Building Classrooms for Quality Education

#aswegrow believes each child has the right to a proper education that matches its needs and effectively prepares it to address the issues of the community in which it lives. Our funding strategy is focused explicitly on projects that improve educational outcomes, and in particular help ensure that children don’t just enroll in school but also derive meaningful and lasting benefit from their education. Our goal is that our activities enable as many children as possible to finalize their education with success.

Problem

We are passionate about education! Learning how to read, write and count form the mere basics to properly function in this world and the more people we can give access to such basic life-skills, the better. But getting children in school, providing them with educational access, sadly hasn’t proven to be enough. Many of the children who are offered the opportunity to go to school, do not get the opportunity to finish it. And those that do finish school often end up with a degree that has little to no meaning for their direct environment. The Second Millenium Development Goal is to Achieve Universal Primary Education. It, justifiably so, defines giving more access to education as a necessity. But what good is access to education if its quality is extremely poor and if it has no standing what so ever in the society it is provided in? #aswegrow feels there is an immediate need to focus on the quality of education.

Solution

The solution we offer is to create a better understanding. We do not have the illusion that there is a short-cut or magic formula which will increase the quality of education with immediate effect. Our innovative approach is in our outlook on Quality Education. By linking many educational barriers to one space, we have experienced that people start seeing the connection. Our three programs (#aswegrow-we teach, #aswegrow-we learn and #aswegrow-we eat) each focus on one part of the classroom. Yet, the classroom cannot be built if all program-items are not taken into consideration. Our vision is simple, transparent and has the potential to be understood by all stakeholders involved (both donors as well as the educational grassroots we work with)

Example

Our solution lies in the outlook and understanding we seek to create. In the past, we supported 23 organisations in 19 different countries in our world. The little experience we have, has shown us that both donor as well as grantee do not often adopt such an overall outlook. E.g. In December 2011 we were able to give a donation of $5000 to a school in Kikambala, Kenya for the construction of a classroom. One of our funders (Accenture) was looking to make an impact while the school we worked with (Vision Majengo) was looking for funding for another classroom. Our emphasis that a classroom can make a tremendous difference in the lives of many (e.g. school could be used for vocational skill programs as well as traditional curriculum or the school is also a community-place for the entire family) defined impact for our donor. While for the school it was necessary to see that they need to talk about the classroom as a place of overall growth for everyone, not only as a space with some learning equipment and a blackboard.

Marketplace

We are inspired by organisations such as Room to Read, UNICEF and Save the Children. As we are a start-up non-profit, we feel, they can only contribute to our success. Room to Read is admirable in its simplicity but also in its business approach to education. We can learn a great deal from them in their governance structure, on-the-grounds approach, fundraising strategy, etc. UNICEF and UNESCO we have found to be amazing sources of knowledge and always good to confirm any educational facts we come across.