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Zero Hunger
Quality Education
Clean Water and Sanitation

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1. 100% access to adequate food all year round

2. Zero stunted children less than 2 years old

3. All food systems are sustainable

4. 100% increase in smallholder productivity and income

5. Zero loss or waste of food

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In most developing countries, few children graduate from secondary school and many don't even finish primary school. In Ghana, for example, only 50 percent of children complete grade 5, and of those, less than half can comprehend a simple paragraph. The UNESCO program Education for All, which as part of the Millennium Development Goals aims to provide free, universal access to primary schooling, has been successful in dramatically increasing enrollment. But, according to annual Education for All reports, many kids drop out before finishing school. Why don't they stay?

There are numerous reasons, including the difficulty of getting to school and the cost of schooling. Even when tuition is free, there are often expenses for lunch, uniforms, and examination fees. And because the quality of education is often poor, parents are forced to pay for additional tutoring to enable their children to pass tests. Opportunity costs may be even larger-while they are in school, children forgo opportunities to produce income working on the family farm or selling in the marketplace. It is not surprising that when education investments do not result in adequate learning, or even basic literacy and numeracy, parents do not keep their children in school.

Even when learning outcomes are adequate, very few students continue on to secondary school. Job prospects for most people in the developing world are poor, and staying in school past grade 5, or even through grade 10, does not improve them significantly. In impoverished regions, the vast majority will not secure formal employment and will be supported primarily through subsistence level agriculture and trading. Health outcomes in these regions are also dire. Millions of children die every year from controllable diseases such as diarrhea, respiratory infections, and malaria.

Educational programs typically adopt traditional Western models of education, with an emphasis on math, science, language, and social studies. These programs allocate scarce resources to topics like Greek mythology, prime numbers, or tectonic plate movement-topics that may provide intellectual stimulation, but have little relevance in the lives of impoverished children. Highperforming students in less developed regions face a much different future from their counterparts' in wealthier areas. There are no higher levels of schooling or professional job opportunities awaiting most of these children; they will likely end up working on family or neighborhood farms or starting their own small enterprises.

Schooling provides neither the financial literacy students will need to manage the meager resources under their control, nor the guidance needed to create opportunities for securing a livelihood or building wealth. In addition, schooling provides little assistance to promote the physical health needed for economic stability and quality of life. Life expectancy is low in impoverished regions, and not just because of lack of quality medical care. The devastation preventable disease wreaks on well-being and financial stability in poor regions can be dramatically mitigated through instruction on basic health behaviors, such as hand washing.

We fervently believe that what students in impoverished regions need are not more academic skills, but rather life skills that enable them to improve their financial prospects and well-being. These include financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills; health maintenance and management skills; and administrative capabilities, such as teamwork, problem solving, and project management.

Over the last five years, we have done extensive work on the state of education in developing countries. We have visited many government, nongovernment, and private schools and teacher training programs in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and we have talked extensively with teachers, students, headmasters, school owners, and government officials. We have visited innovative educational programs that are among the world's largest and most successful, including BRAC, an NGO in Bangladesh that owns and operates 32,000 primary schools; Pratham, which provides literacy and other educational support programs, teaching 33 million children in India; and Escuela Nueva, the Colombian program of mono- and multigrade teaching that has grown to 20,000 schools. We have implemented training for illiterate adults in developing countries and have tested that training effectively over the last few years, applying the best of our experience to improving organizations like Opportunity International, a large microfinance institution.

These experiences have convinced us that the time is right to redefine quality education in the developing world.
A New Educational Model
We have developed a robust educational model that combines traditional content with critically important financial, health, and administrative skills, which can be delivered via existing school systems and teachers.

Our model, which we call "school for life," shifts the goal of schooling away from the achievement of standardized learning outcomes toward making a positive impact on the economic and social well-being of students and their communities. The model requires significant changes in both content and pedagogy. First, entrepreneurship and health modules are mandatory curriculum components for all primary grade students. Second, student-centered learning methods are used that require students to work in groups to solve complex problems and manage projects on their own.

This approach is inspired by models of adult education in developing countries that focus on self-efficacy as a critical foundation of positive livelihood and health-seeking behaviors, along with active-learning pedagogies used in progressive schools throughout the world. The health curriculum draws on the work of the World Health Organization and focuses on preventing disease, caring for sick children, and obtaining medical care. The entrepreneurship curriculum is informed by our work with adult entrepreneurs in developing countries, and it draws ideas from a broad range of financial and entrepreneurial programs developed by organizations like the International Labour Organization, Junior Achievement, and Aflatoun.

Conceptual knowledge is put into practice at school through activities that empower children to use what they have learned. For example, students practice routine health behaviors, such as hand washing and wearing shoes near latrines-and, to the extent feasible, gain exposure to other important behaviors, such as boiling drinking water and using malaria nets. They practice routine market-like transactions by earning points for schoolwork and budgeting those points to obtain valuable prizes, such as sitting in a favorite chair or being first in line.

Students also develop higher order skills as they work in committees to develop and execute complex projects. Health-related projects can range from planning and carrying out an athletic activity to be played during recess, to practicing diagnostic skills when classmates are ill-helping to decide, for example, when a cold has turned into a respiratory infection that requires antibiotics. Entrepreneurship projects include identifying and exploiting market opportunities through business ideas like school gardens or community recycling that create real value. Students learn and practice workplace skills and attitudes like delegation, negotiation, collaboration, and planning-opportunities that are rarely available to them outside their families.

Some school systems, especially at the secondary level, have begun to include entrepreneurship and health topics in their curricular requirements. But including information in basic lectures is not enough. Schools must simultaneously adopt action-oriented pedagogical approaches that hone critical thinking skills and enable children to identify problems, seek out and evaluate relevant information and resources, and design and carry out plans for solving these problems. This involves tackling real problems that require and empower students to take the initiative and responsibility for their own learning.

A full implementation of this new school for life approach has not yet been adopted by any major organization, but a pilot is currently being developed by Escuela Nueva in Colombia. Escuela Nueva was the pioneer in adapting student-centered approaches for use in impoverished rural environments, which often use multigrade classrooms. Escuela Nueva develops classroom materials and pedagogical approaches in which students work in self-directed teams to learn, discuss, and actively practice, using the basic content included in standard governmental curricula.

Through this unique combination of relevant content, practical implementation, and student empowerment, children develop a body of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will enable them to succeed and thrive when they leave school, whether they are headed toward college or remain in their communities.
Dramatic Changes Are Needed
The traditional definition of school quality in the developing world is based on content mastery. But using traditional schooling approaches during the few precious years most children will spend in school leads to wasted resources and forgone opportunities for individuals and communities. Governmental agencies and organizations that support and promote quality education for all children must move beyond traditional models to help children develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are relevant to their lives and that can lift them out of poverty.

For too long, governments and organizations investing in developing-world education have operated under the unquestioned assumption that improved test scores were clear evidence that their investments have paid off. But if, as we argue here, mastery of the basic primary school curriculum is not the best means for improving life chances and alleviating poverty in developing countries, that model is broken. Investing in interventions that produce the highest test scores is no longer a valid approach for allocating scarce educational dollars or the scarce time available for the development of young minds. It is time to seek out the interventions that lead to the greatest social and economic impact for the poor.

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Redefining Education in the Developing World (SSIR)

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In most developing countries, few children graduate from secondary school and many don't even finish primary school. In Ghana, for example, only 50 percent of children complete grade 5, and of those, less than half can comprehend a simple paragraph.

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Last night, 795 million people went to sleep hungry. That's a larger number than the populations of the U.S. and Europe combined, and the effects of not having enough food makes hunger (and malnutrition) the No. 1 public health risk worldwide-greater than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.

In 2000, presidents and prime ministers of the United Nations countries set a goal to cut hunger in half by 2015. We came close but didn't quite hit the target: Worldwide, 10.9 percent of people are undernourished, down from 18.6 percent in 1990-92, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization recently reported. Despite falling short, the 193 member states agreed this week to charge forward with an even bigger goal: ending poverty and hunger by 2030. The goal is part of the new post-2015 sustainable development goals that will be considered at the U.N. General Assembly in September.

It may sound like a beauty pageant wish, but it is an entirely achievable goal. Some paths to end hunger are relatively straight, a matter of increased production and ecosystem maintenance; others are more systemic, such as solving ongoing conflict and reshaping cultural ideas regarding gender roles. But with international cooperation and a departure from "business as usual," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva think achieving the goal is possible.

What would it take? Simply put, $160 per year for each person living in extreme poverty. That's a really nice dinner for two in Brooklyn and less than an August air-conditioning bill.

At the presentation of a report on hunger in July, Graziano da Silva said the total investment would total $267 billion per year over the next 15 years. "Given that this is more or less equivalent to 0.3 percent of the global GDP, I personally think it is a relatively small price to pay to end hunger," he said.

Humanitarians and research institutions are optimistic too. "We can change these things when we all agree to the same goals," said Lyric Thompson, senior policy manager at the International Center for Research on Women. "The important thing is that we need to carry that work through." Here's what needs to be done.
Double Agricultural Production of Small Farmers
If women farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry people in the world could be reduced by 150 million, according to the FAO. As a result, one of the sustainable developmental goals for the next 15 years specifically addresses granting small-scale food producers-particularly women, indigenous people, and family farmers-secure and equal access to land; resources like seeds, tools, and pesticides; credit; and markets.

It's why groups like Landesa and Women's Land Link Africa are advocating for women's land tenure rights and agricultural tech companies such as Hello Tractor are developing gender-blind mobile apps that could increase yields up to 200 percent. Even simple methods that increase production, such as sack farming, seem promising.

"There's not a high cost to get started [in sack farming]; you're not waiting on someone to give you seed funding. You could grab a sack and do that tomorrow," said Regina Pritchett of the Huairou Commission, a nonprofit that works on housing and community issues for women across Africa.
Increase Access (and Peace)
Right now, the World Food Programme is on the ground providing assistance in six different emergency situations around the globe. WFP aid has been a vital resource following natural disasters like foods, earthquakes, and droughts, as well as disease outbreaks, but the demographic of need is shifting.

"Increasingly, the people who need our help are caught up in man-made conflicts, " said the WFP's Steve Taravella, citing Syria as a recent example. There, the WFP is struggling to meet the food needs of close to 6 million displaced people. In Syria as well as in Iraq, Yemen, and South Sudan, " people are hungry because they're denied access to food. Their path toward food has been disrupted, roads are destroyed, refrigeration systems aren't functioning," he said.

In difficult-to-access conflict settings where local markets still exist, the WFP is increasingly bringing in vouchers for food rather than commodities. Much like a credit card, the vouchers enable people to choose their own food, and they are currently being used for Syrian refugees in Jordan. But a sustainable solution to this particular problem of access requires peace brokering.
End Malnutrition in Children
Poor nutrition causes 45 percent of deaths in children under five-that's 3.1 million children each year. The World Health Organization has set a target of a 40 percent reduction in children who are stunted from sustained malnutrition and a reduction of childhood wasting (acute malnutrition) to less than 5 percent by 2025. Estimates from the World Bank show it will cost $8.50 per child per year to meet the global stunting target. And it's a good investment in purely economic terms: Being chronically malnourished affects a child's future income, whereas $1 invested in stunting reduction generates about $18 in economic returns.
Meet the Nutritional Needs of Adolescent Girls and Pregnant and Lactating Women
Every day, 368 million children in almost every country around the world receive food at school; the WFP provides school meals for 20 million of them. It's not only a way to address nutritional needs, it's a method of arresting the poverty cycle.

"We specifically emphasize food for girls so that in very patriarchal societies, families that would be inclined to keep the girl home will send them to school to be fed," Taravella said. In many cases, families are also incentivized to keep a child in school in order to receive take-home rations-more school, more food.

But school feedings also loop back into increased agricultural output and access to markets, as in many cases the WFP will purchase food for school meals from local farmers, providing an additional market for the producers as well as fresh, nutritionally dense food for kids.
Invest in Agriculture and Rural Infrastructure
Research by the FAO shows that investment in agriculture is five times more effective in reducing poverty and hunger than investment in any other sector. A joint report from the FAO, WFP, and the International Fund for Agriculture Development presented last month found that a $105 billion investment in rural development, targeting small-scale irrigation and infrastructure systems like food processing to reduce postharvest waste and loss, could close the hunger gap.

"We believe that we won't see gains in reducing poverty and hunger unless we seriously invest in rural people," IFAD's Kanayo F. Nwanze said at the report's presentation in Rome. "Given the right kind of tools and resources, small-scale agricultural producers and rural entrepreneurs can transform struggling communities into thriving places."
Adapt to Climate Change
Around the world, climate change is exacerbating already hostile natural conditions, threatening farmland with erosion, salination, and desertification. Deforestation further accelerations the rate of erosion. Its results are impactful: If we don't adapt, hunger and child malnutrition could increase by up to 20 percent by 2050 as a result of climate-related disasters.

Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change, but it is also a victim of its effects. In order to meet the growing demands of the global population, agricultural outputs will need to increase 60 percent by 2050. It's difficult to overstate the importance of ensuring the practices used to meet those goals are sustainable for both communities and the environment.

One measure the U.N. has stressed is the importance of maintaining regional, national, and international gene libraries to preserve genetic diversity of plants. According to the FAO, up to 75 percent of crop genetic diversity is already lost; 22 percent of animal breeds are at risk, and more than half of fish stocks are fully exploited. "Preventing further losses of agricultural genetic resources and diverting more attention to studying them and their potential will boost humankind's ability to adapt to climate change," Maria Helena Semedo, the FAO deputy director-general, said in January.

"The biological foundation for agriculture is the diversity that exists in each of the different crops, and that diversity is embodied in each of the different seeds," Cary Fowler said in the documentary Seeds of Time. He's behind the "Doomsday Seed Vault" in Svalbard, Norway, which functions as a backup to more than 865,000 samples from gene libraries from around the world. "The fate of humankind is resting on these genetic resources. So nothing could be more important."

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Here's How We Can End Global Hunger in 15 Years

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Last night, 795 million people went to sleep hungry. That's a larger number than the populations of the U.S. and Europe combined, and the effects of not having enough food makes hunger (and malnutrition) the No. 1 public health risk worldwide-greater than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.

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“inviting all nations to work for a future where everyone enjoys their right to food and all food systems are resilient.”

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https://samrupert.blogspot.com/
https://maddawg12.blogspot.com
https://toenailsthoughts.blogspot.com/
https://slickrick28282828.blogspot.com/

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March 6th, 2014

According to UNICEF's January 2012 report, all children must have access to primary education that is free, compulsory and of good quality. Universal education and gender equality and empowering women are vital components of this mission. Educating children helps reduce poverty. Education will give the next generation the tools to fight poverty and conquer disease. School also offers children a safe environment, with support, supervision and socialization. Here they learn life skills that can help them prevent diseases, including how to avoid HIV/AIDS and malaria. Children may receive life-saving vaccines, fresh water and nutrient supplementation at school.

Many countries have committed themselves to more than the achievement of universal primary education. They are also looking at expanding universal education so that it includes several years of secondary school and a new basic education. The challenge of keeping children in school after primary school is great. UNESCO reports that when lower secondary-school-age children are counted in, the number of out-of-school children is doubled, as more than 72 million adolescents in this group are out of school. The barriers to school attendance at secondary level resemble those at primary level, but those barriers are intensified. The cost of secondary schooling is often higher than the cost of primary schooling and therefore more difficult for families to afford; secondary schools are further from home, often requiring transportation; and the conflict between educational aspirations and the potential income that could be earned by a working adolescent becomes greater.

We are now in the early months of 2014, yet progress in offering free, compulsory and good quality universal education in the developing nations has been slow. Overall, females have been the most affected with little or no access to educational opportunities which can be attributed to social, traditional and deep-rooted religious and cultural beliefs that are often the barriers they encounter and unable to overcome.

The following are a few facts about education in developing countries that show how it affects children and adults:

1. In most developing countries, public school is not free. The costs of books, uniforms, and teachers' salaries are borne by the students' families.

2. 67 million primary-school-age children are still denied the right to education.

3. As much as 115 million children of primary school age are not enrolled in school.

4. More than 226 million children do not attend secondary school.

5. Illiteracy is highest amongst females. In more than 20 developing countries, illiteracy rates amongst women exceed 70%.

6. Of the 67 million out-of-school primary-school-age children, 53% are girls. Of the lower secondary out-of-school adolescents, 52% are girls.

7. While girls are less likely to be in school, boys are more likely to repeat grades or drop out altogether.

8. Educated girls and women are less vulnerable to HIV infection, human trafficking and other forms of exploitation and more likely to marry later and have fewer children. An education can help decrease the spreading of infectious diseases.

9. Children born to educated mothers are less likely to be stunted or malnourished. In fact, each additional year of maternal education helps reduce the child mortality rate by 2%.

10. The African continent has areas with less than 50% literacy among children ages 18 and under. In comparison, the youth literacy rates in South American and European countries are among the highest with 90-100% literacy.

11. In developing, low-income countries, every additional year of education can increase a person's future income by an average of 10%.

12. Ethiopia: By applying an education sector plan with affirmative action towards girls, the country went from a girls' enrollment rate in primary education of 40% in 1999 to 90% in 2008.

13. Burkina Faso: The Government management to change the label of girls' education from 'worrisome' to 'progress' within a couple of years. The number of girls enrolled in school increased 73% between 2002 and 2008, and increasing numbers of girls are continuing onto secondary school.

14. A 10 to 20% increase in women's wages is associated with each additional year of schooling.

15. When women and girls receive an income, they re-invest 90% of their income into their families, as opposed to 30-40% for men.

Clearly an educated world is a healthier and more humane world for all.

Sources:

http://www.wordbank.org
http://www.unicef.org
http://www.nationmaster.com
http://www.unesco.org
http://www.uasaid.gov
http://www.globalpartnerhip.org

Academic Credentials Evaluation Institute, Inc.
www.acei1.com

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15 Facts on Education in Developing Countries

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March 6th, 2014 According to UNICEF's January 2012 report, all children must have access to primary education that is free, compulsory and of good quality. Universal education and gender equality and empowering women are vital components of this mission. Educating children helps reduce poverty. Education will give the next generation the tools to fight poverty...

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Education Failure in Developing Countries - Report
Tuesday, 16th October 2012 at 9:11 am

©UNESCO/D. Willetts, School children in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya

Twenty percent of young people in developing countries fail to complete primary school and lack skills for work, according to a report by global anti-poverty organisation, UNESCO.

The United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) report found that there are still 250-million children of primary school age who cannot read or write, whether they're in school or not, and 71 million teenagers who are out of secondary school and missing out on vital skills for future employment.

And UNESCO says $US8 billion is needed to ensure all young people attend lower secondary education in developing countries.

UNESCO says Governments as well as donors and the private sector must help fill the funding gap.

It says the tenth Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Putting Education to Work, reveals the urgent need to invest in skills for youth.

In developing countries, 200 million people aged 15 to 24 have not even completed primary school and need alternative pathways to acquire basic skills for employment and prosperity.

The world's youth population is larger than ever before; one in eight young people are unemployed and over a quarter are trapped in jobs that keep them on or below the poverty line. As the effects of the economic crisis continue to squeeze societies worldwide, the severe lack of youth skills is more damaging than ever.

Despite significant progress in some regions, UNESCO says few are on track to meet the six Education for All (EFA) goals set in 2000, and some are a long way behind. The report looks in depth at youth skills, one of the least analysed of the EFA Goals. It shows that acquiring a lower secondary education is a minimum today for young people to gain the foundation skills they need to find decent jobs.

©UNESCO/Eman Mohammed, Ibrahim Khalaf, 12, a Palestinian student looking through arabic books at his school's library during the reading class at Tunis public school in Beitlahia northern Gaza strip.

Poor young populations, urban and rural, are the most in need of skills training. In urban areas, the youth population is larger than it has ever been and growing. In a fifth of countries analysed, poor, urban young people have less education than in rural areas. Over a quarter earn little more than US$1.25 a day.

"We are witnessing a young generation frustrated by the chronic mismatch between skills and work. The best answer to the economic downturn and youth unemployment is to ensure that young people acquire the basic skills and relevant training they need to enter the world of work with confidence," Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO said.

"Many, and young women in particular, need to be offered alternative pathways for an education, so that they can gain the skills needed to earn a living, live in dignity and contribute to their communities and societies."

"Investing in young people's skills is a smart move for countries seeking to boost their economic growth. The Report estimates that every $1 spent on a person's education, yields US$10-US$15 in economic growth over that person's working life-time.

"There are worrying signs that aid to education may be slowing down just when children and young people need it the most," Pauline Rose, director of EFA Global Monitoring Report said.

"Governments and donors must find the money and energy to help young people most in need to acquire the skills they and their countries' economies desperately need. The private sector is the first to benefit from a skilled workforce and must also step up its financial support."

"Reallocating aid could help fill the funding gap. US$3.1 billion of aid to post-secondary education never reaches the educational systems of developing countries as it is used to fund foreign students in donor countries. These funds could be better spent addressing the skills deficit for disadvantaged youth in poor countries. The cost of one Nepalese student's scholarship in a developed country could give 229 students access to secondary education at home."

To download the report and other relevant materials, including all regional press releases, video releases and interviews: http://www.efareport.unesco.org

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Education Failure in Developing Countries - Report | PBA

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Education Failure in Developing Countries - Report Tuesday, 16th October 2012 at 9:11 am ©UNESCO/D. Willetts, School children in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya Twenty percent of young people in developing countries fail to complete primary school and lack skills for work, according to a report by global anti-poverty organisation, UNESCO.