Spring 2022
Our inaugural partner newsletter – created just for you!
Our experience of over 15 years as a public foundation supporting girls’ education has taught us many things – especially the vital importance of our partner relationships and strong cooperation with NGOs, social enterprises, researchers and innovative start-ups serving developing countries.
Our 60 million girls‘ R&D team has been in place since 2012 – 10 years already! The team searches for new ideas and the latest data and information supporting girls’ education to guide our investments worldwide. It is also the place where we develop and coordinate resources to support our partners: new content for the Mobile Learning Lab, best practices from the field, success stories, links to local suppliers and more.
With the ever-increasing amount of information we collect, as well as the numerous contacts we make with civil society groups around the importance of girls’ education, we felt it was becoming more and more difficult to ensure that we were sharing this knowledge with you in a timely manner. We have created this newsletter to close the gap.
We plan to send out our new newsletter two or three times a year with the objective of providing you with specific content to help you maximize the impact of the Mobile Learning Labs and/or suggest new ideas and approaches that have been implemented elsewhere and that may be practical in the context you are working in.
We would love to receive your feedback on the newsletter – or anything else we do – so that every dollar we invest in girls’ education has the deepest impact possible.
Please let us know if any other members of your team may like to receive these updates. And, do let us know what you would like to read about in our next newsletters.
Wanda Bedard
President
Partners in action
Change for Children
The team at Change for Children recently had a wonderful research article titled Education and Technology Project in Guatemala published in the Journal for Learning and Development: “Technology has been viewed as a means to improve the quality of education for children globally, particularly in remote and marginal communities. This study examines the comparative advantages of the use of appropriate technology (off-line servers with digital libraries connected to a classroom set of laptops) in ten intervention schools in Indigenous communities in Guatemala for one school year.”
CAMFED
Two major issues face rural students in Ghana: school attendance and the quality of education. The project with CAMFED, our partner in Ghana, addressed both these issues by introducing the Mobile Learning Lab (MLL) while providing an opportunity for educated young women to establish themselves as “edupreneurs” (entrepreneurs who work within the education sector). The project, implemented in 2021, worked to deliver learning materials to the students. The MLL offers a wealth of quality information that is both interesting and entertaining. For the MLL facilitators, members of CAMFED’s alumnae association (CAMA), the MLL also offers an opportunity to increase their pedagogical skills and knowledge. Watch this short video as students, MLL facilitators and teachers describe the extraordinary impact of the MLL.
Embrace International
The Fund for Innovation and Transformation (FIT) is a Global Affairs Canada program to support Canadian charities trying to solve global problems in innovative and transformational ways. In 2019, FIT awarded funding to the Embrace International Foundation, an NGO founded by Bev and Paul Carrick with whom we have worked for many years. Based on technical guidance from 60 million girls, Embrace received almost $214,000 to study the use of the MLL in rural Uganda – an area without Internet access. This one-year project aimed to improve math and literacy scores as well as non-cognitive skills like self-confidence, motivation and aspiration of students in grades 5 and 6, especially girls and children living with disabilities. The project focused on 1,200 students in ten schools, using surveys, skills tests and interviews to assess progress.
Updates from our R&D team
The R&D team has been busy updating the Digital Learning Resources List which contains valuable digital education resources and tools that can be used offline and online. At the time of review (April 2022), the majority of these resources were free. A brief description is provided and the list can be filtered by level, topic (STEM, literacy, or other), and by language. Licensing information is provided where available. The list was initially prepared by UNHCR and additional content was added from UNICEF websites to provide continuous learning at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and has been updated by our team to include information that we hope you will find useful with your projects. Please feel free to share this resource widely.
2021 funded projects
60 million girls is funding three projects that are taking place in 2022. Our website lists the details of each project, but here is a brief summary.
Sierra Leone: We Day Kam Back (We Go Back)
This Cause Canada project will allow 640 out-of-school adolescent girls, aged 12-16 years, to participate in 30 accelerated learning centres located in the rural communities of Koinadugu and Falaba in northeastern Sierra Leone. Using a combination of e-learning and accelerated learning, the project will help the girls return to school at the appropriate grade level for their age. It will develop their knowledge, skills and confidence through the use of high-quality resources, allowing them to rebuild their ability to excel at school.
Uganda: Leave No Girl Behind
This Right To Play project will support the creation of girls’ clubs that will provide tablets to girls in eight secondary schools. Digital play-based learning resources on selected curriculum topics – mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), gender-based violence (GBV), sexual reproduction health rights (SRHR) and rights of girls in Uganda – will be preloaded on the tablets to provide offline access. Additional open-source materials to improve learning, develop life skills and gain knowledge will be included.
Zambia: Facilitating Meaningful Education for Girls
This Stephen Lewis Foundation project will directly support 50 adolescent girls and 20 adolescent boys between grades 8 through 12. In addition, it will indirectly support 625 students a year who will benefit from the improved school facilities through expansion and vital improvements to the school for orphans and vulnerable children and youth. This project will also address key barriers faced by adolescent girls who risk being forced to leave school. Fifty girls will receive educational support, including uniforms, funding for school fees, and menstrual products. In addition, it will offer educational support for 20 adolescent boys.
Global implementation of the Mobile Learning Lab: the red pins indicate 60 million girls’ projects; the blue pins indicate independently funded projects.
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