Educate Every Child

Educate Every Child has two central components, both of which draw on interpersonal interaction and participation:

1. A series of classroom activities that teach developmental education to children through information-sharing about: the inter-workings of global governmental agencies that work to benefit children, different types of United Nations (UN) programmes for children like the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's), and the goals of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its effects on the lives of children living in other countries. Through game play, students learn how international non-governmental agencies differ from non-profit organisations, and the role that diplomatic missions play in helping other countries.
2. A process of teaching the students how to create, administer and evaluate a project in their respective communities. SASEF discusses the reasons to create community projects and puts the process in motion for the class. (Please see details of this process, below). The projects are evaluated by peer students in the areas of sustainability, environment, budget vs. actual costs, time management, and effectiveness.

Specifically, SASEF begins the community-based element of this process by introducing various projects to a privileged school Principal or Headmaster by explaining that their students should be enlightened as to their responsibility in the global picture (that is, to be "my brother's keeper"). Typically, SASEF explains, International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) and other school systems already have some sort of community service interest, but do not know how to implement a hands-on community project in which the students physically visit a school, orphanage or other learning environment in economically poor village areas. SASEF stresses that it is not always easy to convince parents of the value of such an experience unless it is part of a school project. For instance, the IBO curriculum includes learning modules focusing on active community service; students in the Primary and Middle Years programmes must complete a community "hands on" project to advance to the next grade. In this context, SASEF's strategy involves linking the mandatory school project to a global event or initiative like but not limited to Global Youth Service Day, International Education Week and/or the Day to Eradicate Poverty.

As part of Educate Every Child, the students create a real-life project from start to finish, including obtaining the funding and seeing the project through to completion. This may take the entire school year. This is intended to be a fully participatory process, involving several different groups within the school (teacher, administration, staff, and the students) as well as at home (family members) in working together toward a goal of helping others. From SASEF's perspective, this process is designed to accomplish several things:

• Stimulate students' excitement, as the once-isolated and/or independent homework assignment/classroom assignment becomes a team/class community project that is part of something bigger (a global initiative). The idea is to help them see that they are now actively participating in a worldwide collaboration of youth implementing a community-changing event that is taking place all over the world. SASEF feels that this phenomenon/experience is powerful because it centres around young individuals just like them doing the same thing, at the same time, on the same day - only in a different location and communicating in many different languages.
• Due to the global nature of the initiatives, most parents are not as reticent about their child visiting an economically impoverished and possibly dangerous community because the learning is not just taking place in the classroom; parents become actively involved because the children go home and share the global initiative with the family at the dinner table, claims SASEF. "Usually many of the parents get involved and the companies they work for begin to sponsor the initiative", such as by building a school, buying school supplies, providing mosquito nets or medical supplies, and digging water holes. In part because of this parental involvement and support, "Little brothers and sister can't wait to get into the grade where they can participate in this type of project."

In terms of the community being addressed by these students' efforts - the economically poor school - SASEF's strategy involves cultivating an awareness of the particular community's perception of "help", for example, by asking: Who in the community makes the decision to allow the help? How do the students find out who that person is? Why do the students (in the privileged school) want to help? How do they help without being perceived as looking down on the people they are helping? There is also "research" to be done and lessons to be learned by talking to members of the community being helped itself, such as legal issues around land rights and usage. The answers and strategies, SASEF stresses, are indigenous - based on the country in which this programme is taking place. Collaboration throughout the process of building schools, working with orphanages, advising other non-profits, and so on - is key.

To cite one particular illustration of how Educate Every Child works, SASEF has drawn on Netaid's "The Real-Life Game Millions of Kids Can't Play", which is a learning tool for children to experience the challenges other children face in attending school in other countries. The game itself creates all sorts of ideas and projects for young people to implement. SASEF has helped the Luanda International School in Angola to take this game a step further by adding a component where the students have created a prototype of the game; they will be working with a printing company to learn how to create, market, and distribute their game. Although SASEF does what it can as an organisation to introduce the idea, provide access to the game, stimulate the initiative, and provide information and support, this project is student-driven: "we just let the students soar to create whatever they see as a solution to some of the world's most challenging problems in eradicating world poverty."

As of July 2006, Educate Every Child launched an eight-week programme with the Pan American School in Porto Alegre utilising the Millennium Development Goals and the Rights of the Child. This pilot project is entitled Youth in Philanthropy. Plans are that at the end of this pilot project, the school will take the lead for Stand Up Against Poverty, Stand Up for the Millennium Development Goals in the community.

Children, Youth, Education, Poverty Alleviation.

Reflecting on Educate Every Child, the Founding Chair of SASEF writes (in personal correspondence), "On our first visit to a local village school one of the students would not exit the bus and cried for an hour. Another student whispered to an adult 'can we touch them?', the adult responded 'yes you can but how would you feel if someone asked that about you?' Two hours later there was an impromptu soccer game, with no sides and we planted a tree to solidify our commitment to the school. It was difficult to get the visiting children to leave when it was time to go."