In part one of this blog post, we promised to come back with what AJ is doing surrounding children’s education that will ultimately help them break the cycle of poverty within their families.
As we emphasized earlier, generational poverty is not only a daily lack of provisions of food and shelter. It is also a situation where families lack financial capital, education or social capital to rise out of poverty. When families live in poverty, the likelihood that children will be trapped in the same cycle is very high.
According to a new policy paper from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Global Education Monitoring (GEM), it shows that the global poverty rate could be more than halved if all adults completed secondary school. Yet, new UIS data show persistently high out-of-school rates in many countries, making it likely that completion levels in education will remain well below that target for generations to come.
This is why education is one of the cornerstones of our programs. It is an important tool we provide for children to help them make a better future.
This new report from UIS and GEM demonstrates the importance of recognizing education as a core lever for ending poverty in all its forms, everywhere, and we couldn’t agree more.
This new analysis on education’s impact on poverty is based on the average effects of education on growth and poverty reduction in developing countries from 1965 to 2010. It shows that “nearly 60 million people could escape poverty if all adults had just two more years of schooling.” Let that resonate…just TWO more years of schooling! If all adults completed secondary education, “420 million could be lifted out of poverty, reducing the total number of impoverished people by more than half globally and by almost two-thirds in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.”
In Ethiopia, there is a general challenge among impoverished households in enrolling children in school. Also, as children move from primary to secondary school, there is a high chance of dropping out. Enrollment and dropout in impoverished households depend on several factors such as:
- Household income, which determines a household’s ability to send children to school and further invest in their secondary education. The likelihood of children to continue in secondary education depends on the level of costs incurred by parents by sending them to school.
- In impoverished households, there is a high chance that an older child with greater opportunities to earn income to be taken out of school and involve in daily income-earning activities.
- The level of parents’ education is also another factor that influences the chances of children to progress into secondary school.
Children in our Family Empowerment Program (FEP), before they joined the program, were facing various challenges. These challenges included:
- The high chance of their family unit to break-down;
- Some of the older children shouldering a caregiver responsibility when adults were not able to provide; and
- A situation where children engaged in daily work than in school to support themselves and their families.
In consideration of these challenges, AJ is currently intervening in three areas that are important in improving the overall educational opportunities of FEP children.
The first area is fulfilling basic school supplies so that children do not miss school as a result. In Ethiopia, for children to attend school, they also need to have school uniforms. Luckily the government provided uniforms this past year! AJ provided a pair of shoes to go with the uniform for each child so they could attend school. We also gave each child a bookbag full of school supplies for the year to ensure each child had what they needed to succed in school.
Tutoring and library service is the second area that AJ is providing support for children’s education. We have arranged opportunities for children to attend after-school tutoring three days a week at Charlie’s Library and Tutoring Center, located within our Family Empowerment Center and generously sponsored by our partners at Charlie’s Heart Foundation. Along with tutoring, children are being provided with a library space where they can peacefully study and read. It’s a wonderful component of our education provision where we empower children with the gift of quality learning space and the opportunity to improve class performances.
Nutritious food before tutoring sessions is the third area that AJ is working on to improve children’s educational opportunities. As stated above, one of the challenges surrounding children’s education is a family’s economic situation. Families in our program were struggling to put food on the table before children headed to school. Sending children to school with an empty stomach was a common story among families that Addis Jemari is currently serving and this used to result in children missing school. Our monthly stipend that each family receives helps combat that, but we took it one step further. We identified the need to provide children coming to tutoring some nutrituious food before the tutoring sessions began so they could focus on their studies and educational opportunities at the FEP center. Creating access to proper food ensures that children engage more in their learning.
Overall, the three components of provisions (school supplies, after-school tutoring, and nutritious food before tutoring sessions) are important because we do not only want children to attend school but excel in their school performances. Our goal is to ensure each participant child in our program has every resource available to help him or her succeed in school.
When addressed properly, education will help break the cycle of generational poverty!
We can’t always thank enough all our donors and supporters for joining us in this fight to end the cycle of generational poverty with children and families that we are serving.
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