Hi, everyone.
My name is Kaussar Rahman.
I'm a senior biology major and [INAUDIBLE] education minor.
This summer I had the fortunate opportunity
to travel to Ghana in my internship with a non-profit
there.
And so the non-profit that I worked with
is called the Ghana National Education Campaign
Coalition, or NECC for short.
And so what NECC is, it's a network of civil societies
that are advocating for education
for all, equality-based education
for all types of students.
And so I got this internship to do a bunch of networking.
It took a couple months to get it, but when I finally did,
it was a good moment for me.
And so while there, I read a lot of literature,
a lot of policies.
And I attended meetings, conferences.
I had an opportunity to do a little bit of field work.
And so I also drafted and edited a bunch of policies.
And so I'm here to talk about-- one of the things
that I focused on during the summer
was privatization of education.
And so what that means is that in Ghana, it clearly
states in the constitution that free, basic education is
mandatory for K-12, basically.
However, sometimes the government cannot sustain that
promise to all.
And so they allow the private corporates or companies
to come into Ghana, and go into these rural communities,
build schools, and try to kind of fill
in the gap between those who have schools and those
who don't have any schools.
And so they're shifting the control of education
the future generations to private companies
who really don't know the social, or political,
or cultural climate of these communities.
And so one of the biggest companies
who are coming to Ghana is called Omega Schools Franchise.
And this franchise was funded in 2009
by James Tooley and Ken Donkoh.
And James Tooley is a professor of education in the UK,
and Mr. Donkoh is a Ghanian entrepreneur.
So you have someone who's for-profits, trying
to make money, and then another person who's like, let's have
[INAUDIBLE] for education.
So it's like putting together education for a profit,
which cannot be good.
It is funded by Pearson.
And if you have an education in the United States
basically from pre-K all the way to high school,
one of your textbooks were funded by Pearson.
And so they're the largest contributors
of textbooks around the world.
So they are filthy rich, and they want
to basically make more money.
And so their goal with the Omega Schools Franchise
is to reach a large number of students in rural communities
and build as much schools as possible.
However, there's some problems, of course.
There's many issues, but some of them that are highlighted
was the bottom [INAUDIBLE] strategies.
So what that means is that these companies are taking
the communities that are on the bottom, the bottom
of the pyramid, the rural, impoverished communities,
and they are making profits off of these people.
And so that's obviously one of the biggest problems.
Another problem is that they're not actually
solving the issue of school being expensive.
So you have families who make less than $2 a day.
And let's say the school is $0.50 per child.
Most of these parents have multiple children,
and that can add up to $2.00.
So then parents have to make a decision.
Well, which child are they going to send to school?
And mostly they send the male child over the female child.
So there you have gender discrimination
of who goes to school, and who doesn't, and [INAUDIBLE]..
Furthermore, they have inadequate teachers
and inadequate buildings.
These teachers clock in, clock out whenever they want,
however they want.
They teach whatever they want and however they want.
The construction of the buildings
are absolutely terrible.
Ceilings, chalkboards, no chalkboards.
It's not a good learning environment, right?
And so another thing is that they
don't follow the government educational standards.
So in Ghana, they have a syllabus for each grade level.
And most of these schools, they follow
whatever they want to follow.
They follow the policies that are not
set by the Ghanian Ministry of Education, unfortunately.
And so the organization I work with is
trying to basically take the [INAUDIBLE] of education
as an investment for the pocket and mostly for the future.
So changing that outlook of education, of what education
means, from educating the future rather than educating-- sorry,
investing into the future rather than investing for your pocket.
And so what they really want to do
is help hold press conferences, media conferences,
get the media involved, get the community
brought into the conversation of changing
that role of education.
And so when I was there, I helped
them draft a policy that calls for a stronger
regulation of these private corporations
and private companies.
And we wanted to present these policies
to the Ministry of Education and hopefully
get them talking and having a conversation
about these issues.
And so actually, they just finished a policy
before I left that place.
And so they actually presented this policy
to the Ministry of Education now.
And so hopefully things will be starting to change.
And so taking what I learned while I was there,
I did a little bit of field work in Tamale,
which is in the northern part of Ghana.
And I went to this school, which you can see in this picture,
is that they did not have enough desk or chairs for the students
to actually write on.
And there was no chalkboard, right?
So a lot of the teachers would write on the cement floors.
That's where the students will actually copy their notes down.
And most of these students did not even
have notebooks or pencils to write down either.
So while at Mount Holyoke, last semester,
I did start an organization called the [INAUDIBLE] Promise.
And this year we actually changed the name to Advocating
for Global Education.
And we are trying to fundraise as much money
as possible to hand over to the school,
so that they can also get the desk and chairs that they need.
And I'm just really happy that Mount Holyoke gave me
the opportunity to go travel to Ghana
and learn more about education policy that's
happening in my hometown.
And so thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]