Adelina and Rosalia discuss a case and their next steps. 

Mozambique continues to experience the impact of climate-related disasters and ongoing conflict and insurgency in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, which has threatened peace and fueled a severe humanitarian and internal displacement crisis. Among the displaced, more than 1.3 million people are in-need of protection and services to address their mental and physical health. Women and children in particular are at heightened risk of gender-based violence and early forced marriage, and are living in very strained economic circumstances. Moreover, these internally displaced persons are often affected by post-traumatic stress disorder from having to flee from their homes and/or after witnessing and surviving acts of extreme violence.

The Government of Mozambique is partnering with donors and civil society organizations on both immediate response and longer-term recovery efforts, such as meeting urgent psychosocial, nutritional, health, and protection needs. Through the Northern Crisis Recovery Project, led by the United Nations Office of Project Services and funded by the World Bank, the Bantwana Initiative is working with partners to strengthen the capacity of communities, service providers, and government departments to identify, prevent, and respond to the needs of internally displaced persons Cabo Delgado. Together we aim to promote nurturing and protective family care and improve the safety, well-being, and development of individuals and households.

To support the provision of short-term specialized mental health and gender-based violence services, Bantwana has introduced a new approach of recruiting and deploying recent psychology graduates as interns across resettlement sites to screen and provide mental health support, while transferring skills to community cadres (Activists) for long-term service provision.

In the last year, we’ve supported more than 2,500 internally displaced persons and mobilized nearly 200 community leaders to raise awareness on gender-based violence prevention, forced marriage, and child sexual exploitation.

Adelina takes notes after a family support visit in a resettlement site.

Adelina is a 35-year-old mother who was displaced by Cyclone Kennedy in 2019 and resettled in a nearby community where she supported children in the area during that difficult period. In 2021, she was hired by an organization as a child educator for displaced children and last year,  with support from Bantwana, Adelina was nominated to be an Activist in her community, providing support to displaced people who continue to arrive at the resettlement site due to the insurgency.

Adelina is dedicated to her work, and she feels a great responsibility to support children and adults who have experienced extreme trauma and are struggling with their mental health. As an Activist, she identifies and refers individuals to intern psychologists and healthcare workers to receive treatment and has already seen a positive impact.

Rosalia works side-by-side local Activists to provide immediate support to internally displaced persons.

Rosalia, a 23-year-old graduate of clinical psychology and counselling from the Polytechnic University of Quelimane, is one of the trainee psychologists. She works closely with the trained Activists like Adelina to identify and serve individuals and families in need of mental health and psychosocial support services. She provides referrals and leads psychosocial support sessions, and notes that “trauma of this nature can take a long time – several years – for people to overcome.”

But together, Rosalia and Adelina are making a tangible difference.

Barbra and her mother appreciate the support they have received from para social worker Faridah.

Like thousands of young people across Uganda, Barbra’s education and daily life have been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to learning interruption, the country’s extended two-year school closures increased the risk of attrition and dropout from school, and also saw spikes in child labor and teenage pregnancy rates.

Barbra is also one of many adolescent girls whose life was upended when she became pregnant during this time.

Being pregnant at 13 was not easy,” she says. “I stopped going to school and I stayed at home taking care of my siblings while my mother went to work. I thought my life was over.”

Today, however, she is reclaiming her right to an education and a brighter future with comprehensive support for her and her family to navigate the various challenges of schoolwork, teen motherhood, social stigma, and health risks.

On an antenatal visit in 2021 to a local clinic in her suburb of Namuwongo, Barbra met Faridah, a para social worker trained under the USAID ICYD Activity. Through ICYD, the Bantwana Initiative is helping build the capacity of local organizations and government social workers to deliver health, education, and social protection services to children and caregivers living with HIV and other vulnerabilities. Faridah enrolled Barbra in the program so she could receive psychosocial support and other services, including school re-entry, linkage to antenatal care, positive parenting and early childhood development skills, and nutrition and HIV prevention education.

Barbra, her mother, and baby enjoy a happy moment together.

Through regular home visits, Faridah engaged Barbra’s mother and emphasized the importance of continued education to open up more opportunities for Barbra and her child. Barbra’s mother and Faridah visited the school administration and successfully negotiated her re-enrollment. After the baby was born in 2022, Barbra returned to school, leaving her baby under the care of her mother, who operates a fresh food stall in Namuwongo market to support her family and pay for school fees.

With her mother’s support and her own determination, Barbra is achieving high marks in her final year of primary education.

Maths and biology are my favorite subjects and when I grow up, I want to be a doctor,” says Barbra.

SABER’s education coordinator, Arigo Saraiva, explains literacy teaching techniques to trainees in Elomwe.

In the Nampula province of Mozambique, bilingual education teacher Sídia Álvaro Lupanheque was one recent participant in the USAID-funded Improved Learning Outcomes in Primary Education (SABER) program teacher trainings, where she gained knowledge of the fundamentals of bilingual instruction and the use of self-assessment tools and strategies for remedial teaching.

Working closely with the Ministry of Education and Human Development, SABER recently introduced a sustainable and low-cost training model for the professional development of teachers across all program schools. By using a nucléo-level training model where teachers are grouped together at the sub-district level, the program conducted specialized trainings across 200 sites to over 5,200 teachers from more than 3,000 schools.

Using this model, the program also trained 4,707 pedagogical coaches who will support bilingual education teachers at 2,964 schools to improve their reading and mathematics teaching practices. From the trained coaches, 2,856 were selected as facilitators for monthly workshops at the school cluster level. The facilitators guarantee the continuity of the teacher training activities throughout the school year, helping teachers to address challenges they may encounter in the classroom. Through these trainings, SABER is directly helping improve reading outcomes and future prospects of Emakhuwa speakers in Nampula and Zambezia provinces.

Teachers trained by SABER in Alto Molocue district practice learned techniques to facilitate student learning.

Before the training, Sídia acknowledged difficulties teaching the alphabet in Emakhuwa and communicating images and their meaning to her students. Following the training, her students are demonstrating remarkable academic performance, reading better and showing greater interest in the classroom and other school activities. One of Sidia’s students, Ofício, expressed that he and his classmates now find her lessons fun and are excited to attend her classes. Oficio is thankful for his teacher for helping him develop commanding reading skills in the Emakhuwa language.

SABER seeks to improve the life-long potential of Mozambican children by expanding bilingual education and strengthening the education system as a whole. To ensure effective teaching, SABER helps strengthen the national Ministry of Education and Human Development policies as well as the in-service teacher training model, supporting the long-term sustainability of bilingual education. Teachers receive coaching and supervision on best practices in reading and math instruction with the goal of improving student literacy and numeracy skills in grades 1 through 6 across an estimated 50 districts in Nampula, Zambézia, Cabo Delgado, and Niassa provinces.

The UTTHAN (“uplift”) project supported adolescent girls working in the adult entertainment sector (AES), including both those who were already being exploited for commercial sex and those at high risk of exploitation and abuse.

Strategic Approaches

Identify and Engage Girls: Outreach workers visited adult entertainment businesses and built rapport with children, then encouraged them to visit a drop-in-center. Once girls visited, staff began the case management process for those willing to engage and referred them to counseling and medical and/or legal support.

Protect, Support, and Empower Girls: World Education and partners developed the UTTHAN (“uplift”) curriculum, building on the framework of UNICEF’s existing UPSHIFT Social Innovation Curriculum, but tailored to the unique needs of adolescents in the adult entertainment sector. Upon completion of the nine-module program, girls could choose to return to education, pursue vocational training, or return to their families with reintegration support.

Coordinate with Government and Business: World Education and partners coordinated with six local governments to improve child protection, reduce exploitation, and facilitate coordination on case management and service provision. Outreach events targeted owners and employees of adult entertainment venues and raised awareness on children’s rights. In addition, NGOs linked with local businesses to create job placement opportunities for girls seeking safer employment after leaving the adult entertainment sector.

Achievements

Insights & Recommendations

A recent trend is girls entering adult entertainment with higher levels of literacy and education. With higher levels of education and the experience of earning money, girls desire to be independent and keenly evaluate career options.

A creative, participatory curriculum built on principles of adult learning and behavior change proved effective for empowering the target population and better suited to their needs than past content-focused programs.

Significant numbers of adolescents are exploited or at risk for exploitation in adult entertainment. The project identified 979 girls – nearly three times the targeted number for service provision. Long-term support to NGOs running drop-in centers, local governments, and girls themselves is necessary.

Photo Credit: Choiseul Secondary School

The vision of the Choiseul Secondary School in Saint Lucia is to promote excellence in all spheres of human development, while expanding student capabilities to meet the challenges of society in the 21st Century. 

In spite of COVID-19, the resilience of the school and the commitment of teachers to navigating changes allowed them to maintain this vision and ensure continuity of learning in an online environment. All of Choiseul’s teachers possess basic training in the use of technology – but increasing unemployment and the exacerbation of the digital divide in Saint Lucia due to COVID-19 means there is a need to improve their skills to better prepare students for the 21st century.

In July 2022, five teachers from Choiseul participated in training through the Saint Lucia ConnectEd Activity where they learned and practiced ways to leverage technology in the classroom and curate digital activities using EdTech tools through World Education’s EdTech Maker Space process. ConnectED is a United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded project which builds digital educational skills for students and educators in the primary school system.  

One of these teachers came back to the school, and together with the Vice Principal, stressed the importance of participating in the training and pitched the idea of using the opportunities provided by ConnectEd to get as many teachers trained as possible.

The goal of making sure every teacher is competent in digital skills instruction is now an official part of the school’s action plan. Using a “whole school approach,” they have enrolled 23 teachers in the training. Mrs. Lyian Joseph Defreitas  – the school’s Vice Principal and ICT champion – is also participating in the  training so she can mentor the teachers.

Our greatest challenges are lack of student motivation and engagement. We are hoping that this new opportunity in technology training will be the catalyst for change in our Teaching strategies and by extension student performance.” – Mrs. Defreitas, Vice Principal, Choiseul Secondary School

Thanks to the training, Choiseul’s teachers have increased knowledge and skills in using EdTech tools to create learning resources, including the ability to animate and create educational videos. They are also more aware of the variety of open source and free online learning resources that they can adapt for their classrooms.

Students of Choiseul Secondary School applying digital skills in the classroom. Photo Credit: World Education 

With more and more teachers participating in digital skills training, the use of technology throughout the school system is increasing. Teachers are also benefiting from the built-in analytics features of these digital tools which allows them to better analyze and provide feedback on student learning, pinpoint misunderstandings, and provide remediation. 

Students are also showing improvements as a result. Teachers have noticed increased interest, motivation, and interaction from students when using engaging, firsthand, digital platforms and digital tools that provide immediate feedback.

Other schools in Saint Lucia participating in the ConnectEd Activity are on this same path to getting all their teachers training in digital skills instruction. By continuing to hold training on the use of EdTech tools, providing access to digital books, increasing connectivity in classrooms, and updating classroom equipment and devices (laptops, projectors), we can make this a reality and ensure young people are ready to tackle the future in an ever-changing digital world.

The Saint Lucia ConnectEd Activity is funded by USAID and implemented by World Education in partnership with Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and the Saint Lucian Ministry of Education, Sustainable Development, Innovation, Science, Technology and Vocational Training. 

Thank you to the staff of Choiseul Secondary School for sharing their experiences.

By Alison Ascher Webber, Maria Jose Bastias, Maricel G. Santos 

Foundational data literacy is a critical literacy to participate in and stay safe in today’s world and make decisions about all aspects of our lives – from health to housing, education to jobs.

With technology increasing the collection and use of data to drive systems that affect us, data literacy is gaining importance for all members of society. Though there is increased attention to data literacy and analytics for the workforce – including for education and workforce practitioners and administrators to improve their teaching and programs –  there is a pressing need to give sufficient attention to developing the foundational data literacy of adult learners.

As Catherine D’Ignazio, Director of the Data + Feminism Lab at MIT and an Associate Professor in Urban Studies, points out, working with data is an increasingly powerful way of making claims about the world, but there is unequal power between those who store, collect, and analyze data and those who do not. Inequality around who collects, interprets, and communicates data – versus who are likely to be the subject of data – makes a strong case for democratizing data and ensuring all of us are supported to develop foundational data literacy. Foundational data literacy isn’t just about collecting, interpreting, and presenting data – most often through numbers and graphs- it must include helping adults examine and understand data bias and the limitations of data.

While there are some exciting efforts in our field, and especially in libraries, and various adult educators incorporate data literacy into their instruction, there is far from enough attention and investment in supporting adult learners’ foundational data literacy. In this blog, we explore new challenges and opportunities for teaching and learning data literacy — including the overlapping and somewhat messy relationship to other literacies we already talk about in adult education, like digital literacy and consumer literacy. We then share the biggest opportunity we see for advancing data literacy. Opportunities to teach data literacy are everywhere, and adult learners get excited to learn to understand, collect, analyze, and communicate data when it is contextualized to the issues they most care about in their lives and communities.

Challenge: What and Where is Data Literacy?

One challenge to advancing foundational data literacy in education is that definitions and resources for it are not widely available and known. Though the following Oceans of Data Institute definition for data literacy is arguably one of the leading definitions and is used by the American Library Association, it is not well known by adult educators. 

The data-literate individual understands, explains and documents the utility and limitations of data by becoming a critical consumer of data, controlling [one’s] personal data trail, finding meaning and taking action based on data. [One] can identify, collect, evaluate, analyze, interpret, present and protect data.”- The Oceans of Data Institute

And while curriculum standards related to data literacy have been pivotal in directing attention to the role of K-12 schools and higher education in skill-building, competencies related to data literacy are described in a variety of ways and embedded across various subject areas, making them harder to find. 

Certainly, it is a potential opportunity in advancing data literacy that related competencies and  practices are found in diverse subjects areas ranging from numeracy (probability, averages), information literacy (graphs in media literacy), reading (e.g. expository prose), or even digital literacy (e.g. data tools). However, this also spreads data competencies out too thin, making them invisible. 

Although programs and practitioners are doing important work in the area, information and data literacy are not as visible as they need to be in the agendas of the main adult education  conferences and online communities. When they show up, it’s most often as sub-bullets in broader discussions on other competencies such as digital literacy, numeracy or civic engagement. This causes data literacy and information literacy to get lost.” – Alison Ascher Webber, Director of Strategic Initiatives,  EdTech Center @ World Education 

Additionally, when data literacy skills are embedded as components of lessons in specific academic subjects, there can be a tendency for them to be taught decontextualized as specific skills and not as part of a critical and exciting process for adult learners to make meaning of the world. 

Opportunity: It’s Everywhere! 

The incredible opportunity we see in advancing data literacy is that meaningful ways to contextualize it for our learners are everywhere.

The world is constantly offering lessons about data — how data is being collected on you, how data is used or misused to make decisions that affect you, or how you as an individual or your community can use data to improve your well-being. There are limitless authentic on-ramps to help adult learners get excited about data literacy.” – Maricel Santos, Professor of English at San Francisco State University

In Working with Data in Adult English Classrooms: Lessons Learned about Communicative Justice during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Maricel, ESOL instructor and doctoral researcher Maria Jose Bastias at SFSU, and their colleague Margaret Handley, a public health epidemiologist with University of California San Francisco (UCSF), describe the process they used to teach data literacy during COVID to primarily women immigrants and refugees that starts with learners’ interests.

My students are immigrant Latina and indigenous domestic and essential workers so during COVID they were having to make daily decisions about whether to go to work or stay home based on their understanding of risk. They were eager to understand data and learn how they could play a role in changing the way their community was being represented in the media around COVID and to save lives by communicating data more effectively to their communities.” – Maria Jose Bastias

Their work serves as an example of the opportunity for authentic context in instruction to spark the interest and attention of learners and their communities in data literacy, while also driving social change. The approach to instruction in the article is based on a framing of “creative data literacy”, which broadens the definition of data literacy from an individual to a collective one, with communities –especially marginalized ones – becoming their own producers and communicators of data to advocate for representation and change. 

A classroom of English language learners is hardly the image that comes to mind when people think of “data scientists”. At the same time, adult education learners hold powerful perspectives, voices, cultural competency, leadership skills, and more that must be brought into shaping the questions asked and strategies taken when collecting, analyzing, and communicating data.

Invitation to Advance Data Literacy for All

Data literacy is essential for making meaning of the world, for making decisions about our health, education, careers, finances, civic engagement and more, and for protecting our privacy and safety. As adult educators, we must give even more attention and focus on helping our learners develop their data literacy skills. When doing so, we will also be contributing to democratizing data. And if we take a “creative data literacy” approach, we can also develop learners’ leadership skills to use data to make informed and powerful claims about their world and advocate for the changes they want to see.

San Francisco State University and World Education are committed to supporting adult education practitioners and programs to advance data literacy more within our field and will be compiling resources and facilitating national conversations on the topic. As a start, we partnered on facilitating a study circle for a dozen adult educators this Spring, and invite you to join a new listserv. Both formal and informal educators are using this forum to share strategies and resources and align efforts to advance data literacy for all. 

 

About the Authors:

Maricel Santos is Professor of English at San Francisco State University. Her research and practice explores adult education participation as a health-protective factor in transnational immigrant communities, as well as the ways that adult learners are agents of change in health care. 

Maria Jose Bastias is a doctoral researcher at San Francisco State University also working in community-based settings. Her work in adult education combines research justice and participatory research for advocacy and leadership with a focus on identity around data for  adult and English language learners and minoritized groups.

Alison Ascher Webber is Director of Strategic Initiatives with the EdTech Center @ World Education. She appreciates collaborating with like-minded colleagues at SFSU and UCSF on teaching foundational data literacy with intentionality towards democratizing data and advancing equity.

The effects of climate change and environmental degradation on education are most pronounced in communities that have been systematically excluded from environment-related decision-making; often communities least responsible for the causes. Extreme weather events prevent children from attending school, resulting in learning loss. With dwindling water sources and unpredictable rainfall, the time it takes children to do household chores such as fetching water and tending to crippled crop sources increases and distracts from learning.

Malnutrition stifles cognitive development, resulting in reduced capacity for children to absorb information. Pollutants also harm cognitive development, which has long-term consequences for learning, health, and earning potential. Extreme heat and lack of food detract from teacher and learner focus.

Understanding the climate and environment-related challenges affecting student and teacher attendance and performance is crucial in building climate-resilient education systems and supporting communities to plan for contingencies that minimize climate-related disruptions. At the same time, urgent action is also needed to maximize the potential of education to help address the root causes of the environmental and climate crisis facing our planet. There is no time to lose for ensuring that education systems do a better job in equipping learners with the capacities and behaviors to build a future that is more sustainable, resilient, and equitable. 

Our Approach

World Education takes an equity-centered, community-focused approach to working in education systems at all levels. This involves addressing the existential threat to communities around the world that is presented by climate change and its impacts and invoking a commitment to addressing the causes of climate change and environmental degradation. 

Climate and environmental action can only be successful if it is led by and benefits local communities. Our participatory community development approaches work to address the root causes of problems through indigenous solutions. Our Participatory Community Diagnostic Tool was used by the Mahinadopa community in Cote d’Ivoire to ensure children, women, religious leaders, youth, and other community members made key educational decisions and led activities to address systemic issues.

A World Education study found illiteracy and innumeracy are significant barriers to successful community-based conservation efforts. Through functional literacy programs, where learners gain literacy skills and a practical skill set, we increase conservation knowledge and practices. We use nature-based solutions through conservation efforts to support farmers and communities to engage in climate-friendly agriculture, agroforestry, and reforestation efforts. Our expertise in pedagogy means that our learning routines can be applied to science and environmental studies, and can integrate environmental awareness into other subjects. 

UNESCO’s International Commission on the Futures of Education has stressed the need for “fully realizing the transformational potential of education as a route for sustainable collective futures”. Around the world, World Education programming emphasizes relevant, inclusive, and action-oriented pedagogies that build young people’s ‘green life skills and transformative competencies’, such as the ability to collaborate, empathize, problem solve, organize, and connect to one another. We accomplish this through working with governments and local partners on curriculum, teacher development, whole-school planning and community engagement in formal and non formal education.

From leadership training and peer-learning for girls in Eswatini to project-based learning, youth-led community outreach and action research in Cambodia, across our programs, World Education strives to model transformative education at its best. We are creating a generation of change makers by investing in young people’s strengths and assisting them to develop skills to act on their own behalf. Building the capacity of local youth-led and youth-focused organizations and government counterparts, our programs provide youth with safe spaces, supportive role models with high expectations, and the development of the soft and socio-emotional skills that will be vital for dealing with the climate and environment crisis in the years ahead.

In partnership with the Mozambican Ministry of Education and Human Development, World Education held two textbook production workshops between October and December 2022. The workshop brought together 44 national authors who worked with teachers, teacher trainers, academics, and national specialists from the Ministry of Education to develop 5th and 6th grade teaching and learning materials in the local Elomwe, Echuabo, and Emakhuwa languages. The teaching and learning materials developed during the workshops included literacy, social sciences, and visual education aids and crafts. 

Once developed, the teaching and learning materials were tested by teachers, students, parents and guardians, and community members in the districts of Mocuba in Zambezia and Murrupula in Nampula. Testing is important to ensure content quality, and social and cultural acceptance of literary and illustrative content. 

Currently, the development of these teaching and learning materials is part of the USAID SABER program‘s strategy to improve the quality of education in Mozambique by providing a variety of learning resources and setting instructional standards for teachers and students. SABER is seeking to expand bilingual education in Mozambique in order to improve learning outcomes across the country, especially in areas where the local languages of Elomwe, Echuabo, and Emakhuwa are widely spoken.

According to the President of the Northern Development Agency (ADIN) and former Deputy Minister of Education and Human Development, Armindo Ngunga, “the SABER supported teaching and learning material production will ensure sustainability of the bilingual education modality” in Mozambique. Ngunga, who participated in the textbook development workshop, also underscored the fact that “the program is contributing to skills development of bilingual education teachers, who will also become textbook authors.” 

Another workshop participant and expert from the National Institute for Education Development, Afonso Manhice, further acknowledged the that workshop contributes to long-term sustainability by empowering and enabling national and local textbook production experts that can be called upon to develop other bilingual education teaching and learning materials in the future. 

For Saraiva, an experienced bilingual education teacher who teaches Emakhuwa language students, the SABER program represents a significant leap in local education in Mozambique. Her desire is for the expansion of program activities beyond Nampula to other areas like Niassa where students and speakers of other Makhuwa languages can also benefit from the teaching and learning materials being developed under SABER.

In 2022, we welcomed Margaret Crotty, our new president, as well as new leaders for our Africa, Bantwana, and US divisions. This team is focused on strengthening key partnerships and expanding our global presence to lead us through an ever-changing landscape, support localization initiatives, and progress our record of innovation in education.

This past year, World Education successfully built on our wealth of project experience, reducing disparities in education outcomes and strengthening safety net programs around the world. We’re committed to ensuring equity, inclusion, and sustainability are at the core of everything we do.

We’re also strengthening our 30-year partnership with JSI, using cross-cutting initiatives and synergistic approaches to realize our shared goal of better education and health outcomes.

Learn more about this work in our 2022 annual report.