Edu-hub

Equality Through Education Foundation (ETEF), proposes to provide women with tablets and home computers through which use of zoom and Google cloud apps would be utilized to organize classes to train and empower women across Nigerian states to start early childhood education centers. ETEF believes that women and girls should be empowered to play key roles in community development and that appropriate early childhood education, forms the basis for a productive and gender fair society. We are proposing a solution which integrates early childhood education and use of modern digital systems to train trainers who will in-turn train and monitor other women to set up early childhood education centers in the different states in Nigeria, with experienced women as coordinators. we target  improving the percentage of women education and empowerment by training and providing jobs for 7,200 women and directly impact 72,000 women and children in the first year.

Women with higher educational qualifications are more likely to be in formal wage employment than those with only primary schooling (NPC, 2019). Yet girls and women suffer educational exclusion across Nigeria. Nigeria’s out-of-school population is the largest in the world and it is growing. Of the staggering 10.5 million to 13.2 million out-of-school children in Nigeria today, the majority are girls. Girls from the poorest families in rural areas of the North West and North East regions are among the most at risk of never attending school. Education helps men and women claim their rights and realize their potential in economic, political and social arenas. It is also the single most powerful way to lift people out of poverty. Yet, many people — especially women — are still excluded from education in Nigeria. Education should be an intrinsic part of any strategy to address the gender-based discrimination against women and girls that remains prevalent in our society. Girls’ education is good economics. It is the best investment in a country’s national development. Educating girls enhances growth rates and reduces social disparities. The education of girls in Nigeria has always been a thorny and unresolved issue.

Our vision is to revive the hopes of women. Through our early childhood education, new gender responsive pedagogy and special IT and programing techniques will be adopted which will then help to birth a new generation of girl children who are most likely to remain in school as they grow up.

Our approach include;

• Community radio programs discussing the need to improve and support girl child education. Through this program, hotlines will be provided for calling to participate in the effort to promote girls education. Teenage mothers and women from low income homes will be invited to support and participate in our ECE program.
• ECE program; targeted at empowering women by training and helping them startup day care centers and also to promote school enrollment and retention for girl children – most of whom will also benefit through scholarships.
• STEM learning and coding practice; Girls around the ages of 12 and upward will be engaged in intra-school coding and programming classes to prepare them for career in sciences. There will also be extracurricular coding lessons organized in partnership with Lekki peninsula group of schools to encourage teenage mothers and other women reviving their careers in STEM to participate.

Our major focus is to benefit Nigerians – girls, women and children who have and/or are suffering from gender based violence. crisis such as  which expose and makes them vulnerable to various vices such as trafficking of women and school dropout-hooliganism among youths. The target group of this project is primarily women and girls and it will help women learn and adopt models for economic empowerment through the service they learn and in-turn, offer.

We are creating;

• Support for children, especially girls who have no access to basic education.
• Partner with community based organizations to provide adult education in STEM
• The project which is designed by a women-led organization, includes women as implementing team.
• Support for children, especially girls who have no access to basic education.
• Partner with community based organizations to provide adult education in STEM
• The project which is designed by a women-led organization, includes women as implementing team.

To achieve this, a collaborative effort to ensure availability of quality schools and necessary educational infrastructures is imperative to mobilize resources to ensure that all children are put in school including girls and women and other vulnerable ones at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Education helps men and women claim their rights and realize their potential in economic, political and social arenas. It is also the single most powerful way to lift people out of poverty. Yet, many people — especially women — are still excluded from education in Nigeria. Education should be an intrinsic part of any strategy to address the gender-based discrimination against women and girls that remains prevalent in our society, which is what our solution proposes to solve. 

Our solution and approach is unique in that it strengthens the voice of the marginalized. In time past, community radio programs has been used to help amplify the voices of women and girls who feel unfairly relegated by the society they find themselves. Equality Through Education Foundation (ETEF) through the ECE project, not only seek to amplify girls and women voices but also to create solutions that substantially respond to their plights.

We will teach young women and girls behavioral technology, audio-visual media using tablets and computer facilities to administer knowledge and skills including coding skills, programming – python and Microsoft power BI. It is noteworthy that we are making learning with such technology and software possible for considerably disadvantaged populations who otherwise would not gain access to such materials. In time past, ETEF has offered scholarships to hundreds of children from the slums and regions faced with different crisis in Lagos such as the Makoko areas. This population spilled into the Lekki Peninsula areas like Jakande and Ikota Estates and villages in around Ajah, which at the time had very few government schools and no private schools. This population included hundreds of youths, including girls whose academic careers became interrupted. This was the primary reason why ETEF intervened starting with Lekki Tutorial College which ran free in the evening for the first four years providing classes with the help of volunteers from the Canadian and American Women’s clubs for students whose families were displaced by the military government’s actions.   

The technology that our solution utilizes are the following;

• Podcasts and radio programs; this is intended to educate and promote knowledge and awareness around the relevance of girls and women education and encouraging girls to undertake careers in Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
• Use of low cost tablets and computers to educate and promote learning
• Use of digital coding software to prepare young girls and aspiring women in STEM to gain requisite knowledge
• Microsoft Power BI: Power BI is focused on enabling organizations make well-informed business/operational decisions by quickly turning large amounts of disparate data created during the normal course of business operations into useful information.
• Python: python is an interpreted high-level programming language and it allows you to run the code on multiple platforms. As a high-level programming language, allows you to focus on core functionality of the application by taking care of common programming tasks. Development of training curriculum for women, delivering of digital training content with series of experts and adoption of basic gender responsive pedagogy for women starting day care centers that consequently aim to increase girl child education, retention and completion

Microsoft Power BI: Power BI is focused on enabling organizations make well-informed business/operational decisions by quickly turning large amounts of disparate data created during the normal course of business operations into useful information.

*Python: python is an interpreted high-level programming language and it allows you to run the code on multiple platforms. As a high-level programming language, allows you to focus on core functionality of the application by taking care of common programming tasks.

ETEF believes that women and girls should be empowered to play key roles in community development and that appropriate early childhood education, forms the basis for a truly productive and gender fair society.

ETEF is motivated by a strong belief that the keys to alleviating poverty are universal education – especially for women and girls, gender equality, and community building. ETE first, gives girls a strong foundation through early childhood education (ECE). We started by providing leadership training, mentoring, educational and skill acquisition programs including lessons in literacy and numeracy, as well as lessons to prepare students for the West African School Certificate Exam (WASCE), the Joint Admission and Matriculation Exam (JAMBE) in the evening. As parents saw the benefits provided, services were increased to full formal schooling with minimal fees and flexible payment terms (students were allowed to pay monthly or weekly). We achieve these in partnership with Lekki Peninsula College (LPC) which was the pioneer private secondary school of its kind in the area.

These initial progress proves our drive to improving girls and women education using modern advanced technologies will yield even greater impacts.

Since 2015, thousands of children – including girls have benefitted from our services. In the past months, we have impacted over 2,500 school children. One year from now, we aim to support 2000 children and parents with our tech solution for early childhood education and support for women. By 2025, we aim to support 1.4million of these women and children in across the 36 different states in Nigeria.

Our goal are to:

• Reach the rest Nigerian states with our educational solutions for girls, women and children especially in the north-eastern region of the country which records large number of school drop-outs, internally displaced people and early marriage for girls.
• Run our Edu – hub concept which integrates early child education, women empowerment in STEM and coding/programming classes, across the entire country.
• To have benefitted 2 million children – especially girls, and women with our concept. We anticipate being able to partner with state governments to replicate our model more widely. 

• Difficulty breaking cultural and religious barriers affecting girls education, especially in northern Nigeria
• Team will need to develop their capacity in STEM knowledge to fit into our model of equipping girls through use of technology.
• As we scale our idea and expand widely, the challenge of accurately evaluating impact will become increasingly difficult
• Poor financial support to scale our project

• Through  media campaigns and radio/podcasts we hope to create more awareness of the goal of our project and then engage specially with individual community to discuss the impact of our project
• We intend to hire professionals and also partner with organizations such as The Workplace Centre Limited (TWPC), Microsoft, Canadian and American Women’s clubs, to train our staff and team members who will then transfer knowledge and skills learnt to beneficiaries.
• We will develop concrete evaluation techniques and also hire external evaluators to access and ensure that our project is monitored and measured for success.
• We hope to seek support for our idea through partnerships and grants available to support our kind of project, and hopefully, our idea will be selected for this challenge and funded.

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Equality Through Education Foundation (ETEF), is a Civil Society Organization (CSO) with dedicated team which promotes basic education for children from low income families and adult education and empowerment programs for women. Our main goals are: universal education, gender equality and community development.

In the course of our work and extensive interaction with community partners, we are involved in advocating against Gender Based Violence, promoting women’s economic empowerment and women’s participation in governance especially at the local government level as an important springboard to scale up their participation in politics in a sustainable way. We collaborate closely with other organizations focused on the protection of the rights of women and children especially those from very low income households.  In the past, ETEF has supported two schools; Lekki Peninsula College (LPC) and Lekki Peninsula Nursery and Primary School (LPNPS). Collectively, the schools are known as Lekki Affordable Schools. ETEF has assisted these schools to keep their costs down while providing quality, affordable education for children from economically disadvantaged homes.  ETEF also helps to raise scholarships to keep children from low income families in school. ETEF is expanding its activities in education beyond the primary and secondary level to the provision of quality care and learning for children aged 6months to 5years – a much neglected foundation period in the life of a child and a crucial service for working parents especially mothers. 

We are currently working with the following;

• Lekki Peninsula College (LPC) and Lekki Peninsula Nursery and Primary (LPNP) Schools in the effort to provide quality, affordable education for children especially girls, from economically disadvantaged homes through the ECE program which is designed to educate pre-scholars and to empower women by providing them with skills needed to start in their home and immediate communities, run and scale up day care centers.
• EMPARC – Empowerment and Action Research Centre is a women-led, feminist research and advocacy center dedicated to advancing health and social justice in Nigeria. They contribute more in areas of Women’s Leadership in Communities, women’s Entrepreneurship and Access to Resources, early and Basic Education for Girls.
• Canadian and American Women’s clubs to support in the effort to raise students whose families are displaced by government’s actions.        

ETEF is a non-profit organization, hence we believe it’s important to ensure the most marginalized families can access basic education. We charge a nominal fee for our work at a sliding scale – based on payee's income level and partnership with Lekki Peninsula schools to offer scholarships. This helps hold ourselves to a high standard of quality and build a sustainable organization. We will also charge beneficiaries for any premium content and services (e.g. early coding classes are free, but we charge minimally after that). Our organization will train and empower women by providing them with skills needed to start and run day care centers in their home and immediate communities. Our theory is that by providing young women with skills and the ability to turn the skills into gainful employment they are less likely to risk their lives being trafficked or undertaking unsafe migration. Likewise, families, especially women who can afford to feed, educate and provide necessities for their children are less likely to give them up for monetary gains

ETEF is mainly sustained through donors and individual donations to support the work we do to advance education for the marginalized populations. We however are leveraging on the income generating Lekki Peninsula Schools which was built as an extension of the work of ETEF to support disadvantaged populations to attain school. However, because this specific fund carters majorly for administrative expenses, we pursue relevant grants opportunities which are available to support the work that we do.

We believe that through partnerships, solve can help us bridge the gap in gender balance in Nigeria and support our goal of preparing young girls and women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics career and increase girl child retention in school, amongst other solutions, using basic technological tools available for use to reach and teach them as well as improve our institutional capacity to carry out these supports.

Although every child has the right to education in Nigeria, the ratio of male and female students shows a significant bias favouring boys, with the rate of disparity being lower in primary schools than in secondary schools, showing a retention problem. Unsuccessful students who do not progress beyond Junior Secondary School are to be provided with skills training to give them a chance to earn a living through TECH skills training. Yet there persists inequalities in access across all levels of education for girls, for a number of reason. Female illiteracy is a serious problem throughout the developing world. The Gender in Nigeria Report of 2012 ranked the country 118th out of 134 countries on the Gender Equality Index. In some states of Nigeria, for example Sokoto, the female literacy enrollment and achievement rates are especially low. Girls’ net enrollment in Sokoto is 15 percent, while that of boys is 59 percent (UNICEF, 2002). This low literacy rate affects the achievement rate of women, and it has no doubt led to the low economic status of women in Nigeria. 

We would love to partner with;

• Microsoft Company; to help support our drive to equip young girls with computer literacy.
• Google; together with Microsoft, partnership with google, Nigeria will foster increased support for science and other coding classes.
• The Workplace Centre Limited (TWPC), which uses technology to help organisations create High-Performing processes through gaps identification, digital strategy development, and implementation of the right kind of technology
• Other organizations include; Forum for African Women Educationalists, FAWE-Nigeria, and government ministry of education.

ETEF as a nonprofit aims to close the tech gender gap by providing free computer science education, host regular AI workshops for girls. AI programs designed specifically for girls and women aim to make a change. Our tech focus will be majored on;

• Data analysis: a process of inspecting, cleansing, transforming and modelling data with the goal of discovering useful information, informing conclusions and supporting decision-making.
• Microsoft Power BI:  focused on enabling our organization make well-informed business/operational decisions by quickly turning large amounts of disparate data created during the normal course of business operations into useful information.
• Python: an interpreted high-level programming language that allows organizations run code on multiple platforms. As a high-level programming language, allows one to focus on core functionality of the application by taking care of common programming tasks.

Our approach will use a series of mentor-run workshops for families across Nigeria, centered around empowering mothers and young girls where they identify a community-centric issue they will like to help solve, then learn to use AI -- specifically, a platform called “Machine Learning for Kids” that runs on IBM’s Watson -- as a tool to help get there. It helps walk users through training a model to recognize patterns, such as specific types of images or even emotions. 

AI innovations prize will allow our team to increase its drive to help more women and girls develop their careers in STEM. Sadly, it has appeared that specific careers have gained gender monopoly in the past years, where it appeared that only men are pursuing tech – related careers and creating solutions around it. The AI prize will help us position girls in low-income homes in Nigeria to learn how to apply machine learning to advance business and solutions around more risky or dangerous occupations such as mining and oil drilling