How to make pre-school accessible to every child on the planet?

 

Teacher Hosna Ara Dipu interacting with pupils of BRAC Pre-Primary School at Korail Slum, Mohakhali, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photo credit: courtesy of UNICEF

 As Covid-19 has wreaked havoc on education systems around the planet, educators and leaders from around the world are trying to build them back better. They are particularly focusing on early education, which has a lifelong impact on children’s education and well-being.

In Sweden, the pre-school curriculum has been designed to respect the language and culture of refugee and migrant children. In Zimbabwe, an organization works with parents of children with disabilities and pre-schools to promote inclusion. These are the types of innovative initiatives from around the world, which the Global Partnership meeting will look at today.

Many studies have shown that the absence of early childhood education can lock children into deprivation and marginalization. And benefits for children attending quality early education impact not only the children, but generations and society as a whole. Yet, too many young children are missing out. Two in five children, mostly in lower income countries do not attend pre-primary school — especially girls, children with disabilities and children living in vulnerable situations, according to a recent UNESCO report.

“Ensuring early universal access to education is the foundation for inclusion in the lifelong journey to learning and a decent life,” says Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO. “Numerous benefits for children attending quality early education span generations and spill into society as a whole. Yet, too many young children are missing out. If we want them to reach their full potential, we have to get it right from the start”.

Educators and leaders from around the world have recently launched a Global Partnership Strategy (GPS) for Early Childhood Education, a series of recommendations and action plans to help governments make pre-school compulsory and inclusive, and tackling new challenges arising from the pandemic. The guidelines address barriers related to socio-economic status, ethnicity, gender, language, disability and remoteness. They also call for educators to be given the knowledge, training, and support to implement inclusive practices and work with families from all backgrounds.

Here are just two examples, amongst many others presented at the meeting, showing positive, promising and innovative initiatives, which could be reproduced elsewhere.

1. Over half of Roma children in Europe are still missing out on pre-primary school. In the small town of Orehovica, in the northern part of Croatia, Roma and Croatian pre-schoolers get together twice a week to play and learn. The activities have been adapted to their needs and specific culture. This has created a sense of belonging for everyone regardless of their ability or their background. Teachers have been trained on inclusive education practices and how to best support these young children before they enter primary school. Parents also play a central role at the school and feel supported and valued. The positive impact is not only evident on the children but has spilled over into the entire community leading to better social cohesion.

2. Disabled children are more likely to miss out on pre-primary school because these settings are not adapted to their specific needs. The Masvingo Community Based HIV/ AIDS and Vulnerable Children Organization (MACOBAO) in Zimbabwe has done research (this is very important as there is not enough data on pre-primary children, especially those who are excluded) and identified the reasons children with disabilities could be excluded from pre-primary school. These range from discrimination, stigmatization, prejudice and isolation. Once they had this information, they set about educating parents, communities and schools about their responsibility in insuring that children with special education needs access early childhood development and education. To do so, the organization organizes home visits to establish trusting relationships with the parents. These meetings encourage parents to access services for their child and to overcome their fears about enrolling their children in preschools.

Educators hope that these examples and recommendations will be promoted widely across the globe and lead to collaborations at regional, national and global levels in order to bring about concrete actions and real changes.

 

Afghanistan Crisis: Human Rights champion Dr.Sakena Yacoobi pleas for help

 

Dr Sakena Yacoobi teaching/Credit: AIL

 

I wanted to share with you this heart-wrenching letter I've received from peace activist and educator Dr Sakena Yacoobi about the crisis going on in Afghanistan. Please read her first-hand account of the chaos and help out in any way you can. 

 

Yacoobi is an amazing woman: people call her Afghanistan’s “mother of education". She has founded the Afghanistan Institute of Learning (AIL) there and dedicated her life to educating women and children. I've interviewed her for a piece in the New Internationalist a few years ago. 

 

Here is her letter: 

 

Dear, Friends, Supporters, and Colleagues,

This is one of the most difficult letters I have ever written. After twenty years, our government collapsed with almost no resistance. The constitution we worked so hard for, the rights our women sacrificed so much to gain, thrown out the window like scraps for the dogs. Our military and the Ghani government fled, leaving our women and children to face the Taliban with no support. The world watched it happen, without care. We begged, screaming for help. So, now we see peace is again made on the back of women and children. It is what it is. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has fallen, and Kabul is in complete chaos. My office and staff are unharmed, for which we thank God. 

The nation of Afghanistan is in turmoil. My schools still stand, as of now, we have been instructed that we can continue as long as we separate boys and girls. The day the Taliban took Kandahar, they planted their flags in the courtyard of three of them. My schools must be important, as they visited the very first day the Taliban took control. Our Women Learning Centers remain open as they primarily serve women. As of now, my staff is unharmed. We hope and pray this remains true. We have been told that Radio and TV Meraj are not to operate until we are given notice, we will wait for that instruction. We hope and pray that the Taliban wasn’t lying when they told the world they did not intend to shut the schools, but our universities have already shut their doors to women and told them to go home. Burqa sales have tripled, as have the prices to purchase them. Women who lived through the Taliban before, go now to purchase these garments, while the daughters raised under the American occupation throw them in the faces of their mothers, refusing to wear them. 

We are a nation at a crossroads, but AIL will do what AIL has always done. We will continue to educate and provide a safe space for children and women. We will continue to offer food and job training and medical care for as long as we can remain in our facilities. When it is no longer possible to remain in those buildings, we will find new buildings, and work from there. Wherever we have schools now, we will have schools next week or next month or next year. AIL was started in secret and it will continue in secret if it must. While we are afraid, we are not defeated. Our mission remains the same. We will set up schools in every province, now that the worst has come. We know what to expect. We know the Taliban very well. There is no question of how they operate, or what they expect. We know how to manage them. We will do so. 

Letter after letter, phone call after phone call, came in this weekend asking how you can help. We need humanitarian supplies. The refugee situation we updated you with last week and the week before has only deteriorated. We have 300,000 internal refugees and 80,000 children who are without shelter and food. Where we were short of supplies, now we are out. Those in need are overwhelming us. Aid agencies have left with the American’s. AIL will not be leaving, so we will expand our facilities to help those who lost everything, including their homes, in the fighting. We need dry milk, clothes, school supplies, medicine, hygiene items, and Covid is still present, so soap and sanitizers are critical. Many of you have asked what else you can do, and to that I say contact the UN and government officials and tell them you want them to use every possible tool they have to protect our women and girls through diplomatic means. Sanction Pakistan for their invasion of my country, and pray for the safety of my people. 

Our democracy may have fallen for now. Ideas do not disappear so easily. One cannot kill whispers on the wind. The Taliban cannot crush a dream. We will prevail, even if it takes longer than we wanted it too. 

Much love to you all,

Dr. Sakena Yacoobi

 What you can do to help:

Donate to AIL https://www.afghaninstituteoflearning.org/

UK MP information line, simply tell them whom you wish to speak to or give address information to find out the name of your MP. 020 7219 4272

Email the White House https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Email Number 10 Downing Street https://email.number10.gov,uk/

Request Peacekeepers https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/contact

International Committee of the Red Cross https://www.icrc.org,/en/contact

Outdoor Education - Bringing back nature into our children's lives

Children at Into the Woods nursery and Ark Franklin Primary Academy/Credit: Caroline Irby

“Nature breeds curiosity; it helps grow explorers rather than robots.” Ben Palmer-Fry, outdoor learning teacher, Ark Franklin Primary Academy.

Children in the UK spend less time outside than high-security prisoners, according to a recent report.  While their grandparents roamed unsupervised outdoors, our children spend their days cooped up inside, glued to a screen.  We have displaced nature from their lives: selling off their outdoors spaces, feeding them technology, keeping them inside with our fears and lack of time.  

A few years ago, the National Trust published a report on the phenomenon of "nature deficit disorder", a term coined in 2005 by the American author Richard Louv, who argued that the human cost of "alienation from nature" was measured in "diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses".  

Nature deficit disorder is not generally regarded as a medical condition. Yet, in the UK as in many other countries, rates of obesity, self-harm and mental health disorders diagnosed in children have climbed significantly since the 1970s.  

What if we could ‘rewild’ their childhood - bring back nature into their lives?  Could it produce healthier and happier young people?

Many people believe so, and a growing number of schools across the country (and elsewhere) are trying to do just that: they are re-introducing nature into children’s lives.  It is seen as a new trend, but the UK has a rich heritage of outdoor learning going back at least to the 19th century with Wordsworth, Ruskin, Baden and many others.

Some schools are following the Forest School philosophy, drawing on the Scandinavian model of Nature Kindergartens, while others are developing their own outdoor learning organically, adapting it into their curriculum.  Many community programmes, projects and social enterprises are also trying to reconnect young people with nature.

And the results are amazing. A solid body of research show the significant health, social and emotional benefits of outdoor learning. Forest School teachers say their children are healthier, more independent, confident, creative, socially minded and caring for the environment than other children. Yet, outdoor learning is likely to remain on the margins of education until the benefits are  recognised by policymakers and reflected in policies.

Photographer Caroline Irby and I have visited two London schools, which represent two different approaches to outdoor learning.  Into the Woods, a nursery where children spend their entire days in the woods, rain or shine, and Ark Franklin Primary Academy, which has transformed a piece of urban derelict land into a green oasis with a storytelling grove, a bug hotel, a vegetable garden and more.  The outdoors lessons include sciences, literacy and maths, but also “weaving and knot-tying and everything we think will be useful,” says headteacher Janine Ryan.

“Education is increasingly dominated by academic targets and a narrow curriculum,” says Emma Shaw, founder and manager of Into the Woods, London’s first Forest School nursery.  “The concept of play is lost along the way. ‘Let’s do the Maths earlier’: everything is measured. We all live our lives on screen all the time…  Here, the children can be themselves. They have space and time to explore, learn and do their own things.”  

You can read our story “Learning Outdoors: Growing Explorers, not Robots”  published in Positive News.

Meet Sakena Yacoobi – Afghanistan’s mother of education

Sakena Yacoobi in Sayabad learning centre in Afghanistan/  © courtesy of WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education) 

 

 

 

 

I wanted to follow Sakena Yacoobi to remote communities in Afghanistan to see how she teaches women and children how to think for themselves and stand up for their rights.  But here I was at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel in London on a rainy day. 

Yacoobi is one of my heroes: someone who makes a difference, who makes the world a better place. She is called “Afghanistan’s mother of education” and for more than two decades she has been transforming lives through community-based education. 

I was so excited to meet her, but she was jet-lagged and drained – a small figure a bit hunched, wrapped in black, with a slow, tired voice. But when she started talking about education, she grew taller, her voice stronger, her eyes shone and her whole being was infused with passion.

Yacoobi was born in Herat, Afghanistan, and could have led a comfortable life in the US where she had studied, then settled as a university professor.  But when Russia invaded Afghanistan, she decided to go to Pakistan where many Afghans had sought refuge and set up schools in refugee camps.  She then moved back to Afghanistan where she opened schools for girls in defiance of the Taliban who had banned education for girls and set strict laws dictating what children could learn.   She wanted to “counteract ignorance” and give thousands of girls, women and unprivileged children a  better chance in life. 

She created the Afghanistan Institute of Learning (AIL) in 1995 and her organization now runs 44 learning centers for women and children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as four clinics, a hospital, an orphanage, a program for street children and a radio station that brings education to isolated regions.  

She says she has dedicated her life to promoting education because it is the only way to bring peace. “Conflict is the result of ignorance. International governments spend billions of dollars on weapons – just think what that money could do if it went towards education.”

You can read my interview with Yacoobi in New Internationalist here.

Countering violence in war-torn Yemen

Credit: Search for Common Ground

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“When you sleep at night, you just think: ‘Maybe I will wake up. Maybe I will not,’” says Shoqi Maktary, Search For Common Ground’s Yemen Country Director. The war in Yemen is one of the most underreported humanitarian crises in the world today. The small country on the Arabian Peninsula, packed with 27.5 million people, is suffering from a civil war that’s now a proxy for others. Over a million people have fled their homes. "People can’t access the basics they need to survive,” says Maktary. Millions lack water, medicine, or shelter.  Beyond the immediate mayhem caused by the fighting, the war has also deepened existing divisions and created new ones between Sunni and Shi'a, refugees and host communities. "I worry the violence is creating a new generation of young people who'll grow up with this hatred for each other," warns Maktary. (You can read here a Reuters article on the war and what can be done.)  In Yemen, most people accept violence as an appropriate way to handle certain disputes. It is common practice to discipline children at home and at school, using violence. War has exposed this everyday violence for what it is.  Search for Common Ground, a charity which partners with people across African, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the USA to end violent conflict is trying to change this. Their team works closely with women, educators, migrants, young people and the media to develop a culture of respect, human rights and constructive problem-solving.   They have launched a peace-in-school program last year, training over 900 teachers, partners and government officials to understand the effects on violence on children's development. Their ability to resolve conflicts without violence has increased by 50%. Teachers tell stories about how students once triggered them to resort to violent punishment, but now the same behavior prompts them to discover why the kids are acting out. They say that they are committed to "break the stick." One teacher, Khaled, explains: "This training comes at a time when the school environment and community as a whole are overwhelmed with violence.  We were in desperate need for such training." Seeing the impact of the program, Yemen's Ministry of Education now wants their entire staff to take the training, which might lead to conflict resolution curricula in every school. Maybe these children will build a better future for their country...

What drives young Syrians into ISIS?

Young Syrian refugees in Lebanon/Russell Watkins DFID

More than ideologies, it is poverty, desperation and desire for revenge that drive young Syrians into extremist groups.

A new study by the peacebuilding NGO International Alert shows that the key factors that push young Syrians into joining extremist groups are the need to earn a basic living, regain a sense of purpose and dignity, and the belief in a moral duty to protect, avenge and defend their people.

The study, titled Why young Syrians choose to fight: Vulnerability to recruitment by violent extremist groups, draws on interviews with 311 young Syrians, their families and community members in Syria, Lebanon and Turkey, to understand what drives both vulnerability and resilience to recruitment by the groups ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria).

Adolescent boys and young men between the ages of 12 and 24 were found to be most at risk, along with children and young adults not in education, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees without supportive family structures and networks.

The findings suggest that radicalisation is not an explanation for joining a violent extremist group per se. For many young Syrians, belief in extreme ideologies appears to be, at most, a secondary factor in the initial decision to join an extremist group. 

Instead, vulnerability is driven by a combination of extreme trauma, loss and displacement, lack of alternative ways to make a decent living, the collapse of social structures and institutions including education, and the desire to get revenge against the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad. According to respondents, armed groups also provide a strong sense of purpose, honour and self-worth.

As one young Syrian man in Lebanon said: “People can find a new meaning to their life in extremism. Extremism opens a door to a new life where they are wanted.”

In Syria more than 6,000 schools are out of use, having been attacked, occupied by the military or turned into an emergency shelter. The collapse of the education system, with some two million children out of school, has also greatly contributed to young people’s vulnerability to joining violent extremist groups, who are filling this gap by providing their own forms of education, the report says. These ‘schools’ are highly segregated, exploit sectarian divisions and support divisive narratives.

UNICEF, which today unveiled details of a major new fund (Education Cannot Wait) to help get children back in class during emergencies, also stresses the crucial role of education in countries affected by wars and disasters.  

"Education changes lives in emergencies," said Josephine Bourne, UNICEF's education chief, in a statement. "Going to school keeps children safe from abuses like trafficking and recruitment into armed groups."

Yet, only 2 percent of global humanitarian appeals are on average dedicated to education.  "It is time education is prioritised by the international community as an essential part of basic humanitarian response, alongside water, food and shelter," Bourne added.

Offering comprehensive, inclusive and quality education, which also incorporates trauma healing and psychosocial support, was one of the four key factors identified by the report that can prevent recruitment.  The others were: providing alternative sources of livelihood, better access to positive social groups and institutions, and avenues for exercising non-violent activism.

The report stresses the need to integrate these social cohesion efforts into humanitarian aid projects, regional policy objectives and diplomacy aiming to reduce discrimination against refugees, which can also drive recruitment.

Note: The study was conducted five years into the conflict in Syria, which has claimed an estimated 300,000 lives, displaced 6.5 million people internally and prompted 4.8 million people to flee to neighbouring countries. 

You can find out more about International Alert's work in Syria here.

 

Virgin Wives of the Fetish Gods - Slavey in Ghana

Enyonam and Forgive, both former trokosi slaves, at home in their village. They bonded due to the stigma they face from the community and say "we have become family to each other". Photo by Fjona Hill (Aletheia Collective)

 
I love Ghana, so when Magnum ice cream asked me to conduct interviews for a film on sustainable cocoa in the Ashanti region, I jumped at the chance.  It would also allow me and photographer Fjona Hill to report on a story we have wanted to do for a long time, but didn’t have the means to, as editors rarely pay for travel expenses these days.

So after the film, we stayed behind and headed north to the Volta - a beautiful region rich in history and culture, dominated by the vast Lake Volta and the River Volta. We wanted to look at the terrible trokosi tradition and try to understand why it still endures today.  Ghana is widely seen as a model for political and economic reform in Africa and lauded for its rapid development.


But away from bustling Accra, in remote countryside villages, some deep-seated traditions prevail. The trokosi practice calls for virgin girls to be sent to the shrines of fetish gods to pay for crimes committed by one of their relatives. They become living sacrifices, protecting their families from the gods’ wrath. Some stay at the shrines for a few years; others for life.

The tradition, also practised in neighbooring Benin and Togo, is deeply rooted in the beliefs and identity of the Ewe (ay-vay) people. It serves rural communities’ need for justice and meets the material and sexual needs of the fetish priests. But it's also considered a spiritual act and as such it is, along with female genital mutilation, one of the most difficult human rights violations to eradicate.

With the help of International Needs Ghana (ING), the main NGO campaigning to stop the practive, we visited isolated rural villages, speaking with women who had spent many years in fetish shrines, fetish priests, ING director and government officials.  We were aware of being Western journalists looking at a tradition we couldn’t understand and didn’t want to present another story on “dark, exotic, dangerous Africa”.

But we felt this was not a story about Western against African values – rather it was one one about modern Ghana vs. traditional Ghana. The Government outlawed the custom in 1998 and many Ghanaians are deeply embarrassed it is still enduring today. But there are powerful religious and political lobbying groups who argue the tradition is part of their cultural and religious heritage, and is misunderstood.

Here is our story for the Thomson Reuters Foundation and here is the same story on the Chime for Change site, a global campaign to convene, unite and strengthen the voices speaking out for girls and women around the world. 

The priest, Torgbi Ahiaeu at the Avevi shrine. He complains that he now has to do the farmwork himself now the women have gone. His wife, behind him, is the one remaining trokosi in the village. All the other 23 trokosi have left the village after liberation. Photo by Fjona Hill (Aletheia Collective)

Peace-building course in Rwanda helps next generation learn from the past

Ceremony at the Kigali's Genocide Memorial/courtesy of the Aegis Trust

On a recent reporting trip to Rwanda, I spent a day at the Kigali’s Genocide Memorial Centre. It is a harrowing and moving place of remembrance and learning for Rwandans and international visitors, built on the mass graves of 250,000 people killed there during the genocide.

I had first visited the Genocide Memorial in April 2004 for its inauguration and events marking the 10^th anniversary of the 1994 genocide during which Hutus soldiers and militias killed nearly one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The country was still in ruins and the scars of the genocide were visible everywhere. Survivors told me horrific stories and I was wondering how they would ever manage to heal and go on living. I thought the country would never recover from something like that.

But 19 after the genocide, the country is recovering. Rwanda's is the fastest-growing economy in Africa. Its infrastructure is rapidly expanding and so is access to health and education. The government has adopted policies of peace and reconciliation, encouraging people to leave behind their divisive ethnic identities and think themselves simply as Rwandans. The perpetrators have been tried at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, and in the Gacaca courts, the traditional village courts in Rwanda.  You can see convicts in pink jumpsuits all over the country, toiling in the fields and on the roadsides, working for the public good, and that helps the nation to mend.

On the surface, Rwanda is healing and has moved on from its terrible past.  But at the Genocide Memorial, I was told there are worrying signs that children who were not even born during the genocide are perpetuating the ethnic prejudices of their parents.

Over 60% of the Rwanda’s population is under the age of 24, so their understanding of the genocide is shaped by their families and communities. “There are resentments and ideologies that children learn from their parents and wider communities, and these feelings pose a threat to long-term stability,” says Dr. James Smith, CEO of the Aegis Trust, the British charity which runs the Genocide Memorial with the Rwandan government.

The organization believes that the next five to ten years are crucial to reach this generation to help safeguard Rwanda against internal strife.  It has designed, alongside the local organization “Institute of Research and Dialogue for Peace” (IRDP), a peace-building course where young people who were not born during the genocide or were very young can learn how hatred and prejudice can lead to mass violence and why peace and reconciliation – even when it may seem difficult and at times impossible – is vital for their personal future and that of their country. 

Peace-building course at the Kigali Genocide Memorial/Veronique Mistiaen

This is very important, says Mona Weissmark, Associate Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University Feinberg Medical School and an expert in the inter-generational impact of injustice.  “If left unresolved, the trauma of any atrocity inflicted on an ethnic group is then passed along to the next generation and those in turn lead to entrenched ethnic tensions and group conflicts.”   She is the author of  “Justice Matters: Legacies of the Holocaust and World War II”, which explores the psychology of hatred and ethnic resentments passed from generation to generation.  In the face of unjust treatment, says Weissmark, herself the daughter of Holocaust survivors, the natural response is resentment and deep anger - and a desire for revenge. While legal systems offer a structured means for redressing injustice, it often does not redress the emotional pain, which, left unresolved, is then passed along to the next generation - leading to entrenched ethnic tension and group conflict.

I’ve written a piece for the Guardian on the Genocide Memorial’s peace-building programme.  You can read it here.

Investing on children's future

Children’s early years are crucial and that is the time when governments should strongly support them. Investing more money on children in the first six years of their lives would reduce social inequality and help all children, especially the most vulnerable, have happier lives, according to the OECD’s first-ever report on child well-being in its 30 member countries.

The report shows that average public spending by OECD countries up to age six accounts for only a quarter of all child spending. But a better balance of spending between the “Dora the Explorer” years of early childhood and the teenage “Facebook” years would help improve the health, education and well-being of all children in the long term, according to Doing Better for Children.

“The crisis is putting pressure on public budgets across the world. But any short-term savings on spending on children’s education and health would have major long-term costs for society,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “Spending early, when the foundations for a child’s future are laid, is key especially for disadvantaged children and can help them break out of a family cycle of poverty and social exclusion."

The report is advocating providing more cash benefits in the pre-school years, strengthening pre- and post-natal services and early childhood education, especially to children in disadvantaged families, supporting breast-feeding and teaching parents the importance of a healthy diet and the risks of smoking.

Many countries concentrate child spending in compulsory education. But often, school systems are not designed to address the problems of disadvantaged children. More of this money should be spent on helping them within schools, through mentoring and out-of-school programmes, to improve behaviour and educational attainment.