LearnAsOne

The human story

Children enjoy learning. They enjoy it so much, that in many rural African areas, they’ll walk for three hours every morning to get to school. And it won’t necessarily be a school in the sense that you or I understand it.

Books, for a start, are likely to be a luxury. In Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia, over half of grade six students don’t have a single book. It’s not just the kids, either, up to 40% of the teachers in the same countries don’t have textbooks for the subjects they teach either. You could say they’re the lucky ones, though - Mozambique loses over a thousand teachers every year to AIDs.

For too many people, expectations are low. It’s heartbreaking that so much effort is expended for so little reward. The Education For All report for 2009 reckons that 60% of young women who’ve completed six years of primary education in Zambia can’t read a single sentence in their own language.

You can understand why there’s a pattern of ‘high enrolment, low survival’ even in countries that have made huge strides to opening up access in the last ten years. In Madagascar and Malawi, nine out of ten children are enrolled in primary school, yet fewer than half of those will complete the final grade.

These unpromising outcomes are only part of the story. In areas where it’s endemic, malaria can cut school completion rates by 29%. Poor sanitation in schools can lead to high drop out rates – particularly among girls – and then there’s the pressure to work. A quarter of 5-14 year olds in sub-Saharan Africa are engaged in child labour (PDF).

We don’t despair at the problems faced by educators and pupils in Africa, though. We marvel at the dedication shown by the huge numbers of families and children who are still determined to attend class, and do our best to help them fulfil their potential.

That’s why we won’t just be investing in the bricks and mortar, pens and paper, physical substances of a school. We place an enormous value on listening to the specific needs of a community. We’ll be spending your money on the things that will help to keep children at school and getting the most out of it. Whether that’s a basic breakfast to start the day, or a village borehole so they don’t have to spend hours fetching water for their family before class. Every project we undertake will be different.

LearnAsOne is able to exploit all the benefits of living in a prosperous, knowledge based economy to drive its fundraising activity. Almost everything we do is based online to reduce our costs and make us more effective. We hope that the same low cost technology will mean that the children you can help will be have access to the same levels of opportunity tomorrow, that we enjoy today.

Source for all stats unless otherwise linked to - http://www.efareport.unesco.org