Have you had a chance to view The Long Walk to School on Netflix?  Here's a YouTube preview of the film's moving stories about challenges students in the developing world face as they strive to get an education.  

Last week, students at my school participated in activities designed to simulate how children in developing countries collect water from rivers, gather firewood in dangerous conditions and brave long and sometimes difficult routes on the way to school.  

Grade 4 teacher Sylvia Dakin created the simulations as a fundraiser for the Widows' Garden Project in Uganda. Dakin will volunteer with the project in the fall, and her students have been enthusiastic in supporting their teacher's project with a variety of fund-raising efforts, including collecting pledges during The Way To School.  Read the full article about the fundraiser here:  Courtenay’s Ecole Puntledge Park students gain deeper understanding of African peers’ hardships.

The Widows' Garden project is an effort to provide Ugandan women with the means to provide themselves and their families with a sustainable source of income.  Through fundraising, legal advocacy and literacy supports, the project aims to combat the practice of property grabbing, in which relatives, community members or authority figures take possession of the property that belonged to a women's deceased husband or to the couple jointly.  Dakin shared project videos with Ecole Puntledge Park staff, featuring women affixing their thumbprint to legal documents so that their land ownership rights would be recognized and upheld by the law.  This is a poignant illustration of the illiteracy that remains endemic in the developing world due to the lack of print materials and access to education.  Inspired by Sylvia's project?  Donate to her GoFundMe campaign here:  Widows' Garden Project GoFundMe_Sylvia Dakin  

The Widows' Garden Project:  Harvesting Hope in Uganda

How can economically developed nations promote wider literacy in countries like Uganda?  While physical hurdles such as the ones Puntledge students simulated often come to mind when we think of barriers to education in the developing world, there are other obstacles to attending school in Uganda.  For example, young women in sub-Saharan Africa miss as much as 20% of the school year because they lack the facilities or sanitary products for menstrual hygiene management. (See Globally, periods are causing girls to be absent from school).  

It was a sad day for our school community when an arborist ordered the felling of our mighty maple tree, but it is a marvellous addition to our playground!

Dakin is strongly committed to supporting the school in Kigamara village, making the point that the more we promote literacy, the less people will be able to be exploited.  When she contacted local school officials to ask how she might best support the school, they requested good pencil sharpeners.  Dakin also plans to stash some dictionaries in her suitcase, along with reusable menstrual pads. We talked about other supplies that we have in abundance and could share with Kigamara students; however, the sheer logistics of transporting school supplies to rural Uganda impedes our sending stationery, books and teaching supplies.  How do we prioritize educational products so that the most important tools make their way along the supply chain to rural schools in the developing world?

According to a 2014 UNESCO report, technology may be the answer.  In the article "Cellphones ignite a 'reading revolution' in poor countries", Toor (2014) writes about literacy in the mobile era, stating that "people are reading more, they're reading to their children, and they're hungry for more content."  UNESCO studied mobile reading in seven developing countries including Uganda.  They found that women were more likely read on mobile phones than men; that one-third of study participants read ebooks aloud to their children; and that neo- and semi-literate adults were able to access texts appropriate for their reading level.  The report makes a number of recommendations, including:

• making a wide variety of texts available to increase interest and accommodate reading levels
• providing eBook access,outreach and training
• lowering barriers to mobile reading (e.g. access to devices and internet connections)

Efforts are already underway to remove some of the connectivity barriers to Internet use in Uganda.  Phase 2 of the country's Internet Backbone project was completed in June  2018, laying 1548 km of fibre optic cable with direct links to Kenya in the east and South Sudan to the north. A third phase will add an additional 307 km of cable to connect Uganda's capital city of Kampala to the Rwanda border, completing a link from the Kenyan port town of Mombasa.  

Uganda also has the backing of the likes of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft's Bill Gates.  Since 2008, Bridge International Academies (BIA), which receive funding from Zuckerberg and Gates among other sponsors, have been operating in five African countries, including Uganda.  Mobile devices are a feature of the Bridge's approach but not for students:  instead, smartphones and other wireless handheld devices are used to "record attendance – of both pupils and teachers – assess scores, track lesson pacing and measure pupil comprehension".  The devices "streamline non-instructional management tasks such as payroll processing, billing and expense management" (Bridge International Academies, 2013).  Not surprisingly, the government of Uganda has sought a court injunction to shut BIA down, citing eduction methods that are standardized, scripted and lacking in transparency.  

Other global technology aid projects such as One Laptop Per Child have not demonstrated the expected increase in literacy and technology skills in developing countries despite early promise as ways to overcome obstacles of connectivity, power sources and technical knowledge in rural and urban Africa.Sugana Mitra's Hole-in-the Wall Playground Learning Stations have had greater success, children exposed to the stations gaining statistically significant higher levels of computer literacy when compared to students without access to the stations (Dangwal & Mitra, 2017).  

According to a World Bank study released in 2016 (Pramanik, 2017), more people in developing countries have access to mobile phones that clean water or electricity.  Mobile technology is creating opportunities for citizens in countries like Uganda to improve their literacy, finances and health using a variety of applications and internet sites.  

Mobile Technology Enhances Literacy, Economic Activity and Health Care in the Developing World

Unfortunately, mobile phones remain prohibitively expensive for people in rural villages like the one Sylvia Dakin will visit this fall.  I attempted to find aid organizations collecting phones for donation to developing countries but none of the sites, including Africa Calling, HYLA and Hope Phones had current educational support programs in place (Hope Phones continues to operate a donation site collecting used cell phones for mobile health care programs).

Perhaps Dakin needs to make room in her suitcase for as many donated iPhones, chargers and type G power adapters as possible and then,since many Ugandans lack the basic literacy skills required to make use of a mobile phone (in Uganda, approximately 75% of third grade students are emergent readers), arm herself with a series of ICT lesson plans to accompany them.  

Wouldn't it be nice if you and I could go with her?  Consider sending a part of yourself along on the journey by making a donation to Sylvia's GoFundMe page!

References

Bridge International Academies. (2013).  Our Model.  Retrieved from http://www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com/approach/model/

Buchanan, Leigh.  (2016, November 30).  Founder Speaks After Her Zuckerberg- and Gates-Backed For-Profil School is Ordered to Shut Down.  Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/bridge.html

Dangwal, R. & Mitra, S. (2017).  Acquisition of computer literacy skills through self- organizing systems of learning among children in Bhutan and India. Retrieved from https://link-springer-com.umasslowell.idm.oclc.org/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11125-017-9409-6.pdf

[Euronews.]  (2013, November 22).  The long road to school in Mexico, Uganda and Kenya--learning world [Video File].  Retrieved from https://youtu.be/JH7flPjuNsM.

National Information Technology Authority--Uganda [NITAU] (2018, June 6).  National Backbone Infrastructure Project.  Retrieved from https://www.nita.go.ug/projects/national-backbone-infrastructure-project-nbiegi

Pramanik, A. (2017, Feburay 24).  The technology that's making a difference in the developing world. Retrieved from http://www.usglc.org/blog/the-technology-thats-making-a-difference-in-the-developing-world/

Robertson, Adi (2018, April 16).  OLPC's $100 Laptop Was Going to Change the World--Then it All Went Wrgon.  Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17233946/olpcs-100-laptop-education-where-is-it-now

Scott, S. (2018, June 4). Courtenay's Ecole Puntledge Park students gain deeper understanding of African peers' hardships. Comox Valley Record, Retrieved from https://www.comoxvalleyrecord.com/home/courtenays-ecole-puntledge-park-students-gain-deeper-understanding-of-african-peers-hardships/

Toor, A.  (2014, April 23).  Cellphones ignite a "reading revoluiont' in poor countries.  Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2014/4/23/5643058/mobile-phone-reading-illiteracy-developing-countries-unesco.