OPEN PAGES Children's Space

Children in Ethiopia are subjects to the problem of "Spacelessness". They do not have any space that is specifically designed for their development and contribution to the global environment.Moreover, the education system in Ethiopia is too far from quality and accessibility. 

Open Pages is a network of children's spaces in Ethiopia, with branches committed to reduce spacelessness, raise literacy everywhere and provide platforms for children to be expressed, inquisitive and contributors to their world.

If elevated on a bigger scale, it can broaden the access to literacy, children-specific spaces and also serve as a supplement to the creation of quality education. Children everywhere will gain access to books, music, art, technologies and new cultures. These public spaces are what ignite interaction, fuse self-reflection, and in the process breed change and development.

Open Pages focuses on the issues of Spacelessness and Quality education. In Ethiopia, there is a huge lack of spaces and programs designed for the purpose of child development. Children do not have spaces to explore, read, research, or even interact with their peers. In addition, the educational system in Ethiopia only focuses on the matter of the academic and undermines the personal development of students. The potential and passions of students is barely noticed in the school environment.

Open Pages team establishes spaces for children where they can read, play music, paint, play, perform their talents weekly, and interact with their peers. These spaces enable them to explore themselves and express their personalities fully. Moreover, we are offering a quality education for these children. For what other definition does education possess than bringing the inner self to the light? 

Open Pages is a network of children's spaces in Ethiopia. It provides access for children to storybooks, music instruments, painting materials, performance platforms, and the like. We establish these spaces in schools, condominiums, public spaces, and universities. We give service for all children during the weekends. Run by high school students, the team always searches for new ways to expand the access children have to the world around them. Together with our partners, we host children's events, seminars, and discussion platforms for parents. 

Our spaces also work with children on different issues like the SDGs. Together with children, we develop storybooks, make short videos, and host seminars. This way, we are not only providing physical spaces but also the opportunity to elevate their contribution to the world we all live in.

Children in Ethiopia do not have spaces designed for them. The education curriculum is only built to fill them with academic knowledge and not personalized passions and purpose. These children are the people we are addressing in our project. 

With its quality still in question, the accessibility of education in Ethiopia is very limited to only some parts of the country. Hence, the illiteracy rate is very high.

Through the establishment of our children's spaces in different cities in Ethiopia, we are observing that it is creating an increase in the literacy rate of children. Even places with no schools now have access to storybooks in their local languages. In addition, we are also helping them explore new paths like art, music, performance, sports, literature, and so on. 

Our spaces everywhere are closely tied with strong networking mechanisms. Hence, every team has the opportunity to share experiences and resources with other teams in distant areas. This creates an equitable sharing of materials and creates a path for continuous development of each branch.

Together with children, we develop storybooks on SDGs and other issues, plan and host events, and prepare short documentary videos. In addition, we also have a system that helps well-performing children to join the space-management teams and work with us on local projects. 

Educere, the latin root for education, means to draw out. Hence, quality education would mean effectively drawing out what lies within.

Our spaces, in addition to raising literacy through appealing and familiar materials, offer hands-on experiences on music, painting, performances, literature, traveling, researching, photography, coding, and so on.

Peers are divided into groups and are given team projects to work on, like SDG storybooks' development. For our performance nights, formed children's teams are responsible for managing and performing. 

With or without access to formal education, children using our spaces gain the platform to draw out what is within them. 

The establishment rate of our children's spaces is constantly on the rise. Due to the lack of these spaces in schools and communities, we are rapidly expanding. Open Pages has transformed from only establishing children's spaces to including a networking platform for these kinds of spaces in Ethiopia. Hence, even if the management of each branch is independent on its own, Open Pages controls the over-all progress and management of these spaces.

Our project started in Jemo2, Addis Ababa, in a high school called Lebawi. Later on, we opened our second branch in Gondar university in Gondar, Ethiopia. Moving on, we went to Zelalem Desta in Gojjam region. Now, in our network, we have over 13 spaces and the number is continuously increasing each time.

The educational system has been full of challenges for years. The quality and inclusive accessibility of it has been inefficient. Yet, there is no visible change happening in the system. Open Pages, being an educational experiment strives to test and implement the ideal educational system. It is the first pioneer in Ethiopia, as an educational experiment, to try to reform the educational system in this manner. Its way of experimentation is through establishing public children’s spaces and working with them to bring the ideal curriculum into existence.

Our spaces and materials are continuously being worked upon so that they all are inclusive for all children. We are developing braille storybooks, creating accessible spaces for wheelchairs, and content being developed in numerous local languages.

Through increasing children’s literacy and reading habits, we create an inquisitive and curious generation. With these children, we host events, run public children’s spaces, and prepare seminars. These are the main platforms for the educational reforms and their impacts to be communicated to the community.

Currently, Open Pages has 13 children’s spaces in its network. Within these spaces, an average of 30 children uses the service daily. The total average of kids served daily is about 390 throughout all spaces. Every branch space is  managed by a team with a minimum of 6 youth members. On total average, about 78 teenagers volunteer in administering our network.

Open Pages, in its newly implemented plan, has decided to also inculcate already built children’s libraries and spaces into its network. This is done so that all network spaces can freely share resources, experiences, and make a bigger impact together.

In a year, the total number of spaces in our network will be 200+. About 6,000 children will be served daily and 1,200 teenagers become members of the network administering and managing group. Our digital library is currently under development by our IT team. It will be in service after a few months with an average of 5 new storybooks being released each month. This will help us broaden our impact area and make our content more accessible to children and families.

In 5 years, our network would have 1,000+ spaces and 1 Mega-space in Hawassa city. In our spaces, 30,000 children will be served per day and 6,000 teenagers volunteering in our project.

Our Mega-space in Hawassa will be one of the biggest holistic children’s spaces in Ethiopia. Its design is made by our team and it will have a capacity of serving 500+ children daily.

In the quantitative expansion of the spaces, the main measurement tool is bench-marking. In the first year of including 200+ spaces in our network, the months are all given minimum quotas. The network is expected to add 25 spaces every 4 months. When this number is divided into cities, the Open Pages Addis Ababa team should include 6 spaces into the network, quarterly, with the other cities taking responsibilities for four spaces. Plans, aiming to accomplish these aims, are presented to the Open Pages central committee and get reviewed. This is how the quantitative measurement is guaranteed.

The committee of every city meets every 6 months, to reflect on the semi-annual progress of its members. These reflections are later presented to the central committee on its annual conference. In these meetings, well-performing committees are incentivized, the next annual plan discussed upon, and committee members elected.

The IT team is also responsible for data gathering and analysis. The Member spaces' progress is continuously recorded through bi-monthly forms to be filled. The IT team uses all these gathered information to analyze the annual progress and shortcomings, and present the final conclusions to the central committee. Based on these suggestions, the central committee prepares the annual plans for the coming year.

We have no paid workers. All staff members are students and volunteer for free. In our 13 spaces, we have 78 teen-aged volunteers. Through our networking platforms, we have began including schools and public libraries into our community. Currently, there are 5 librarians in our network, employed by 5 schools.

The entire Open Pages team knows and feels what Spacelessness means. The problem, which children still face, is a form of social exclusion and inequality. It is the act of denying children a platform through which they interact, reflect, and become more fully human.

Our team is comprised of teenagers, who are seen in the eyes of the society, as important for change making. Yet, breaking this narrative, our team is building spaces, establishing networking platforms and working on educational and social reform. This work is initiating a series of inspired acts among children and teenagers. Our team is a living example of anyone's potential to make a change.

The fact that all our members are not yet university graduates also helps each member work with out compartmentalizing and bounds. Our volunteers are flexible, fast learners and collaborative. Hence, it has become easier for us to move swiftly and efficiently.

As the educational experiment is to be made WITH and not FOR students, we have an active communication with the children, exchanging ideas on how to improve our model. Children are also included in running and coordinate events, programs and preparing literary materials. The little age difference between the children and us has made it easier for us all to communicate fully.

At Open Pages, our differences are what catalyzed our growth and uniqueness. The differences between members have made us synergize and work collaboratively. Every time a new difference emerges, it is a gate way for endless potentials and capabilities.

Our recruitment policy is very simple and ensures the building of a diverse and inclusive team. Anyone who is willing to work with us is welcomed to the team, irrelevant of age, sex, academic levels, and the like. There are no filters for recruitment, except for the person's willingness  to work in our environment and respect our community's values. Members work according to their own abilities, and anyone with contributing hands is invited to join us.

All our members are volunteers recruited with no tight policy. There is little possibility for violating the equitability of the working environment. Yet, given that teams in different parts of Ethiopia have no equal access to resources, the performance of each space's team is different.

To ensure an equitable working platform for all teams, anywhere, we have come up with the distributive approach. Any financial, material, and other resources obtained by the central committee are distributed to each teams according to the needs of the spaces. This way, our team works to give an equitable working environment for all our spaces.

Applying to solve, we have challenged ourselves to think twice about our plans and assumptions. The questions gave us insights on what we did best, what we lacked and what we should improve. Hearing about solve, we joined to be inspired and encouraged in the application process.

Our team hopes to overcome its financial and resource shortage through prizes and grants from the solve competition. We also hope to raise our management skills and financial literacy from the mentorship and coaching we get from experts.

The active network of change-makers we join will elevate our teams' spirits to exceed expectations and work more devotedly. The support of the solve community will help us have strong legal foundations in our country and abroad, enabling us to work with less barriers.

We also know that all the prizes we see on the solver-page are very valuable to us. But nothing compares to the feeling of pride and inspiration we get when we are welcomed to the change makers' group of the Solve alumni.

Open Pages team faces more challenges in the technical aspects of the work. The artistic and creative ways of public relations, service distribution and networking, though a lesson-on-progress, is going well in our work. As we are expanding our base, we are facing challenges in having effective board recruitment methods. Our teams' financial literacy is very low and we are new to the concept of developing a social enterprise's business model in a technical manner.

As our team is filled with teenagers, we lack experiences in legal or regulatory matters. With mentorships and advice on how to work in these environments, our team can be more efficient.

We also need partners who will help us on hardware and data analysis issues. With our current lack of digital devices, such as computers, cameras and office devices, we are being held back from exercising our full capabilities. We hope the solve community will help us overcome these barriers and elevate our impact.

Open Pages believes that any partnership, if thoroughly assessed, can bear a fruit. Some partnerships might be easy to spot because of the organizations' path alignment. Some partnership possibilities need deep analysis to be noticed and realized. What can the solve community contribute to our work?

Alike to our recruitment policy, our partnership policy is of no exclusions. Any organization and institution that agrees with our vision and is willing to help on our work can be a partner.

As we have listed the barriers we face on our work, we also understand that we have many problems in our progress that we did not notice yet. Hence, to name partnerships one aspires to have is to address a single portion of the issue on focus.

As the partnership platform is all-inclusive and open, the unnoticed problems and challenges the team faces come to the light. In addition to making clear the team's strong and weak sides, inclusive partnerships open new paradigms  for the work. Hence, Open Pages is willing to partner with all willing parties and to assess the best possible options for co-working.

The inclusion and active participation of all communities ensure the development and welfare of a nation, and the world at large. In countries and systems which address only some portion of the community always perform below their capabilities and resources.

Countries like Ethiopia, which exclude and undermine the contribution of children for national development, only give attention to the adult group. Children in these countries suffer from a form of social injustice called Spacelessness.

In these under developed countries, the accessibility of education and the literacy rate of children is very low. It is an insanity to believe that refugees in these countries get the chance to read books, let alone access education.

Open Pages, working to solve children's Spacelessness everywhere, plans to open public children's spaces, including storybooks libraries, painting and music sections,  and handiwork and vocational training, in refugee camps. In addition to providing a platform for raising children's literacy rate, it gives them the opportunity to learn about the new culture, history and language of different countries.

At Open Pages, all works are done WITH and not FOR children. Together with the refugee children, we can change the horrible situation in refugee camps through building inclusive children's spaces which advocate for critical-minded and active community members.

Inclusion is at the heart of Open Pages' educational experiment work. The beneficiaries of its impact are children, the excluded section of the Ethiopian community continuously suffering from the challenge of Spacelessness. Children do not have events, places and systems specifically designed for them. Moreover, children's voices and contributions are undermined in the national and international political, economic and social environment.

Open Pages builds for-free and inclusive public children's spaces in Ethiopia and, if scaled, globally. Our spaces serve as libraries, mini museums, seminar and workshop platforms, stages for Arts and engaging events and many more. We work with children to experiment our common ideal forms of education. Through our workshops, children discuss on issues like the SDGs, national development and community impact projects.

Children engage with their peers and share experiences from elderly guests. Our seminars are executions of the problem-posing education system, which we believe is the future of our national curriculum. Open Pages also facilitates an active networking platform for all children's spaces in the country. In this platform, numerous teenagers are given the opportunity to run and manage these social projects. Parents also gain trainings and experience sharing on our parenting conference. We interact with our community, reflect upon our systems and become more fully human. Work is an experiment under continuous refinement. We open pages.