It is beyond the scope of this blog to examine a world without education. It is so important to learn even the basic things like reading and writing. Without proper education, you are going to learn (or not learn) the hard way.
"Without the education of people, a society cannot flourish or grow because it does not have the knowledge to build and maintain the society."
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In review, with the help of Andando, the village of Keur Soce has water and gardens and nutrition and a way to make a little income. We want to enable them to meet the needs of today.
What about the future? What about the children? How can we improve their prospects for a brighter day ahead?
In this remote place, they do have schools, but it's a struggle to provide quality education without any resources.
One of the problems is that kids often don't show up at school. And if the kids don’t come to school they will never learn much. If they show up hungry, they are not focused and they lack motivation. If you can feed them, it is a proven encouragement for them to show up.
And if they show up, they learn.
We started a feeding program. It was simple - or the goal was to make it simple and keep it simple. We came up with a recipe of simple porridge, made of rice, peanuts, millet, corn, and beans. It is very easy to make and is very nutritious. And easy to serve.
The local ladies and moms cook it each morning (at the school) and the kids have food to start their day. They are fed and eager to learn. And it works. Attendance improved and test scores went up and the schools got more crowded.
And then we needed more schools.
So we built them. Keep in mind, the government is not responsive in this remote corner of the country. They don’t have resources (or choose to deploy them elsewhere). Some of the schools or “classrooms” actually meet in a grass hut. The learning environment can be brutal. So we rolled up our sleeves and started building classrooms. This is not quite as hard as it might seem.
The design is very basic and is pretty much uniform. You just have to get the process down and repeat it. We have a builder who is good and efficient, and once you get the ball rolling, you can get a lot done. We have built 30 classrooms so far.
It costs us around $6,000 for a classroom. A classroom in America probably costs what, $200,000? The Andando Foundation is a very lean organization and we can get a lot of bang for the buck. So if you do the math, we have built 30 classrooms for less than the cost of one in the United States.
The world is changing faster these days, and you need education to compete. Heck, you need an education to operate a smartphone. If you can’t read, you’re gonna get left behind. If we can help, we’re going to do our best.
For example, most school kids in Senegal don’t know much about geography. So we painted murals of the world on large outside walls. They can see that other lands are far away. Funny thing, when they see Senegal on a world map, they often say “It’s so small!”
To summarize:
Get ‘em fed
Get ‘em to School
Teach ‘em how to read and do some math.
Teach ‘em about geography and teach ‘em a foreign language, you know, the stuff we teach in the United States ... oh, wait, what?
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