the Fostering Peaceful Communities in Morocco project. They shared their insights with CVE practitioners in Washington, D.C. at the Alliance for Peacebuilding on March 22.
From preparing religious students to prevent extremism to training unemployed mothers to recognize the signs of radicalization, the interventions had two critical characteristics in common that made them successful, according to Yasmina Sarhrouny, Chief of Party for the project, which is implemented by Creative Associates International and funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. They were locally driven and collaborative.
“As CVE practitioners, we see a lot of projects that succeed and many others that don’t because they are designed elsewhere. They are cookie cutter or they don’t necessarily bring all of the players together around the table,” said Sarhrouny.
Across the panelists’ three communities, religious and civil society leaders came together to understand local risk factors for extremism and design smart interventions to mitigate them.
For example, panelist Abdeljalil Anouar and his Casablanca team found a lack of religious knowledge to be a risk factor for extremism, while religious literacy could be a force for prevention. With this insight, they decided to equip the next generation of religious leaders with tools to positively educate their communities and support prevention.
“We chose to work with the students of the Hassan II School for Islamic Studies because they were already enabled with the technical skills but we could enable them with the soft skills and communication skills to work better in their communities,” said Anouar, who is a high-school Arabic teacher in addition to his work with this initiative.
The project marks the first time Hassan II Mosque has collaborated with an international organization on a CVE-focused project.
In Salé, the local team discovered that no organizations were working with women and mothers on CVE, therefore missing a critical opportunity to bolster prevention. They designed a program to equip women with tools to prevent radicalization within their families and communities.
The program trained 60 mothers and unemployed young women on how to detect hate speech and signs of extremism, recognize signs of radicalization and provide psychological support to loved ones at risk for radicalization.
“It was received very positively,” said panelist Abdelilah Abdellaoui, a civil society leader who supported the initiative. “Most of the mothers went back to the community with the training and what they did in the classroom. Often, they came back telling us about a friend or a neighbor who wanted to do the training as well.”
Abdellaoui’s group is currently developing a CVE manual of the course material that will be shared with the broader community.
In Fès, panelist Soukaina Sriti, a civil society leader, is deploying an educational and human rights approach to promote a culture of tolerance in four secondary schools. The program engaged youth who were at elevated risk of radicalization, teaching them how to engage more positively and peacefully with their peers, their schools, and their communities.
The Fostering Peaceful Communities project is also operating in Beni Mellal, though the representative of this town could not attend the event. The Beni Mellal team works with under-educated youth and adults exposed to violence and radical discourse, helping them to build their life skills, enhance resilience and improve their sense of belonging in the community.
By working through local organizations that had already garnered trust and buy-in in their communities, the project could effectively reach individuals at the greatest risk for radicalization and the community members best able to support those at-risk individuals in their families and neighborhoods, said Sarhrouny.
She added that it was also essential to bring local government officials on board from the beginning and to keep them engaged in the process. This both helps to dispel suspicions about the program and to build the partnerships and capacity to support sustainable CVE efforts. Through this collaboration, she says elected officials have begun to reshape their conceptions of CVE as something larger than law enforcement.
“They began to see that it takes looking at youth engagement, citizen engagement and getting to these kids so they aren’t at risk before they go toward extremism,” she said.
Across all four initiatives, panelists reported that the most significant change they observed in participants was a change in attitude about the nature of violent extremism and their role in helping to prevent it.
“Students changed their idea on extremism,” said Soukaina Sriti, who led the secondary school workshops in Fès. “In the beginning they though that extremism was something only related to religion, but in the end evaluation they connected hate to extremism in other forms.”
She noted that the youth also made plans to pass on what they had learned to their peers through similar workshops.
As the Fostering Peaceful Communities in Morocco project continues to measure the impact of these four initiatives, it is the change of attitudes that symbolizes a major step forward for preventing and countering violent extremism, said Chief of Party Sarhrouny.
“When you get into these types of trainings, when mothers start understanding and having these conversations among themselves, for example, that is the big change of attitude that can make a big difference in a community,” she said.
MEXICO CITY — More than 30 percent of school-aged children in northern Nigeria do not have access to basic education. Lack of teacher motivation and parent support, paired with insufficient learning and teaching materials have contributed to this education gap.
An integrated approach is needed to achieve optimal reading outcomes and strengthen education systems in complex environments like Nigeria, said a panel of experts at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) conference on March 27.
“The lack of formal reading national policies in Nigeria has resulted in teachers who are unprepared to teach primary school curriculum and students who are unable to gain literacy skills,” said Creative Associates International’s Semere Solomon, Senior Director of Africa Strategy.
For Solomon, who manages an education project in Nigeria called the Northern Education Initiative Plus, this is where a “whole child, whole teacher, whole school and whole system” approach can make a difference.
In the panel session called “Pre-Service, In-Service and Policy Reform: A Three-Legged Stool for Improved and Sustained Early Grade Reading Outcomes,” Solomon said the Northern Education Initiative Plus project is witnessing positive change through a “packaged approach to increasing access and the quality of education.”
Effective community mobilization, literacy policy reform, multilevel government collaboration, improved learning and teaching materials and mentoring and coaching of teachers are all key ingredients in applying a sustainable, holistic approach, said Solomon, who served as the panel’s discussant.
Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Northern Education Initiative Plus is being implemented in formal and non-formal schools in Nigeria’s Sokoto and Bauchi states with the goal of improving reading skills for more than 2 million primary grade learners.
Creative implements the program in close partnership with Education Development Center, Florida State University and Overseas Strategic Consulting.
Now in the second of its five years, Northern Education Initiative Plus has developed a comprehensive program called Mu Karanta! (Let’s Read!) for helping students learn to read in Hausa, their mother tongue language, and then transition to English. The project has distributed more than 1.9 million reading materials to students and teachers. In all activities, government partners take the lead.
“Leadership of the project is in the hands of the federal, state and local officials,” said Solomon. “With constant collaboration and ongoing consultation, the Nigerian government is facilitating the process of strengthening the overall education system.”
The early grade reading project is creating a forum where all education counterparts can come together to address local problems using evidence-based research, he added.
Representing the Northern Education Initiative Plus project with Semere Solomon, Bilyaminu Bello Inuwa, Hausa Reading and Standards Specialist, outlined the project’s reading policy development process.
“From the project’s Early Grade Reading Assessment, we found that more than 90 percent of children in Nigeria could not read a single word,” said Inuwa. “We pointed to that evidence when collaborating with the Nigerian government to design early grade reading policies.”
Leadership of the project is in the hands of the federal, state and local officials. With constant collaboration and ongoing consultation, the Nigerian government is facilitating the process of strengthening the overall education system.
Semere Solomon, Senior Director of Africa Strategy at Creative
To improve early grade reading outcomes, the project has facilitated a participatory process with policymakers to implement a policy mapping exercise, create three policy briefs and develop a road map for designing a National Reading Framework.
The three policy briefs –focused on the global best practices of reading programs often referred to as the “5 Ts” (Teaching, Time, Tongue, Text and Testing) – provide recommendations for improving early grade reading.
The close collaboration with the government on policy reform has proved to be effective.
“We have seen some key education shifts in Bauchi and Sokoto states,” said Inuwa. “After ongoing dialogue and presenting evidence, the Nigerian government agreed to amend the first to third grade school timetable from five to ten periods per week to language – both in Hausa and English.”
The former reading policy mandated only 30 minutes each week of language instruction and “that little amount of time is not going to take your kids anywhere,” said Inuwa.
For students to learn how to read, teachers must be proactive and provide adequate time for them to master the English language and their mother tongue language, he added.
He also emphasized that sustainable change to improve literacy education requires systemic action.
“Reading policies have to be in place in order to get consistent, sustained improvements in the delivery of an integrated early reading program, and improve the Nigerian educational system as whole,” he said.
To visit Creative’s CIES 2018 Special Report hub, click here. For a full schedule of Creative’s CIES 2018 panels, including panelists, times and locations, click here. In addition to the panel sessions, stop by booth 54 to engage with education experts and to learn more about Creative’s global projects. Follow us on Twitter @1977Creative for live updates.
Among children who finish primary school in Mozambique, nearly two-thirds leave the education system without basic reading, writing and math skills.
Corrie Blankenbeckler wants to change that.
As Senior Associate for Instructional Systems and Governance at Creative Associates International, Blankenbeckler currently manages the USAID-funded Let’s Read! (Vamos Ler! in Portuguese), which supports the Mozambican government to improve the reading and writing skills of children in first, second and third grades through literacy materials in local languages.
The program is simultaneously supporting oral language skills in Portuguese to prepare students for the transition from their local languages to the national language in grade 4. Creative implements the program with the World Education, Inc., American Institutes for Research, Overseas Strategic Consulting and Blue Tree Group.
At the annual Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) conference March 25-29 in Mexico City, Blankenbeckler will explain how her program is working to change the outcomes for Mozambican students through more effective materials in local language, effective teacher training and systems supporting in a complex multilingual context.
In this Q&A, she shares insights on the importance of bilingual education and creating optimal learning in complex environments.
For a full schedule of Creative’s CIES 2018 panels, including panelists, times and locations, click here. Follow @1977Creative and #CIES2018 on Twitter for up-to-date coverage.
Blankenbeckler: I often get asked the question: “Why bilingual education in Mozambique?” and then there’s a follow-up statement about how students and adults should be learning Portuguese or English, but certainly not in the local language.
My response to this question is that the goal isn’t necessarily for students to learn the local language, it is for them to have the opportunity to learn in their local language so they can fully express themselves and master essential reading and writing skills. After this literacy foundation is built, then students can learn multiple languages.
In the context of Mozambique, children have not been learning to read for several reasons, including poor curriculum design, lack of access to printed materials or unqualified teachers. Students also lack literacy skills because there’s a disconnect between the language of students speak at home and in the community, and the language of instruction, Portuguese, which most Mozambicans don’t speak at home or in their communities.
Blankenbeckler: I often say, reading is rocket science. Of course, it’s not rocket science, but it is a science. Learning to read combines a critical set of skills that are acquired and learned, and this learning process shapes the future of every person.
Literacy skills are affected by exposure to print, such as a road sign or printed books, and accessing these materials in your mother-tongue language is foundational to bridging the gap between literacy and non-literacy. For young children, learning how to read in a familiar, local language can be the key to success.
Literacy is a foundational skill that contributes to building other early grade skills such as math. The “Mathew Effect” shows that if children don’t acquire reading skills, such as distinguishing letters and sounds at a very young age, they often stagnate in learning and eventually dropout of school.
Brain development at a young age is crucial for a child’s continuous, lifelong learning. Cognitive skills begin to form when children start putting sound and words together to communicate. Building on early brain development by creating books in the local language and being able to read and interact with text in the local language is so beneficial for these young learners.
Blankenbeckler: In the classroom setting, children need to fully understand what is being communicated from their teacher, especially in the early grades. Through Let’s Read!, children in grades 1 to 3 learn to read in their local language but also receive a 45-minute lesson on oral Portuguese every day. In this way, children develop their reading skills in the local language and over time can transfer these skills to learn to read Portuguese. By the time students reach grade 4 and transition to learning in the national language entirely, they have had the opportunity to practice, learn and speak the national language.
To support the children’s cognitive development outside of the classroom, the project recently launched an activity called “Let’s Talk,” where parents and their children use their own language to practice building oral language skills through conversation.
In this activity, parents learn the importance of engaging with their children in more “nutritious talk”, and children learn how to speak with other peers and adults, to ask questions, and reflect together on their world. Parents are often illiterate but the project works with “Agents of Change,” or community facilitators, who provide the tools to engage in quality conversation through demonstration.
Blankenbeckler: In the beginning, the project conducted three mixed methods studies with a select sample of schools and communities. We conducted a language mapping study to better understand which local languages were being spoken in the schools and communities. We also conducted a community engagement and teacher educator studies to learn more about parent, teacher, and educator attitudes toward education in general, with a keen focus on bilingual education.
Through interviews, we aimed to understand how many languages each student spoke and the frequency they used the language in daily conversations. Most children said they were bilingual or trilingual on paper but when they were assessed through a verbal evaluation, the result was most children were not fluent in multiple languages.
We spoke with educators, parents and other community members. Most indicated that they preferred children to learn in Portuguese, since it’s the national language and they believe speaking Portuguese is a path out of poverty and provides great economic opportunities.
However, the studies showed that even in non-bilingual programs, teachers use the local language for young students to understand what’s being taught, since comprehension in Portuguese is very poor. More than 90 percent of the teachers that we interviewed said they use the local language to get their students up to speed. Overall, the communities felt education in their villages was not effective.
Let’s Read! went inside communities in all districts, asked questions and tried to gauge the level of acceptance the new curriculum and policy. And we received positive feedback from teachers, students and other community members excited for the new bilingual education program.
By conducting ongoing, annual classroom assessments we will help ensure learning is on track and the bilingual education approach is effective.
Blankenbeckler: In the early 1990s, the Ministry of Education in Mozambique launched an optional bilingual education program, which leveraged 16 local languages throughout schools nationwide. Parents had the option to choose bilingual education, with local language instruction alongside Portuguese in the early grades, or the monolingual program, only learning in Portuguese. The program has been implemented in fits and starts, with little support and no formalized curriculum. Even so, as a result, there has been a strong push to standardize the 16 languages by having an orthography, formalize spelling of words, etc.
The optional bilingual program has not been consistent or effective across the various districts with diverse environments. This is due in part to an unstructured approach to learning to read in the early grades.
Let’s Read! offers a structured approach to early grade reading, with focus on reading in the local language with transfer of acquired skills in later year to Portuguese. In close partnership with the Government of Mozambique, focused on formalizing a policy that required bilingual education in every school in the target districts in which Let’s Read! operates. As of July 2017, bilingual education is required in each school.
Together, we are designing reading and writing standards and establishing a National Reading Framework. This effort would assist in unifying different parts of the country and paving the way to making bilingual education a national priority.
A result of the civil war in Mozambique, many teachers did not receive a quality education, which has translated to ineffective teaching approaches. To address teacher placement and training challenges, the project is working closely with the Ministry to directly train teachers in the new reading approaches and match teachers and students who speak the same language.
Armindo Ngunga, Ph.D, Vice-Minister of the Ministry of Education and Human Development, who is a linguist and former language professor, has played a key role in standardizing languages and helping the bilingual education program move forward.
Having a supportive Ministry of Education that understands the importance of bilingual education has been essential. The Ministry has taken ownership of the bilingual education curriculum development and teacher placement, which speaks to the sustainability of the project.
During the past five years, the global growth of the number of children in classrooms has been stagnant, according to recently published UNESCO Institute for Statistics data.
About 263 million children—one in five children— adolescents and youth worldwide are out of school, the U.N. agency reported. Since 2012, the number of school-aged children and youth in classrooms around the world has increased by only about 1 million a year.
“These new figures show starkly the size of the gap that needs to be closed to ensure universal access to education,” said UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay in a press release. “We need much more comprehensive and targeted approaches together with more resources to reach those children and youth who are denied the right to education, with a special emphasis on girls and on improving the quality of education for all.”
Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the highest out-of-school rates for all age groups, and accounts for more than half (34 million) of the 63 million out-of-school children of primary age, according to the report.
Countries with the highest out-of-school rates also tend to be among the poorest countries in the world. Poverty levels are also closely linked to gender disparities in education.
The UNESCO data stresses that a business-as-usual approach will not succeed in achieving universal primary and secondary education by 2030.
This call for new approaches is particularly critical given the swelling rates of displaced persons and refugees across the globe, including millions of school-aged children and youth, points out Eileen St. George, Director of Education in Conflict at Creative, who read the published report.
For these out-of-school children and youth, gaps in education can be compounded by the trauma of conflict and displacement. Years out of school can set learners back in literacy and life skills; unhealed trauma can negatively affect their life outcomes.
“To keep children and youth in the classroom – especially in conflict and crisis environments – we need increasingly innovative approaches to minimize disruption to learning,” says St. George, adding that non-formal community-based learning centers can help to provide basic education to displaced learners when formal schools are not an option.
Regardless of the forum for education, a sense of normalcy and security is particularly critical to the development of these vulnerable learners, she adds.
“It is essential for schools to create a safe environment for students to receive a quality education and to heal through psychosocial support and Social Emotional Learning,” she says.
In conflict-affected countries like Afghanistan and Nigeria, Creative is implementing multiple education projects that integrate Social Emotional Learning activities into their curriculum.
“By providing Social Emotional Learning support in the classroom, educators in complex settings like Nigeria and Afghanistan, can create a powerful learning environment that fosters healing, support, motivation and ultimately success of vulnerable children and youth,” says St. George. “However, to achieve this we must also turn our attention to the well-being of teachers, enabling them to effectively nurture the children and youth in their classrooms.”
UNESCO also finds that around the world, girls continue to face barriers in receiving an education.
The UNESCO figures show that in sub-Saharan Africa, girls of every school-age group are more likely to be excluded from education than boys. For every 100 boys of primary age out of school, there are 123 girls denied the right to education.
Traditional attitudes and cultural beliefs, poverty, early marriage and pregnancy and violence against women and girls, are among the many barriers that keep girls from accessing quality education.
Karen Tietjen, Director of Instructional Systems and Governance at Creative, points to the USAID Read to Succeed project’s “whole school, whole teacher, whole learner” approach as an example of an effective way to counter school dropouts – especially for vulnerable girls.
Creative’s “whole child, whole teacher, whole school, whole system” approach addresses critical supply and demand factors that affect learning, teaching, management, parental participation and responsiveness to children’s needs.
“When girls stop going to school because of household responsibilities, early pregnancy or other barriers, they are closing the door to a brighter future,” she says. “The Read to Success project in Zambia provided psychosocial tools and counseling support needed to help learners succeed in school and in life.”
Tietjen says the education project trained guidance and counseling teachers who also mobilized a cadre of energetic and effective youth allies to help support vulnerable students.
Called Agents of Change, these groups of adolescents worked side by side guidance and counseling teachers to deliver important messages to their fellow classmates about staying in school, practicing healthy behaviors and making smart choices.
“With a support system, we witnessed vulnerable Zambian girls staying in school despite dealing with social, economic and psychological challenges outside of the classroom,” says Tietjen.
“When girls have the opportunity to access quality education, they are empowered to gain the knowledge and skills needed to help break the cycle of poverty for themselves, their families and communities,” she says.
Citizens’ fundamental rights and constraints on government powers suffered in nations around the globe in the past year, the World Justice Project finds in its annual Rule of Law Index.
Creative Senior Rule of Law Advisor, Jenny Murphy
Reflecting on the recently released report, Creative Associates International Senior Rule of Law Advisor Jenny Murphy says she is not surprised by its findings but that the global development field can take action to address the deficits.
“The drivers of this decline include lack of accountability and enforcement of existing laws,” she says. “The development world can respond by supporting civil society organizations’ demand for better accountability of justice sector institutions and providing access to justice.”
The 2017-2018 Rule of Law Index paints a picture of troubling trends globally, with the most negative change seen in citizens’ perceptions of their basic rights — including treatment free from discrimination, security, due process, and freedom of expression and religion. Fundamental rights scores dropped in 71 countries.
The other major downward trend centered on reduced constraints on government powers, which declined in 64 countries.
The Index measures adherence to the rule of law across nine indicators and is based on thousands of households and expert surveys in 113 countries.
At a panel event around the report’s release on Jan. 31, David Smolansky, the exiled former mayor of El Hatillo, Venezuela, said citizens — especially the younger generations — must have a voice to call for change in their countries’ institutions.
“We must always try to be engaged with people and with citizens, and people need to demand open governments and governments that have to be accountable. And when you start losing that, you’re going to start losing rule of law,” he said.
The overall global Rule of Law Index average score decreased only slightly from last year’s report, and 37 percent of countries’ scores remained unchanged. But the percentage of countries that saw their scores decline — 34 percent — outweighed the 29 percent that saw improvement.
Speaking at the panel event, Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described anti-corruption as the “bright spot” of the Index; nearly 70 countries saw their scores improve in absence of corruption. More than half of the indexed countries also saw an improvement in order and security.
The three highest- and lowest-ranked countries did not change since the previous report: Denmark, Norway and Finland hold the top three spots, while Afghanistan, Cambodia and Venezuela are rated lowest.
Regionally, sub-Saharan Africa saw the biggest overall improvements, although only 18 nations were able to be surveyed. According to the World Justice Project, the sub-Saharan African region showed the most improvement in absence of corruption. Ghana is the region’s top-ranking nation, and Burkina Faso and Kenya saw the biggest jump upward this year.
Latin America and the Caribbean saw the greatest overall decline. While three countries showed positive trends in open government, three experienced negative trends in constraints on government powers. Uruguay is the region’s highest-ranked country, in the 22nd spot out of 113.
Creative’s Murphy said that while the data is changing, the challenges for 2018 and beyond remain the same.
“Rule of law needs a strong foundation. Similar to a house, if there are cracks in the foundation or a leak in the roof, rule of law will start to deteriorate or erode,” she said. “The state should provide sufficient political will to institutionalize justice sector reforms so that said institutions can withstand the challenges to come, such as corruption and impunity.”