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. 

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