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New Year wishes, ECDC new year reception,
Wednesday 3^rd February 2016, Yaoundé

The year 2016 is a special year for Knowledge for Children. This year, it is exactly ten years since started our operations in Cameroon. Currently, we work with 132 rural primary schools in the North West Region and a small part of Adamawa region. We donate textbooks, train teachers and work closely with parents.

After ten years, is there still something to wish for?

I wish for less corporal punishment in schools and more teachers like Madam Rashidatu. She teaches her class 1 pupils in such a way that they are all excited and don’t have time to misbehave. So Madam Rashidatu doesn’t have to punish them!

I wish for less blind repetition of the teacher and more teachers like Mr. Faith. He makes his pupils really read, he facilitates the reading of the children in his class.

I wish for less illiterate teachers and more teachers like Madam Esther. She is an outstanding teacher who doesn’t only teach the children in her class, but also supports the other teachers in her school and even in neighbouring schools.

I wish for fewer children to be driven away from school because their fees have not been paid, for less fathers spending money on beer instead of school. I wish for more mothers to pay the education of their children and more people like Mr. Emmanuel, who pays the fees for all the children in his family.

I wish for fewer pastors who tell parents that if they don’t send their children to their denominational schools, they will no longer be a real church member. And for more people like Precious who visits families every few week to check on the progress of the children in school.

I wish for less out of school children and more children like Ali. He is no longer looking after his father’s cows but is now in school and one of the best pupils in his class.

I wish for less talking of the teacher and more teachers like Madam Mary, who puts the child in the centre of her teaching and enjoys teaching so much.

I wish for less writing on the blackboard and more books used by the pupils in class.

But above all, i wish that in 2016 all of us will come together to support the children of Cameroon. If we work together, the children will be able to Read Today and Lead Tomorrow!

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Reading for Fun

Speech delivered during the Ndu ECCUFORUM, organised by the Council of Ndu
13th December 2015

Good afternoon, my name is Esly van Dam and I am the country director for Knowledge for Children, a NGO based in Kumbo. Knowledge for Children works with 133 rural primary schools all over the North West Region as well as in Bankim (Adamawa). In Ndu, we work with 18 schools for now. Our main focus is literacy.

Every year, Knowledge for Children conducts Reading Tests in our schools to measure the reading performance of the pupils in our schools. Every year during these reading tests, I am shocked again. Shocked to see children in class two and realize that the average class two child cannot read even one two-letter word in a minute. Shocked to see children in class six who can’t read words of more than 3 letters. Sometimes I even see teachers who can hardly read and write themselves.

As Knowledge for Children Cameroon, we try our very best to help these children and their teachers. We believe that reading is an essential skill for the children to be independent grown-ups. If you can read, you can always be independent, you will always be able to check information yourself. Together with parents, we therefore invest in textbooks for their schools. We train the teachers on how to use the books and how to teach well. And we try to make children realize that reading can be fun!

As part of this last program, reading for fun, the Council of Ndu and Knowledge for Children are joining hands to organise a Reading Competition for primary schools in Ndu municipality. I am very proud to be able to officially announce this event here today!

During the Reading Competition, three children from all participating schools will compete in reading activities. They will have to read words and sentences and write words as well. The children compete with other children of their own level, what means every schools sends a child from level 1, from level 2 and from level 3.

By the end of the day, we will know which school is the best-reading-school of Ndu, and which children are the best readers of Ndu for their age group. The Knowledge for Children school that ends highest, will even join the Regional Finals in Kumbo on the fourth of March. Registration will be through the Inspectorate of Basic Education and will close on the 1^st of February, 2016. After registration, you will get access to materials to have a first round in school to select the pupils who will compete for your school. The Ndu Finals will be in the second half of February, 2016.

Participation for this day will cost 500 francs per child, which is 1.500 francs per school. For this money, we will be able to organise logistics and pay transport back to the school, for those schools that came on time.

I am personally very excited about this project and as Knowledge for Children, we are very grateful to the Council of Ndu to partner with us in this. We hope this is the start of a bigger partnership which enables more schools in Ndu to join our programs.

We appreciate the Council for taking reading serious. As our motto says; Read today, lead tomorrow. Without being able to read, no child will become a future leader. I hope you all agree with me that you people in Ndu are lucky to have mayors who can read, and who understand the importance of reading. So the children of Ndu will also be able to read, so they can be tomorrow’s leaders!

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Send your girls to school!

Speech delivered during the Kumbo Horse Race, organised by the Rural Development Foundation

21st December 2014

When I was a little girl, my parents and I lived in a small rural village. There was only one primary school and secondary school was about 20km away. But, my parents sent me to both.

Look at me now, I left my country, I work here in Cameroon, I can read, write, calculate, I am the ‘oga quarterquarter’ of Knowledge for Children. If there is something I don’t know I can go to a library or on the internet and find information. I can find information about health and diseases, I can teach myself how to make savon based on the information I can read, I can read about getting healthy babies.

 

I am sure everyone who is here today wants his or her children to grow up to be good, healthy and independent people. Maybe you know the African proverb that says; ‘If we educate a boy, we educate one person. If we educate a girl, we educate a family – and a whole nation’.

I know that not in every culture, it is common to send girls to school. But, look at this. In every culture, parents love their children. In every culture, parents want their children to be healthy. In every culture, grandparents love their grandchildren and want them to be healthy.

If you agree with this, keep this in mind;

• Children of educated women are less likely to die before their first birthday. So, if you send your daughter to school, your grandchildren (the boys and the girls alike) are more likely to grow up. The Girls Global Education Fund reports that when a child is born to a woman in Africa who hasn't received an education, he or she has a 1 in 5, so 20%, chance of dying before they reach the age of 5. I am sure you don’t want your grandchildren to die before they are 5 years old!
• Educated women are less likely to die during pregnancy or delivery. This also means that children have bigger chances to grow up with their mothers.
• Women who are educated can also get good jobs. They can become nurses or midwives for example. If there are more female health workers, the health of women will improve. I know my friends of RDF are supporting one girl who studies nursing and will soon be a midwife. Can you imagine how many lives she will save in the rest of her life? I am sure her parents had doubts to let her go, but are now very proud of her.
• Educated women can support their husbands much better. Besides every strong man, there is a strong woman! And remember, God created the woman from the rib of the man. Not from his feet to be walked on, but from his side to be equal.
• Educated women are better able to financially support their families. They can sell their products in the market because their calculation skills are better, they can access bigger markets because they speak English and go and trade with various tribes, they can become teachers and earn a living for their families.
• Educated mothers will also be better teachers to their own children, the girls but also the boys. They are much better able to support the children in doing their homework, encourage them to study etc. Who is the one to give birth to the future leaders of your community and your country? Is it the man or the woman? Who is the one who spends most time with the children, the man or the woman? If you want to enable your boys to become leaders of your community, you need to educate not only the boys, but also the girls, the future mothers of your future leaders. 

Now, what does it take to give a girl, but also a boy, a successful start in school?

• First of all, you as parents have to support your children. So think about it, do you want your daughters to be healthy and happy? In that case encourage her to study, support them in doing homework. Praise them if they work hard, encourage them if they don’t. Believe me, without the encouragement of my parents, I would not be here today.
• Parents are the most important educators of their children. Simply count how many hours a day a child spends in school, and how many at home. This goes even stronger for a child who is still too young to go to school. A child who is only 2 or 3 years old learns so much, to walk, to speak, to interact, everything! But the school is not yet taking care of them. So you as parents are the ones to teach. Encourage your children to ask questions about the world around them. How often do you hear a parent telling the child; o, be quiet! In that way, how will a child learn to ask questions, to speak, to think? 
• You don’t have to be a teacher to teach your own children. If you allow your children to talk or to go and get water with their friends instead of alone so they can communicate, you already support them. If you allow your children to play, they will develop skills which are necessary to be ready to go to school.

I really want to appreciate RDF for supporting education of girls. But they can’t do it without you. Your efforts are essential, we talk about the future of your sons and daughters, the future of your community and even the future of your country!

Useko, thank you!

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Presentation for the official start of the Early Childhood Development Network Cameroon. Yaounde, 17th September 2014 by Mark Losha Chaffee (Program Manager) and Esly van Dam (Country Director), Knowledge for Children, Kumbo.

When I was six years old, my parents moved to a small village in the rural area of the Netherlands. I entered the local primary school where I ended up in the by far biggest class of the school; we were twelve children. Can you imagine, the biggest class having only twelve pupils?

In my school, we learned how to count, about history and all other subjects children learn about in school. But first thing, we learned how to read. If you can’t read, you can’t learn other things, you can’t survive. Already in nursery school pupils were taught basics of literacy. We practised holding a pen in the right way, we tried to follow the lines and in that way we learned the coordination of our hands to enable us to write a few years later.

Not only my school, also my parents really supported me. They always read me stories, they encouraged me to call names of things, to ask questions. In this way, parents can support the literacy development of their children.

Now that I look back at it, I see how lucky I have been. I was in a rural school, but I have had all opportunities in life. Without this rural school, I would not have been here today. I would not have been able to learn English and work in a country like Cameroon.

The situation is very different for many children in rural schools in Cameroon. As Knowledge for Children, we work in 132 rural primary schools all over the North West region. It makes me sad to see that so many children in rural schools have a lot of capacities, but simply don’t have the means to learn. There are not enough teachers, and if there are teachers many of them are not well trained, they don’t have access to books and other materials are not available. The simple fact that these children are born in a rural village, will have so much influence on the opportunities they get in life.

Recently, we as Knowledge for Children conducted reading tests in 42 rural primary schools. We randomly picked pupils from class 2, 4 and 6 and had them read words and sentences suitable for their age and expected level. We found out that on average, a pupil in class 2 can read 0,7 words in a minute. So, a primary 2 pupil reads less than one word a minute. And these are simple words, like ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘cow’.  I would expect a pupil to be able to read this kind of words.

We also see that schools, in which pupils perform well in class 2, also have pupils who read better in primary 6. So, we conclude that it pays off to invest in early literacy education to increase the results towards the end of primary school, into secondary school and into life in general.

This makes sense if you look at what scientists say about early childhood development. A child who benefitted from Early Childhood Education, in our case on literacy but it does of course not limit to that only, is more prepared to go to school, has a better ability to learn and more self-confidence. This may increase the likelihood of primary school enrolment, swifter progression through the cycle, and transition to higher levels, resulting in cost-saving from decreased school wastage (repetition and drop-out). In short, if a child is better prepared to learn and brings in more knowledge and experience at the beginning, it is easier for him or learn. If a child enjoyed Early Childhood Education, it will be a step before those children who didn’t and they will always struggle to pass the child who started with an advantage.

It is for this reason that in a country like the Netherlands, immigrants but also farmers who speak a strong dialect are pushed or even forced to send their children to pre-school. This is where they learn to speak Dutch so they can start school with a Dutch language level similar to other children.

If you look at the long term, during adulthood, the ECCD beneficiary may be more likely to find remunerative employment and be more economically productive, as signified by a higher lifetime earnings stream. He may engage in more socially responsible behaviours such as preventative health/hygiene practices, family planning, better parenting, leadership, less domestic violence, and reduced criminality—that will require fewer public (and private) resources for support, correction, or control.

If an adult can read very well, he or she can be informed about diseases, about career opportunities, about agricultural innovations and all other things you and I read about on a daily base.

Just think about the economic advantages of a population who is healthier because they are informed about diseases. The economic advantages of a population who is able to read about business opportunities and investments. The economic advantages of a population who is able to read about new support initiatives of government and NGOs.

We as Knowledge for Children believe that literacy is the key to anything. Look at yourself, if you would be unable to read and write would you be here today? Would you be able to work? To survive?

But, the older a person gets, the more difficult it becomes to learn something new. Remember how easy it was for you to learn to speak your mother tongue and how difficult it is now to learn a new language. So if we want our children to be able to read, to write, to survive, we have to start teaching them at a young age.

The strategic plan of ECD Cameroon says that ‘young children develop less and less skills in reading, writing and counting in primary school because they have not enough played, touched, felt and tasted numbers, letters and words’.

Therefore, let us call upon everyone here, upon government, upon NGOs, upon teachers but also upon you as a mother or a father; let’s invest money, time and energy in the development of our young children. How often do you hear a parent saying to his young kid; oh! Reste tranquil! In that way, a child doesn’t have the opportunity to explore, ask questions and prepare themselves for their future. They don’t get the opportunity to taste words.

So as a parent you can do so much make your child taste words, to encourage your child and give him or her a great start into their learning life. You can read stories to your child, ask questions about what they see, check their homework and encourage a child to ask questions.

It is the future of YOUR child we talk about, the future of YOUR country. 

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Imagine...

Speech at the International Volunteer Day, 5th December 2013 in Abuja

Imagine:

You are a girl in a school in Kwara state. You are in JSS2. In your school there is no teacher for biology. Then one day, a guy shows up, he is a national volunteer in the Nigeria Graduate Volunteer Program from the Ministry of Education and VSO. He is teaching biology to 320 girls in your school.

After a few months, he invites you and 500 other students from your school to a workshop soap making. He and his fellow volunteers teach you how to make liquid soap and vaseline.

A few weeks later you go to the market to buy ingredients, you produce soap and sell it for 50 Naira per bottle.

Can you imagine that you, as a school girl, would be very happy about the national volunteer?

Imagine:

You are a teacher in a rural secondary school in Kwara state. Your school is quite new and you have only four colleagues and there are some NYSC corpers to teach. Then one day a girl comes to your school as a national volunteer to teach mathematics.

You don’t really understand her. She is working very hard for much less money than you. She takes her job very serious and tells you that the children in your school are more important than doing business. One day, you realise she is right when she says that assisting others is a gift and that by working together you can bring a real change.

Can you imagine that you, as a teacher, would be very happy about the national volunteer?

Imagine:

You are a school principal. You are having a lot of challenges in your school, finding qualified teachers for example. You didn’t manage to find a qualified teacher for chemistry and physics. As you believe something is always better than nothing, there is someone teaching these subjects but he only has a secondary school certificate. He does his best, but is not able to teach any practicals. At external exams, about 60% of the students from your school fail.

Then, a volunteer comes to your school. He is teaching physics and chemistry (and when he finds out there is no English teacher, English as well). Although the lab facilities are limited, he is teaching practicals. At the next external exams, 90-95% of your students pass.

Besides this, he receives training and shares his learning with the rest of the staff, improving their work as well. He organises workshops on career possibilities for students to motivate them. He offers academic support to students who need it. And he equips your library with new, current textbooks.

Can you imagine that you, as a principal, would be very happy about the national volunteer?

Imagine:

You are an international volunteer. You are working in the Nigeria Graduate Volunteer Program in Kwara State. In this program, young Nigerian graduates are posted to rural schools to teach English, mathematics and science. They receive training to better equip them for their job. Although we have a lot of challenges in our work, the stories I just told you all really happened to our national volunteers during the last few months.

Can you imagine that I, as an international volunteer, am very happy about the Nigeria Graduate Volunteer Program and that I am very proud of our volunteers?

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Nigeria Graduate Volunteer Program (NGVP)

VOICE, VSO Nigeria newsletter, August 2013

The Nigeria Graduate Volunteer Program (NGVP) was started in 2008 by VSO Nigeria and National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). One of the states where the program is implemented today is Kwara state.

VSO Nigeria provides capacity building support to national volunteers and implementing partners of the NGVP program on volunteer management, teacher training and project management.

In partnership with the Kwara State Ministry of Education and Human Capital Development, 15 volunteers were placed in secondary schools to teach science subjects. Another five volunteers are based with non-government organizations (NGOs). In the month of April 2013, 20 in-service NYSC volunteers were recruited to teach in rural schools.

In May 2013 NGVP Kwara volunteers met in Ilorin for two days of training. Facilitated by VSO international volunteers and the VSO desk officer of the Ministry of Education, national volunteers discussed many topics related to their work. Topics included assessing students, stakeholder mapping and communication.

The aim was to make the training as interactive as possible and enable sharing among participants. This was well received; “The interactive questions and answers were very interesting because people gave solutions to different challenges,” one volunteer noted intheir evaluation.

One of the sessions was about inclusive education. UNICEF defines inclusive education as “recognition of the need to work towards ‘schools for all’ - institutions which include every-body, celebrate differences, support learning, and respond to individual needs.” This means for example paying as much attention to girls as to boys in the classroom, or enabling slower learners to keep pace with the class instead of leaving them behind.

Most volunteers reported seeing how girls are not treated in the same way as boys. One of the volunteers stated: ‘”When I was a corper I was teaching science in Bauchi state. In my classroom there was only one girl. Her classmates and also many teachers tried to discourage her and told her science is for boys. I tried to involve her as much in the classes as possible. I picked her up to go to school and gave her a seat in the first row. I saw her self-confidence grow and by the time I left she was still taking science classes and feeling confident about it.”

Participants readily acknowledged that if you are teaching a class of 70 pupils, it is not easy to make sure everyone is carried along and understands your teaching. However, being aware of the problem is an important first step. As one volunteer promisingly noted, “I will actively engage all members of the class, giving keen attention to individual’s special need/challenges to ensure 100% participation.”

Although inclusive education may come in little steps, the volunteers of NGVP can and will in their own way contribute to its evolution in Nigeria. In the end, every little bit helps!

Esly van Dam is volunteer management and training advisor with the Kwara State Ministry of Education and Human Capital Development