The Impact of “Shedding a Light” on Education
“Our community did not know what the electricity was. We did not know what a child could handle at school. Now, they know how a computer operates”. That is what a leader of a Colombian rural community of Tunay answered when he was asked about how the Lights to Learn (LtL) program affected their lives. He […]
Why Having Safe Spaces for Girls Works
Naja’atu Muhammed is a 16-year-old girl from the Anguwan Malamai community of Kaduna State in Nigeria. Naja’atu was forced into early marriage by her father and was eventually cut off from both Islamic and Western education due to poverty. Naja’atu’s meals were rationed and her financial demise resulted in starvation and depression. Stories such as […]
Youth are Africa’s Untapped Resource for Change
If you’ve ever passed through downtown Kampala, you’ll know the scene: a crowded street, honking cars dodging potholes, street vendors dodging cars, goats, chickens, and above all – lots and lots of people. Lately, whenever I find myself here or in another major African city, I’ve tried to make a conscious effort to pause and […]
Making Deaf Education Accessible and Inclusive
Deaf education is a fundamental right for every deaf child. In Pakistan, there are over one million deaf children but less than 5% of those children have access to education. Availability of and access to sign language – the native language of the Deaf community – is a critical component of every deaf person’s cognitive, […]
Building a Successful Youth Employment Program
Yvonne is a young Kenyan woman. As an orphan, she moved in with her sister after completing high school and spent three years searching for a job. “I was feeling like an outcast in the society,” she says. Unfortunately, she’s not alone. There are 75 million unemployed young people globally, and three times as many […]
How Should Schools Incorporate Happiness Into Curricula?
In a previous piece, I discussed the role of happiness as one of the purposes of education and argued that we can learn how to improve our well being. Even though it is not possible to teach how to be happy in a prescriptive way, research has found patterns that show the influence on how we […]
To Raise Smart Citizens, We Must Nurture Curiosity & Flexibility
I find myself thinking about smart citizenship during interactions with the families, teachers, and children of Ecole Claire Fontaine; an art, language and nature school for young children. I believe that to raise smart citizens we must entertain all the senses and cultivate words for the social brain to form. We must also entrust […]
Cities as a Powerful Resource for Knowledge
As the populations in urban centers rise, so too does their influence on the world stage. At the same time, cities across the globe are recognizing their power and potential as nodes in global networks of social, economic, and cultural influence, looking to each other to collaborate and learn, sometimes even bypassing national government […]
Environmental Education for a Changing World
When Sanchirmaa Altankhuyag and I first met during the WISE Learners’ Voice Program in 2014, little did we know that four years later we would be driving across Mongolia in a Land Cruiser, on a mission to teach students about climate change. In the intervening years, Sanchirmaa taught in schools in Ulaanbaatar and started a […]
Building Lifelong Learning Communities for Smart Cities
54% of the world’s current population lives in urban areas, and it is within these cities where we confront social, environmental, and economic issues. Recently the proliferation of smart city projects around the world has led to an increase in discourse regarding the issue of smart citizenship. Rapid urbanization and industrialization have given rise […]