Education for a Better World
Providing high-quality and accessible education is always a challenge. In the developing world, that challenge is amplified by conditions such as poverty, high drop-out rates, and the subjugation of women and girls.
But Aga Khan Foundation has been helping to change that through its Madrasa Early Childhood Development Programme, which has been active in East Africa for more than 25 years.
“Not only should we aim for everyone to have the opportunity to get an education, we should ensure the education they are getting is of a very high quality,” Salman Alibhai, Programme Officer with Aga Khan Foundation Canada, noted during a presentation in Halifax yesterday.
Entitled Education for a Better World, it was hosted by Bridges that Unite at Pier 21, Canada’s Immigration Museum. The event attracted teachers, former educators and members of the public eager to hear about education challenges – and, more importantly, progress – in the developing world.
Alibhai spoke about the importance of early childhood education in laying the foundation for later learning.
“The focus on that stage allows children to then climb the ladder of education,” he said.
The Madrasa Programme launched a quarter of a century ago and now has more than 200 preschools in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
They operate in a collaborative model with parental and government involvement and financing, and aim to foster a love of reading, problem-solving skills and an ability to cooperate with others – much different from the traditional style of rote learning in those regions.
The programme has benefited more than 68,000 children, and trained more than 4,500 local teachers, said Alibhai.
In a film about the Madrasa Programme, happy, eager children – boys and girls – play and learn together surrounded by colourful artwork, and distinctly local learning aids: sticks gathered from nearby forests are used in building projects and bottle tops for counting. Their teachers sing and dance with their students, and use culturally appropriate references. For instance, Swahili poetry or Arabic literature trump Shakespearean sonnets in these schools.
When Alibhai asked the Halifax group about challenges to education in Canada, answers ranged from an aging infrastructure, to lack of resources such as books and computers, to the different learning styles of boys and girls.
Soulafa Al-Abbasi, a former AKFC intern who has lived and worked in the developing world, said convincing families in other countries that education is essential can be difficult.
“Enrolment is a challenge. We need more apprenticeship programs where people can make a living and learn, hands-on,” she said.
“If a country has primary school graduates, is that enough for that nation to develop?” Alibhai asked at one point.
All agreed it is not, citing the importance of secondary, vocational and university graduates to further a country’s development.
Setting the stage for that to happen is the Madrasa Early Childhood Development Programme. As one programme graduate – now a medical-school student – said in the film:
“I think the Madrasa centre made us well-rounded … able to tackle more.”
Click to view additional photos from the event:
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