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WORLD EDUCATION
World Education, Inc. is "dedicated to improving the lives of the poor through education and social and economic development programs. World Education’s programs promote individual and collective change.” Per the organization’s website:
They use experiential and engaging teaching techniques to help people and organizations develop skills that build on the learners’ context (cultural, linguistic, geographic, and economic), and include vital information about life and livelihoods—health, agriculture, small business development—that learners can put to immediate use.
Founded in 1951 to meet the needs of the educationally disadvantaged, World Education has worked in over 50 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as in the United States. Working in concert with private, public, and nongovernmental organizations, World Education initiatives support effective local management and promote partnerships between local organizations.
Let’s examine one of their most fascinating programs, which is actively run by mothers’ groups creating systemic changes to education throughout Benin and improving the lives of countless children.
Since 1994, World Education has been working in the Republic of Benin to improve education, especially for girls.
World Education’s programs foster literacy and women’s empowerment in a country where the average adult has only 2.7 years of schooling and 76% of women are illiterate.
MOTHERS IN BENIN ARE COMMITTED TO FIGHTING ILLITERACY
In 2003, World Education launched a program organizing and empowering women through School Mothers’ Associations. The mothers’ associations enhance women’s civic participation and provide opportunities mothers to actively engage with local schools.
Mothers’ associations create new opportunities for women to become more involved in education and for girls to be supported and retained in school. World Education’s work with mothers’ associations across Benin has led to improved school management, the creation of school health and feeding programs, and higher general enrolment and achievement.
IMPROVING GIRLS’ EDUCATION
World Education works with mothers’ associations to help girls stay in school. Mothers’ associations register girls for school, monitor their attendance, and help them overcome obstacles that prevented them from going to school.
Mothers receive training to provide social support for vulnerable children in their communities, and advocate against child marriage and gender-based violence.
CREATING LASTING CHANGE
Mothers’ associations meet with school directors to discuss absence-related issues or other problems that children are encountering. They educate community members about the education challenges caused by teacher absences and help with the funding and construction of local teacher housing so that teachers can live in the community instead of having to travel long distances.
School lunch programs are enhanced by setting up cooperative school gardens to provide condiments, and even staples, in the absence of a government feeding program at their school. Daycare arrangements have also been established, so that older children are not removed from school to take care of younger siblings. School directors are also involved in these discussions to make sure that school clean-up tasks are equitably divided between boys and girls and that teachers call on girls as much as boys in class.