Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9804031055.F8993-0100000@lan.vita.org> Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 10:30:45 -0500 From: Dania Granados <mailto:granados@LAN.VITA.ORG> Subject: April Newsletter To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
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April 1998 Volume 8, No.4
IN THIS ISSUE
FOCUS ON EDUCATION
Educating Indigenous Girls in Latin America
LITERATURE REVIEW
Economic analysis of Africa
ORGANIZATIONS
Winrock International
VITA PROJECTS
Update on International Disaster Information Center
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Distance Education in Africa
* * *
DevelopNet News is published monthly by Volunteers in
Technical Assistance (VITA) in Arlington, Virginia, USA. For
additional information, please see the end of this newsletter.
* * *
F o c u s O n E d u c a t i o n
EDUCATING INDIGENOUS GIRLS IN LATIN AMERICA
Extending the Benefits of Education
An estimated 40 million people in Latin America, or I 0 percent
of the total population, are indigenous, including Mayan peoples
in Guatemala and the Quechua and Aymara in Bolivia and Peru.
Indigenous people live throughout the region but constitute a
majority of the total population in Bolivia and significant
minorities in Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is
working with Latin American governments and indigenous leaders to
improve the standard of living for all indigenous people.
Increasing educational opportunities represents an important
contribution toward that goal.
In most Latin American countries, gender parity in education has
been achieved for children (United Nations, 1995). The education
of indigenous girls, however, lags behind the rate for indigenous
boys and still further behind the rate for nonindigenous boys and
girls. As a group, indigenous females have the lowest literacy
rate in Latin Amen-ca. Given the documented benefits of girls'
education in improving the economic and health status of
families, it is important to extend education to girls who have
been marginalized for cultural, economic, linguistic, or other
reasons.
The Challenge
Low levels of education of indigenous women contribute to high
rates of infant and maternal mortality, fertility, and
malnutrition, since these health indicators are linked to the
level of women's education. For example, 46 percent of children
of Bolivian women with no education are chronically malnourished,
compared to 14 percent of children of women with a secondary
school education (Martin, 1997).
In most countries, substantial differences in education exist
between indigenous and non-indigenous children. In Guatemala,
indigenous girls complete an average of less than one year of
schooling, compared to 1.8 years for indigenous boys. By
contrast, non-indigenous girls and boys complete an average of
4.0 and 4.5 years respectively. In Peru, 65 percent of the
indigenous female population is illiterate, as opposed to 26
percent of the non-indigenous female population. In Bolivia,
where the majority of the population is indigenous and rural,
68.5 percent of rural women are illiterate, double the rate for
rural men.
The Barriers
Latin American governments, working to include indigenous girls
in the educational system, face barriers related to policies,
infrastructure, community, household beliefs and practices, and
the education system itself (Clay, Tietjen, and Padgett, 1996).
For example, indigenous people often live in geographically
isolated areas, with schools located a considerable distance
away. Many indigenous people, particularly women, have little or
no command of Spanish, the dominant language used in most schools
in Latin America. Approximately fifteen indigenous languages in
Guatemala, twenty-seven in Peru, and seven in Bolivia have more
than I 0,000 speakers each, and many more languages are spoken by
smaller numbers of people throughout the region. Another barrier
is the cost of schooling, which is often prohibitively expensive
for families in poverty. In addition to paying for their
daughter's books, clothing, and other costs, parents must factor
in the foregone income from the child earning a wage or helping
out with household tasks.
Creative Solutions
New initiatives and innovative approaches are breaking down the
barriers. Stakeholder mobilization, scholarship programs,
multigrade schooling, bilingual education, multicultural
materials, and early childhood education programs broadcast on
the radio have shown promising, preliminary results.
Mobilizing Stakeholders
USAID's Girls' and Women's Education Initiative, launched in 1996
by First Lady Hilary Rodham Clinton, is active in twelve
countries. Its overall goal is to increase girls' primary school
completion by 20 percent over five years. In Guatemala, USAID is
building on earlier efforts to mobilize public-sector and
private-sector decision makers to develop strategies to
effectively provide education to indigenous girls and others
traditionally underserved by the educational system. In Bolivia
and Honduras, the initiative will conduct research on such topics
as the effect of women's literacy programs on broader social and
economic development.
Scholarship programs
Guatemala has been a leader in offering scholarships to keep
indigenous girls in school. USAID's Basic Education
Strengthening (BEST) Project built on earlier efforts to provide
scholarships and to evaluate the effect of these scholarships on
girls' school dropout rates. When local community workers
assisted parents' organizations in providing scholarships for
girls, the first grade promotion rates for scholarship recipients
were at least 20 percentage points higher than for
non-scholarship recipients over a three-year period. In 1996,
for example, 87.5 percent of the girls in the scholarship program
went on to second grade, as compared to 61.9 percent of a control
group of girls who did not receive scholarships.
As a sign of national commitment to the value of the
scholarships, the Guatemalan government developed its own girls'
scholarship program, financed with its own resources. In
addition, the Ministry of Education entered into a partnership
with a local foundation to target more financial resources toward
the scholarships rather than toward program administration.
Multigrade schooling
The Nueva Escuela Unitaria (NEU) has been an effort by the
Guatemalan government to improve educational quality for children
attending isolated rural schools where one or two teachers are
responsible for all six primary grades. The NEU program, which
USAID has helped support, stresses the role of the teacher as a
facilitator of knowledge-building who encourages girls and boys
to be active, creative, participative, and responsible. The
program involves in-service training in which teachers develop
materials and form "teaching circles"; parental involvement in
classrooms and on school governing boards; active teaming
strategies such as self-instructional guides, small group work
and peer teaching; flexible promotion and participation of
students in elected school government.
The program began with I 00 schools in 1993 and has since
expanded to more than 1,000 schools. From 1993 to 1996, dropout
rates were consistently lower in NEU schools than in similar
schools without the NEU program. The program has had the
greatest impact on indigenous girls; dropout rates were
significantly lower for NEU indigenous female students in all
three years of investigation (Chesterfield, 1997).
Bilingual education and multicultural materials
After years of using a Spanish-only curriculum to teach
indigenous children, Bolivia has introduced bilingual teaching in
the classroom. The 1994 Education Reform Law recognizes that
bilingual education for the country's indigenous groups can
result in educational advancement and economic development on
individual and national levels. Funded by the Inter-American
Bank and The World Bank, implementation of the reform recently
began and has included training bilingual education specialists
and producing materials in Quechua, Aymara, and Guarani. The
Reform Law also guarantees, at least at the policy level, equal
rights for men and women and the incorporation of gender equity
throughout the curriculum design process (Martin, 1997).
Since the early 1980s, USAID has supported the Guatemalan
government's efforts to provide bilingual education to indigenous
girls and boys. Research conducted through the BEST Project
showed that girls in the bilingual education program had a higher
sixth-grade completion rate than girls in rural schools without
the bilingual curriculum (Chesterfield, 1997).
USAID has also provided funding and technical assistance to
produce posters, books, songs, and literature in Spanish and in
the major Mayan languages to support girls' school participation.
These materials encourage indigenous girls to attend school at
least until the sixth grade, and they highlight the lives of
several Mayan women as positive, culturally sensitive role models
for young girls.
Early childhood interventions and distance learning
Early childhood interventions can play a key role in the
transition between home and school for rural and indigenous
children. With USAID funding and technical assistance, the
LearnTech Project in Bolivia developed a series of radio programs
for caregivers and preschool children that were designed to be
used at midis, the small centers often located in a woman's home,
that serve as gathering places for other women in the community.
In addition to its focus on education for preschool indigenous
children, the radio programs surmounted the obstacle of distance
in reaching indigenous women in rural areas. UNICEF and PLAN
International translated the materials into the languages of
Aymara and Quechua, which expanded the listenership to
non-Spanish-speaking women. Evaluations have shown that the
program was effective at helping women set up stimulating
environments for their children's early Teaming and growth
(Education Development Center, 1995).
Sharing Strategies
Indigenous girls in each country in Latin America face specific
individual and structural barriers to achieving an education.
However, governments, NGOs, and others are sharing successful
strategies and promising research results. At the April 1998
Summit of the Americas, policy makers from throughout the
hemisphere will consider education, including education for
indigenous girls and other underserved populations, as one of
four major initiatives to contribute to progress toward national
social and economic goals.
In May 1998, USAID-supported by the World Bank, the
Inter-American Development Bank, European Union, LJNICEF, and the
Lewis T. Preston Education Program for Girls-will convene an
international conference on girls' education. Its goal is to
strengthen public-sector, private-sector, and civil society
partnerships to increase girls' school participation worldwide.
Latin American government, private-sector, and religious leaders
will focus on strategies to extend the benefits of education to
indigenous girls.
Reprinted with permission from USAID's Office of Women in
Development. This article appeared recently in WIDWorks, the
information bulletin. For information contact:
mailto:dsediqui@usaid.gov.
* * *
L i t e r a t u r e R e v i e w s
AFRICA IN CHAOS?
Ayittey, George, Africa in Chaos, St. Martin's Press, NY, 1998.
An economic analysis of 54 nations, 4 racial groups, and more
than 2,000 ethnic communities in a continent 4 times the size of
the United States is a massive undertaking. It is also
"hazardous" in the context of today's hypersensitivity about race
and the hesitancy to portray anything African in any but the most
favorable terms. However, Mr. Amity tells it like it is, but
he's done that before. His earlier book, Africa Betrayed, paved
the way for his continued scholarly and objective research and
analysis of the problems facing Africa, and the inadequacies of
the proffered solutions.
The author describes as one of Africa's major problems the
governments hijacked by "kleptocrats and brutal despots," and
widespread political corruption. Coupled with donor fatigue and
the "pernicious" failure of Western Aid. Africa's future might
look very grim, except for a growing number of African
intellectuals whom the author sees as the potential "saviors" of
the situation, provided they clean up their act. He ends his book
with an interesting list of "the Ten Commandments for
intellectuals."
* * *
O r g a n i z a t i o n s
WINROCK INSTITUTE FOR AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
Winrock International is a private nonprofit organization
headquartered at Petit Jean Mountain near Morrilton, Arkansas. It
has offices in Arlington, VA, and field offices in Brazil, China,
India, and the Philippines. It currently manages more than 130
projects in 40 developing countries and the U.S.
Winrock was founded in 1985 with the merger of three Rockefeller
organizations: the Agricultural Development Council, the Winrock
International Research and Training Center, and the International
Agricultural Development Service.
Winrock focuses on five areas: Agriculture, Forestry & Natural
Resource Management, Leadership & Human Resource Development,
Renewable Energy, and Rural Employment & Enterprise development.
For more information contact: www.winrock.org
* * *
V I T A P r o j e c t s
UPDATE ON INTERNATIONAL DISASTER INFORMATION CENTER
VITA continues to provide information regarding relief efforts in
response to both man-made and natural disasters around the world.
Most recently the Center has been responding to inquiries related
to the devastating earthquakes in Afghanistan, flooding in Peru
and Jamaica, the ongoing crises in the former-Yugoslavia and the
Great Lakes region of Africa as well as preparing for the
upcoming 1998 hurricane season in the Caribbean and Latin
America.
Since March 1991, VITA's International Disaster Information
Center has been working with the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster
Assistance to promote private sector disaster prevention,
mitigation, and preparedness (PMP) capabilities in disaster-prone
countries. This program has led to increased involvement by the
private sector in planning and implementing PMP efforts in
developing countries such as Jamaica, Ecuador, St. Lucia,
Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and India. In Jamaica VITA
collaborated with the Pan American Development Foundation and
with local non-profit organizations and the business sector in
implementing a major, 10,000 home safe roof retrofit project in
hurricane-vulnerable areas. It was also under this program that
VITA developed an electronic bulletin board system for the
International consortium of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA) for use in
the former-Yugoslavia as well as the development of the Commodity
Tracking software for the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees.
In 1988, under a grant from the U.S. Office of Foreign disaster
Assistance and the IBM Corporation, Volunteers in Technical
Assistance (VITA) began to manage the International Disaster
Information Center, which provides the U.S. public and private
organizations with information related to international disaster
relief activities. Since its inception, thousands of
individuals, as well as embassies, corporations, and relief
agencies have come to rely on the Center as a source of
up-to-date disaster-related information.
For information, please contact: mailto:sbrooks@vita.org.
* * *
A n n o u n c e m e n t s
DISTANCE EDUCATION
GhaCLAD "98 Conference - Ghana Computer Literacy & Distance
Education Conference, May 20-22, 1998, Accra International
Conference Center.
The conference will focus on the use of information technology to
enhance the economic, social, cultural, and educational
development of African countries. This goal includes: initiating
a long term effort to promote electronic networking in Africa,
examining the future of education in electronic classrooms,
exploring the barriers to developing transnational goals for
infusing computer literacy into primary, secondary, and tertiary
education in Africa, and, strengthening the capacity of
grassroots organizations and low income communities to initiate,
choose, plan and manage their own self help projects through
computer technology and information systems. For updated
information, check www.ulbobo.com/gdep.
* * *
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