This Years' Winners:
1st Prize: Voluntourism for Education
 Soft Power Education, Uganda
www.softpowereducation.com
In 1999, Soft Power Education was established in order to “improve the quality of life through education”, and in fewer than ten years and in approximately 500,000 community member lives, they have accomplished just that.
SPE set out primarily to enable schools in South Uganda to cope with the introduction of Universal Primary Education as well as achieve the 2nd Millennium Development Goal of free primary education for all children. The net enrollment of primary schools increased from 2.3 million in 1997 to 7.5 million in 1999.
To meet these demands sustainably Soft Power Education ingeniously elicits the help of over 1000 helpful tourists yearly, and together they have met infrastructure needs in 34 schools, building or renovating 370 classrooms.
With no volunteer leaving uninspired, Soft Power Education’s mission of improving lives through education does not stop at the 33,000 children attending newly refurbished schools. Tourist involvement has allowed Soft Power Education to experience a 50% growth yearly in the past 2 years, and these increases directly get funnelled back into other projects, such as the Amagezi Education Centre.
This Centre partners with 22 P6 level schools and offers life changing skills to community members through programmes focused on Agriculture/ Health, Science, Computers, Drama and Art. Focusing efforts on health and hygiene they have built 71 environmentally friendly fuel-efficient stoves, 28 in home hand-washing facilities, and teach Family Planning and HIV education through drama through locally trained community members.
If this isn’t enough of a resource, they are building a library in the next 3 months!
2nd Prize: Pre-School Education for Millions
Whiz Kids Workshop, Ethiopia
www.whizkidsworkshop.com
 Whiz Kids Workshop is a private production company located in and focusing on the children of Ethiopa. The number of televisions in Ethiopia has grown 400% in the last ten years, meaning around 5 million children can now be reached through television.Seeing this change, the entrepreneurial co-founders of Whiz Kids began in 2005 to provide an educational television show for children ages three through six based on extensive research in the field of Early Childhood Development.
The product of this endeavor is “Tsehai Loves Learning” a show that has grown rapidly in popularity and has been viewed by millions of Ethiopian children, parents, teachers, and care-givers in the last three years.
Whiz Kids Workshop, through their popular television show, seeks to educate children about personal values such as honesty, justice, and commitment as well as prepare them academically to better succeed upon entering school. Much of the program’s focus is dedicated to scholastic ideas such as expanding children’s vocabulary and understanding of numbers and letters, preparing them with a better attitude towards school, and enabling better relationships with peers.
On top of educating children through their program, Whiz Kids Workshop recently completed an eight week intensive program with five young people from a cross section of Ethiopian cultures in which they each completed an episode of “Tsehai” - enabling them to have hands on experience and allowing Whiz Kids to provide this training without breaking with their regular programming.
3rd Prize: Schools Earning Money from Honey
Africa Now, Kenya
www.africanow.org
 Africa Now is an NGO located in Western Kenya with an innovative program to provide students with important agricultural and entrepreneurial skills through the practice of beekeeping.
Having established a beekeeping program in two schools, Africa Now is expecting to expand their program to a further six schools in the region. In this program, students learn communication skills by working together with a teacher and by mentoring younger students. Moreover, the skills learnt from Africa Now’s project go home with the students where are able to teach their families, thus enabling the program to reach into the community.
Students learn entrepreneurial skills by forming their own business models in a class setting, promoting their product in local exhibitions, and linking with local commercial honey producers who offer a fair, fixed rate for the honey produced. Additionally, the project encourages environmental awareness in the students by demonstrating the importance of biodiversity and regional sustainability. This is done through maintaining the bee gardens and discussing with students the environmental impacts of agriculture.
On top of diversifying the education of children, Africa Now’s beekeeping program provides the cooperating schools with additional income. Not only does the program cover any additional maintenance fees that may occur, the surplus income has allowed over thirty needy children to attend school and has allowed schools to purchase other necessary educational equipment including mathematical sets, textbooks, and uniforms.
Back to Pan-African Awards for Entrepreneurship in Education main page |
