Archive for Education

This story originally appeared in our February 24, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to subscribe.

We look at five barriers to education for girls and the social enterprises working to remove them.

Menstruation

Although it’s not an easy-to-talk about subject anywhere in the world, females in the developing world miss up to 50 days of work or school per year because they do not have access to sanitary pads. The alternatives—mud, bark, leaves—are a health hazard. Sustainable Health Enterprises, founded by Elizabeth Scharpf will manufacture sanitary pads from banana-tree fibers in Rwanda. » Continue reading “No Girls Allowed”

This story originally appeared in our February 24, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to subscribe.

By the Numbers

Gray Matters Capital recently assessed affordable private schools in Hyderabad. The results, which provide a glimpse into this growing sector, will be published in a report this month.

29%

Percentage of school leaders who are female

83%

Percentage of schools that have female toilets » Continue reading “Data: Empower Through Education”

This story originally appeared in our February 24, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Anil Kumar, a school dropout from village Gora Bazar in Uttar Pradesh, went from being a labor earning less than INR 2,000 per month to become a supervisor earning INR 10,000 per month.

By Santosh Parulekar

In the early morning hours of April 27, 2009, five students woke up the head of Pipal Tree Ventures’ training center in Uttar Pradesh by banging on his door. Just days earlier, the students were given jobs at a reputed construction company in Chennai. The boys had returned. They did not want to work in Chennai.

I remembered one of the boys. Just 10 days back, I shook hands with Anil Kumar and wished him good luck for his first job. I had been impressed by the spark in the boy. My trainers told me that he was from a poor family and lives in a hut in the Gora Bazar village. » Continue reading “Journey of a School Dropout to a Supervisor”

This story originally appeared in our February 24, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to subscribe.

In Mumbai, public-private partnerships may be one of the best solutions to addressing the city’s public education needs.

Mumbai claims a 97% enrollment rate of all primary school-aged children in private and public schools. Despite such a high rate, 40% of children attend private schools because of perceptions that private education is superior to public education.

Poor families cannot afford to put their children through the private education system. The public education system then caters to the most marginalized children, where the incentive to attend school is based on the availability of lunch. However, these children have low reading levels where approximately 45-50% cannot read or write a paragraph. » Continue reading “Partners in Public Education”

This story originally appeared in our February 24, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to subscribe.

The private sector can play a large role in providing education to the bottom of the pyramid.

By Irene Pritzker

While education is the key to poverty alleviation, governments and development agencies cannot keep up with the demand for efficiently run primary schools. In Ghana and other developing countries, to successfully include all children in the education system means working outside the traditional government education framework and embracing the private sector.

In Ghana, as with virtually every developing country, dissatisfaction with the government education system has given rise to the prolific growth of low-cost private schools. The schools are at the very bottom of the economic pyramid; in some cases the schools are nothing more than dirt floors with half walls or merely benches under a tree. These impoverished schools are disenfranchised and don’t receive any government funding, resources or textbooks. » Continue reading “The Power of the Private Sector”

It’s easy to get wrapped up in an attractive story: the Harvard grad who gave up a comfortable life on Wall Street to move to Africa and start a microfinance institution or the pretty 17-year-old model who abandoned a promising career to rescue orphans in Cambodia.

Daniela Papi, of PEPY and PEPY Tours, points out that not only is this “hero worship” superficial, it’s also harmful. On her blog, she relays a story she heard from a friend: » Continue reading “Stop the Worship and Measure the Impact”

A recent TIME magazine article makes the argument that investing in girls is the way to fight poverty. It’s a solid argument to make.

The higher the education level a girl achieves, the more she will eventually earn. Each extra year of primary school increases her wage potential by 10-20%; an extra year of secondary school increases it by 15-25%.

Even more compelling is the fact that when women earn they invest more than their male counterparts in their families. The World Food Programme found that women invest 90% of their income into their families while men only invest 30-40%.

So, getting girls to stay in school can hugely impact the lives of millions worldwide. Unfortunately, as the article points out, the current situation is less than ideal: In sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than 1 in 5 girls make it to secondary school. Nearly half are married by the time they are 18; 1 in 7 across the developing world marries before she is 15. » Continue reading “The Power of the Girl”

This post is the second half of a piece we published last week, Basic Services for All: Whose Responsibility is it Anyway?

Last week, I wrote about the provision of basic services for all, and posed the question, whose responsibility is it? To paraphrase: When the government can’t provide, should we let someone else step in?  And, in so doing, do we send the message that it’s okay for government to fail?

The conclusion last week led us to look to social enterprise as the most viable alternative to government service provision, because the private sector tends to serve the wealthy, not the poor, and the non-profit sector may not be a sustainable solution. But, the question persists: by providing an alternative, are we giving government an out, so to speak?

One commenter, Anoj Viswanathan (check out his socent Milaap), believes that we don’t have the luxury of contemplating who should do the work. “While creating a systemic change is indeed required, the question one has to ask is – do I lobby/wait for a grant/subsidy that may/may not come my way, while another generation would have slipped into the grinding cycle of poverty?,” he said.

Viswanathan brings up a great point: having a theoretical debate doesn’t help the people who need education or healthcare now. But, taking a big picture approach can help us bring change to the masses, instead of just a single target group, and make sure that we’re not sending the government the message that it’s okay to fail. » Continue reading “Education for All? Invite Government to the Table”

When it comes to providing basic services like education, healthcare, and finance, who is responsible?  Unarguably, most would say government. But, when the government can’t do it, should we let someone else step in?  By letting another group—the private sector, NGOs, social enterprise—provide these services, do we do a disservice to the poor? Worse, do we send the message that it’s okay for government to fail?

These topics came up during a recent workshop hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation in Bangkok. Dr. Timothy G. Evans, dean of the James P Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University in Dhaka, eloquently argued that by letting private healthcare and education mushroom, we do a disservice to the poor. We cut the poor out of the equation by only providing for the wealthy. » Continue reading “Basic Services for All: Whose Responsibility is it Anyway?”

Beyond Profit “On the Spot” with Steve Hardgrave of Gray Ghost Ventures from Beyond Profit on Vimeo.

Steve Hardgrave is the senior managing director of Gray Ghost Ventures, an impact investing firm focusing on market-based solutions in India. Beyond Profit spoke to Hardgrave about Gray Ghost Ventures’ new project in the affordable public school movement.