This is a good idea but I am wondering how your training curriculum is tailored to be applicable to the Ugandan setting. Do you have Ugandan Education experts or people conversant with the Ugandan education system in any of your boards? Do you involve any of them in designing your curriculum? How does your idea improve learning in the classroom in Uganda?
Thank you for your comment and great questions about Educate!’s work. Let me try to answer them one by one:
How is your training/curriculum tailored to be applicable to the Ugandan setting?
First, Educate! developed the curriculum with the help of many effective organizations and institutions in Uganda. For example, Cornerstone Leadership Academy which unites students of different tribal and religious backgrounds along common principles shared their entire curriculum with Educate!. In addition, we receive constant feedback from the teachers and administrators at our partner schools about the curriculum. We have even organized a meeting with all the teachers at Aga Khan Secondary School to review and provide feedback on our curriculum.
Do you have Ugandan Education experts or people conversant with the Ugandan education system in any of your boards?
Educate! has a strong Uganda advisory board that we rely on heavily not only for curriculum development but also program design. Many members are leaders in the education system or involved in leading relevant organizations or institutions. The full list of our advisors is available on our site at: http://www.experienceeducate.org/uganda-board-of-advisors/, but here are the profiles of a few:
Collins Hy Tugumisirize: Collins is the founder and managing director of Afroeducare (www.studyinuganda.com). Afroeducare markets Ugandan educational institutions to East Africa and is currently collaborating with the Ministry of Education to develop a secondary school accreditation system in Uganda.
Irene Mutumba: Irene was elected as an Ashoka Fellow in 2005 and has been creating “Young Entrepreneur” Clubs in secondary schools across Uganda where students create and run small business projects. She is also training teachers to create a less regimented classroom and recruits volunteers from business and citizen sectors to participate in the management and growth of the clubs. Her organization is called the Private Education Development Network (pedn.org) She is a speaker for the Educate! Mentor Induction Training and a future judge for the Educate! Social Entrepreneurship Club Competition.
Tim Kreutter: Tim is the founder and director of Cornerstone (www.cornerstonedevelopment.org), an organization that builds highly effective leadership academies in Uganda and Rwanda. Cornerstone’s innovative curriculum unites people of different religions and tribes based on common principles.
Aramanzan Madanda: Aramanzan is a lecturer and coordinator of the Information and Communication Technology Program in the Women and Gender Studies Department at Makerere University. Madanda serves on the board and is a founding member of Mt. Masaba HS in Mbale, Educate!’s primary pilot school. Listen to an interview with Madanda about Educate! that aired on KGNU.
Peter Kasenene: As the Minister of Privatization of the government of Uganda, Peter Kasenene helped oversee the rapid spread of microfinance in Uganda. He has experience as a professor in numerous institutions around the world and now runs the Thomas More Leadership Institute in Kampala, Uganda.
Do you involve any of them in designing your curriculum?
Yes, Educate!’s Uganda advisory board has been crucial to the development of our curriculum. We have met with the members one-on-one during each step of the development of the curriculum (and continue to do so now as the curriculum is being implemented). In addition, we have held board meetings to brainstorm and discuss the curriculum, program design, and ideal outcomes of Educate!’s work.
How does your idea improve learning in the classroom in Uganda?
Educate!’s Mentors, who teach our curriculum, use a relationship based teaching method and guide Scholars through the creation of a social enterprise. Together, Educate!’s mentoring based teaching method, social change curriculum, and practical component based on social entrepreneurship maximize the extent to which Scholars learn to create change in their communities. The relationships Mentors build with the Scholars provide the confidence, or empowerment, that Scholars need to become leaders in their communities. Therefore, our work catalyzes the sequence of relationships, empowerment, leadership. As the Scholars gain experience leading change in their communities as a result of Educate!’s work, Scholars learn the foundation needed to address the challenges facing their community and country – a foundation which is not provided by the UNEB curriculum.
Thank you again for your comments. Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Congratulations Eric upon being recognized and selected among the finalists of the Champions of Quality Education in Africa! I wish you continued success as you strive to advance quality education in Ugandan secondary schools. Let me also ask Educate! to widen its partnerships with potential and relevant individuals and organizations so as to make its idea spread far and wide. Congs!
I want to sincerely thank the organizers for this opportunity and for the few comments that I have read from colleagues even outside Nigeria, I feel so honored and I am humbled and will continue to do my best as a champion of quality education in Africa. I want to thank everyone for the very positive remarks that you have made and pledge to truly live up to your expectations and serve as a Champion of Quality Education in Africa. As a teacher leader and motivator, I will raise more champions in Africa and all over the world for quality education. I also want to congratulate my other colleagues who have been selected as finalists. I believe we are the ones that Africa has been waiting for and this is an opportunity to make a new determination and offer a new vision for quality education in Africa.
Also, I see this rather as a recognition that commissions you and I to a higher service to humanity and I pledge to live and work with other colleagues to bring the dream of qualitative and quantitative education for the millions of children in Africa and around the world to reality. Thank you Ashoka Changemakers for the recognition and thank you colleagues for your VOTE, which is not just for me, but for the 59 million teachers around the world who have never been recognized enough for the contributions they make and for the hundreds of millions of children who look up to us as teachers for their future. I hope that this will inspire many more to join the 14 of us who have been selected to work for quality education in Africa. I urge my colleagues who have emerged finalist to see this as a moment to truly give a new direction to education in Africa. Let us become the champions of champions for quality education in Africa. While governments in Africa and the UN are making effort to ensure education for all children (quantitative), let us use this recognition to serve as advocates and changemakers for quality education, so that the education of children in Africa will be both qualitative and quantitative.
For the 14 of us selected as finalists, instead of seeing each other as competitors, I will rather request that we work cooperatively as the people chosen at this time to promote quality education in Africa. Let us become the embodiments of quality education in Africa, and let us work to raise more champions of quality education and eventually produce qualitatively educated children who will address and overcome the many critical challenges (corruption, HIV/AIDS, poverty, etc) facing Africa even in the 21st century.
Dear Colleagues, this is a win-win situation for all of us. Let us work more collaboratively to ensure that quality education in Africa is realized. Whether we emerge as final winners or not, let us maintain this momentum and quickly forge a common ground for the sake of education in Africa. I propose that the organizers create a G14 group and a G300+ group for both the finalists and other colleagues who were not selected but passionately believe in quality education in Africa to work together as the new champions of quality education in Africa who will raise many more champions for quality education in Africa. In this way, we shall all be able to work transcending the borders of finalists and non-finalists to bring quality education to Africa. Thank you all for being a part of this and let us mobilize others to join this initiative.
Leaving the United States to be involved in the education of students in Africa is a laudable move. May your sacrifice be rewarded. Like Raphael in Nigeria and Casely-Hayford in Ghana, our National Africa Foundation would want to see you succeed in your efforts in Uganda. Congratulations and all the best!
Thanks for the comment on Educate!'s entry. I browsed through National Africa Foundation's website and it looks like a great initiative, congratulations on this! If there is any room for collaboration between NAF and Educate!, I would love to talk more.
Thank you so much for the wonderful ideas and inspiring message. I could not agree with you more when you say that quality education will equip the next generation of youth in Africa, and aorund the world, to address the critical challenges we are facing from corruption, HIV/AIDS, poverty, and climate change. Together, I'm sure we can make great progress towards this goal and I hope we can collaborate well in to the future.
Thank you Changemakers.net for organizing this forum!
It's been such a pleasure seeing your efforts and passion through Educate! You and your team are such an inspiration for me, I get excited when I hear of the wonderful things you are doing and accomplishing (I couldn't believe Educate! was in Ode).
It's such a wonderful thing that you live out what you talk about. It was a pleasure working with you in D.C. and now watching what you are doing. When Who Cares? LLC gets off the ground, it would be a pleasure to help spread the word about Educate! as I believe in your cause.
I wish you and your team the very best. Please give one of your students a hug for me!
I am glad that AfricAid has had the opportunity to learn from Educate!'s model. The work being done by Educate! is truly innovative, and it is inspiring to see that the Educate! curriculum is already producing tangible results among its participants. I have enjoyed reading that Educate!'s past students have been accepted to the top leadership institutions on the continent, and it was equally inspiring to read about Diana, the Educate! scholar who has already translated her time in the Educate! curriculum into a community project through her Social Enterprise Club. Keep up the great work, and we look forward to continuing to learn and work together!
Hard work and commitment is always followed by a reward! Congratulations, Educate!, Uganda, upon emerging the best in Uganda and among the best three Champions in Africa in promoting quality education. I hope you will improve on your idea further by cooperating with other partners.
I think I am seeing an Acholi name. Are you from Lira? I'd love to hear from you so I could describe what my Ugandan Orphans Fund is trying to do in paying school fees for 163 children in the Children of Hope project in Lira.
Its a great pleasure to hear from you. Well, though I have particular interest in the North as well, I am neither an Acholi nor from Lira. Am from Kumi, not very far wawy from Lira. I am happy to hear about what you have done and are continuing to do in helping the 163 orphans pay their school fees in Lira - this indeed is helping the disadvantaged!
I have been looking forward for such an opportunity to reach out further to help more disadvantaged children in science education through use of educational videos. I hope you dont mine checking out what I am doing in this area on this link; www.youtube.com/user/yosamo2
Thank you for getting in touch. I wish I could straighten out my name (Pitcher) but you found me anyway. Your video for Science Education Communication Video shows the value of IT for rural learning. I'll suggest to the Director of Children of Hope in Lira that she tell the Secondary School Principals about it.
Let's stay in touch in case we can find a way to help each other. I see your specialty is fruit processing which doesn't give me an automatic connection to any of the farming IGA's that the C of H caregivers are working on. But the fact that you have been a teacher for over 18, like me, makes me think we have common interests.
First congratulations Eric for your effort to encorage entrepreneurship in Ugandan secondary students.
My name got scrambled above. I am Lorna Pitcher a 60 year old retired teacher in Toronto, Canada who founded Ugandan Orphans Fund http://UgandanOrphansFund.givemeaning.com in 2007 after visiting Uganda for 2 weeks on my March Break.
UOF supports 163 orphans and vulnerable children ages 10 to 16 in Lira, northern Uganda with school fees and scholastic materials. The children attend Primary (grades 6 & 7) and Secondary 1 & 2. We have sent over $35,000 in the past 2 years to the Director of Children of Hope, Uganda who visits the Principals of the 31 schools to pay the children's fees.
The Director has recently used some of the funds to start Income Generating Activities (IGA's) with the caregiver families so they can increase their share of the school fees. These activities are goat, chicken, and pig raising, bee-keeping, oxen sharing and necklace making. I market the recycled paper bead necklaces in Canada with great success.
Could you please contact me at lornapitcher@hotmail.com. I'd like to chat about bringing the entrepreneurship classes to the 31 schools in Lira, or to give the lessons at the regular gatherings of the 163 Children of Hope children.
I think we could help each other to help the children. I look forward to hearing from you or anyone else interested in educating the young people of Lira, northern Uganda. Lorna Pitcher
On July 28, 2009 the judges reviewed the entries for the Changemakers “Champions of Quality Education in Africa” competition and would like to pass on the following feedback (listed below) for your entry. Thank you for applying and for your hard work in the field. We are excited to archive your entry to serve as a leading solution for the worldwide community of innovators. We wish you continued luck with your innovative, sustainable, and socially impactful initiatives.
All the best, The Changemakers Team
“This was a very exciting proposal! I love the idea of introducing social activism to high school students by getting university students and graduates from the program itself involved in mentoring younger students. It’s all about building future leaders and getting students to understand that they are citizens, constituents, and that they’re the ones who can bring the change that is needed in communities. I found it deeply inspiring.”
“This initiative is very well conceived, and they’re clearly thinking of how to lead capacity in Uganda. It’s great that they’re self-organizing and growing their organization and leadership from the kids who are benefitting from the program. I would really like to learn more about this initiative’s groundwork for sustainability and possibly their plans for mass scalability.”
- Changemakers “Champions of Quality Education in Africa” Judges: Escuela Nueva, Center for International Education at the University of Massachusetts, Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, CARE (United States), African Leadership Academy, UNICEF
Comments
This is a good idea but I am wondering how your training curriculum is tailored to be applicable to the Ugandan setting. Do you have Ugandan Education experts or people conversant with the Ugandan education system in any of your boards? Do you involve any of them in designing your curriculum? How does your idea improve learning in the classroom in Uganda?
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Hi Mr. Omoding,
Thank you for your comment and great questions about Educate!’s work. Let me try to answer them one by one:
Collins Hy Tugumisirize: Collins is the founder and managing director of Afroeducare (www.studyinuganda.com). Afroeducare markets Ugandan educational institutions to East Africa and is currently collaborating with the Ministry of Education to develop a secondary school accreditation system in Uganda.
Irene Mutumba: Irene was elected as an Ashoka Fellow in 2005 and has been creating “Young Entrepreneur” Clubs in secondary schools across Uganda where students create and run small business projects. She is also training teachers to create a less regimented classroom and recruits volunteers from business and citizen sectors to participate in the management and growth of the clubs. Her organization is called the Private Education Development Network (pedn.org) She is a speaker for the Educate! Mentor Induction Training and a future judge for the Educate! Social Entrepreneurship Club Competition.
Tim Kreutter: Tim is the founder and director of Cornerstone (www.cornerstonedevelopment.org), an organization that builds highly effective leadership academies in Uganda and Rwanda. Cornerstone’s innovative curriculum unites people of different religions and tribes based on common principles.
Aramanzan Madanda: Aramanzan is a lecturer and coordinator of the Information and Communication Technology Program in the Women and Gender Studies Department at Makerere University. Madanda serves on the board and is a founding member of Mt. Masaba HS in Mbale, Educate!’s primary pilot school. Listen to an interview with Madanda about Educate! that aired on KGNU.
Peter Kasenene: As the Minister of Privatization of the government of Uganda, Peter Kasenene helped oversee the rapid spread of microfinance in Uganda. He has experience as a professor in numerous institutions around the world and now runs the Thomas More Leadership Institute in Kampala, Uganda.
Thank you again for your comments. Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Sincerely,
Eric Glustrom
Director, Educate!
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Congratulations Eric upon being recognized and selected among the finalists of the Champions of Quality Education in Africa! I wish you continued success as you strive to advance quality education in Ugandan secondary schools. Let me also ask Educate! to widen its partnerships with potential and relevant individuals and organizations so as to make its idea spread far and wide. Congs!
I want to sincerely thank the organizers for this opportunity and for the few comments that I have read from colleagues even outside Nigeria, I feel so honored and I am humbled and will continue to do my best as a champion of quality education in Africa. I want to thank everyone for the very positive remarks that you have made and pledge to truly live up to your expectations and serve as a Champion of Quality Education in Africa. As a teacher leader and motivator, I will raise more champions in Africa and all over the world for quality education. I also want to congratulate my other colleagues who have been selected as finalists. I believe we are the ones that Africa has been waiting for and this is an opportunity to make a new determination and offer a new vision for quality education in Africa.
Also, I see this rather as a recognition that commissions you and I to a higher service to humanity and I pledge to live and work with other colleagues to bring the dream of qualitative and quantitative education for the millions of children in Africa and around the world to reality. Thank you Ashoka Changemakers for the recognition and thank you colleagues for your VOTE, which is not just for me, but for the 59 million teachers around the world who have never been recognized enough for the contributions they make and for the hundreds of millions of children who look up to us as teachers for their future. I hope that this will inspire many more to join the 14 of us who have been selected to work for quality education in Africa. I urge my colleagues who have emerged finalist to see this as a moment to truly give a new direction to education in Africa. Let us become the champions of champions for quality education in Africa. While governments in Africa and the UN are making effort to ensure education for all children (quantitative), let us use this recognition to serve as advocates and changemakers for quality education, so that the education of children in Africa will be both qualitative and quantitative.
For the 14 of us selected as finalists, instead of seeing each other as competitors, I will rather request that we work cooperatively as the people chosen at this time to promote quality education in Africa. Let us become the embodiments of quality education in Africa, and let us work to raise more champions of quality education and eventually produce qualitatively educated children who will address and overcome the many critical challenges (corruption, HIV/AIDS, poverty, etc) facing Africa even in the 21st century.
Dear Colleagues, this is a win-win situation for all of us. Let us work more collaboratively to ensure that quality education in Africa is realized. Whether we emerge as final winners or not, let us maintain this momentum and quickly forge a common ground for the sake of education in Africa. I propose that the organizers create a G14 group and a G300+ group for both the finalists and other colleagues who were not selected but passionately believe in quality education in Africa to work together as the new champions of quality education in Africa who will raise many more champions for quality education in Africa. In this way, we shall all be able to work transcending the borders of finalists and non-finalists to bring quality education to Africa. Thank you all for being a part of this and let us mobilize others to join this initiative.
Leaving the United States to be involved in the education of students in Africa is a laudable move. May your sacrifice be rewarded. Like Raphael in Nigeria and Casely-Hayford in Ghana, our National Africa Foundation would want to see you succeed in your efforts in Uganda. Congratulations and all the best!
Dear Prince,
Thanks for the comment on Educate!'s entry. I browsed through National Africa Foundation's website and it looks like a great initiative, congratulations on this! If there is any room for collaboration between NAF and Educate!, I would love to talk more.
All the best,
Eric
Dear Raphael,
Thank you so much for the wonderful ideas and inspiring message. I could not agree with you more when you say that quality education will equip the next generation of youth in Africa, and aorund the world, to address the critical challenges we are facing from corruption, HIV/AIDS, poverty, and climate change. Together, I'm sure we can make great progress towards this goal and I hope we can collaborate well in to the future.
Thank you Changemakers.net for organizing this forum!
Eric
Dear Eric,
It's been such a pleasure seeing your efforts and passion through Educate! You and your team are such an inspiration for me, I get excited when I hear of the wonderful things you are doing and accomplishing (I couldn't believe Educate! was in Ode).
It's such a wonderful thing that you live out what you talk about. It was a pleasure working with you in D.C. and now watching what you are doing. When Who Cares? LLC gets off the ground, it would be a pleasure to help spread the word about Educate! as I believe in your cause.
I wish you and your team the very best. Please give one of your students a hug for me!
Jessy (Turnell) Pratt
Who Cares? LLC
Hey Jessy!
Thanks for the great note. I have wonderful memories of our time in DC and I hope that everything is going well with Who Cares. Keep me updated!
All the best,
Eric
I am glad that AfricAid has had the opportunity to learn from Educate!'s model. The work being done by Educate! is truly innovative, and it is inspiring to see that the Educate! curriculum is already producing tangible results among its participants. I have enjoyed reading that Educate!'s past students have been accepted to the top leadership institutions on the continent, and it was equally inspiring to read about Diana, the Educate! scholar who has already translated her time in the Educate! curriculum into a community project through her Social Enterprise Club. Keep up the great work, and we look forward to continuing to learn and work together!
Hard work and commitment is always followed by a reward! Congratulations, Educate!, Uganda, upon emerging the best in Uganda and among the best three Champions in Africa in promoting quality education. I hope you will improve on your idea further by cooperating with other partners.
Hi Samuel
I think I am seeing an Acholi name. Are you from Lira? I'd love to hear from you so I could describe what my Ugandan Orphans Fund is trying to do in paying school fees for 163 children in the Children of Hope project in Lira.
My name got scrambled. I'm Lorna Pitcher lornapitcher@hotmail.com
Would love to make email contact
Hi Lorna,
Its a great pleasure to hear from you. Well, though I have particular interest in the North as well, I am neither an Acholi nor from Lira. Am from Kumi, not very far wawy from Lira. I am happy to hear about what you have done and are continuing to do in helping the 163 orphans pay their school fees in Lira - this indeed is helping the disadvantaged!
I have been looking forward for such an opportunity to reach out further to help more disadvantaged children in science education through use of educational videos. I hope you dont mine checking out what I am doing in this area on this link; www.youtube.com/user/yosamo2
Hello Samuel
Thank you for getting in touch. I wish I could straighten out my name (Pitcher) but you found me anyway. Your video for Science Education Communication Video shows the value of IT for rural learning. I'll suggest to the Director of Children of Hope in Lira that she tell the Secondary School Principals about it.
Let's stay in touch in case we can find a way to help each other. I see your specialty is fruit processing which doesn't give me an automatic connection to any of the farming IGA's that the C of H caregivers are working on. But the fact that you have been a teacher for over 18, like me, makes me think we have common interests.
Best wishes,
Lorna
First congratulations Eric for your effort to encorage entrepreneurship in Ugandan secondary students.
My name got scrambled above. I am Lorna Pitcher a 60 year old retired teacher in Toronto, Canada who founded Ugandan Orphans Fund http://UgandanOrphansFund.givemeaning.com in 2007 after visiting Uganda for 2 weeks on my March Break.
UOF supports 163 orphans and vulnerable children ages 10 to 16 in Lira, northern Uganda with school fees and scholastic materials. The children attend Primary (grades 6 & 7) and Secondary 1 & 2. We have sent over $35,000 in the past 2 years to the Director of Children of Hope, Uganda who visits the Principals of the 31 schools to pay the children's fees.
The Director has recently used some of the funds to start Income Generating Activities (IGA's) with the caregiver families so they can increase their share of the school fees. These activities are goat, chicken, and pig raising, bee-keeping, oxen sharing and necklace making. I market the recycled paper bead necklaces in Canada with great success.
Could you please contact me at lornapitcher@hotmail.com. I'd like to chat about bringing the entrepreneurship classes to the 31 schools in Lira, or to give the lessons at the regular gatherings of the 163 Children of Hope children.
I think we could help each other to help the children. I look forward to hearing from you or anyone else interested in educating the young people of Lira, northern Uganda. Lorna Pitcher
On July 28, 2009 the judges reviewed the entries for the Changemakers “Champions of Quality Education in Africa” competition and would like to pass on the following feedback (listed below) for your entry. Thank you for applying and for your hard work in the field. We are excited to archive your entry to serve as a leading solution for the worldwide community of innovators. We wish you continued luck with your innovative, sustainable, and socially impactful initiatives.
All the best, The Changemakers Team
“This was a very exciting proposal! I love the idea of introducing social activism to high school students by getting university students and graduates from the program itself involved in mentoring younger students. It’s all about building future leaders and getting students to understand that they are citizens, constituents, and that they’re the ones who can bring the change that is needed in communities. I found it deeply inspiring.”
“This initiative is very well conceived, and they’re clearly thinking of how to lead capacity in Uganda. It’s great that they’re self-organizing and growing their organization and leadership from the kids who are benefitting from the program. I would really like to learn more about this initiative’s groundwork for sustainability and possibly their plans for mass scalability.”
- Changemakers “Champions of Quality Education in Africa” Judges: Escuela Nueva, Center for International Education at the University of Massachusetts, Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, CARE (United States), African Leadership Academy, UNICEF