Community-Based, Roots-to-Sky Solution to Education for All
This solution addresses educational needs of the community using resources found mostly within the community.
As many communities across the planet fail to meet the educational needs of their people, they reach out to centralized governments for resources including materials, facilities, educators, and funding for operational costs and expansion. Many governments have priorities which take greater shares of the budget than education, in spite of political promises to the contrary. Community members become disenchanted by what they perceive as lack of support from their government and students of all ages needlessly lose opportunities for quality educational experiences. Community-Based,
The "Community-Based, Roots to Sky Solution to Education for All" addresses these problems by helping communities identify existing resources for quality education within the communities instead of depending on outside resources which are less reliable and not as able to address local problems. This solution, based on the Harambee School model from Kenya, changes the emphasis from government-provided services based on political standing to community generated services based on the needs of all stake holders. The emphasis is on identifying low-cost, quality education relying on local, retired teachers, existing facilities, materials, and funding rather than on centralized governmental aid which may never come or may be inadequate to the needs of the community members.
The solution described above will change the world by shifting people's reliance from one based on government aid to one based on reliance on themselves and their communities. This will change the level of services provided because it will change the structure of accountability. When the stake holders can personally identify community members responsible for execution of necessary services, the likelihood of success increases dramatically over the services provided by faceless bureaucrats working outside the communities. Every community has many, high-quality resources that have not been identified because the mindset of many populations has been conditioned to think of centralized governments as providers of all needs. The solution will change the world by focusing on self-reliance instead of dependence.
- Supportive ecosystems for educators
The technology is innovative because it recombines existing technology to solve the problem of scarce resources in education. There are innumerable websites on the internet with more educational value than could be accessed or processed in a lifetime. The technology here is to be able to package it in a user-friendly manner and structure learning processes around it along with community educators.
In these times, nobody can be totally expert in any topic, but most people have the mental capacity to learn to educate themselves in whatever area they find useful or interesting. The technology of the internet and its crawlers allows educated users to access the knowledge there. Therefore, technology is key and essential to the solution offered.
The goals of the solution are to explore the technology bases extant within randomly selected communities to ascertain the feasibility of community-based education initiatives and to document resources within the community and present a roadmap of the way ahead. By the end of one year, a plan would be in place for a prototype map at a detailed level.
Based on the success of the first experimental projects, the solution would be implemented rapidly in any community in which there were willing recipients and volunteers. One virtue of the solution is its easy scalability. The vision for this solution is widespread implementation to as many as 60 communities at the end of the third year and 100 by the end of the fifth.
- Child
- Non-binary
- Urban
- Lower
- US and Canada
Volunteers will be required to help contact interested community leaders through written and face to face contacts.
As the solution is in its idea stage, the population is not well defined and is not yet being served.
In the next twelve months, the solution could be serving up to two hundred individuals. The urban population will benefit through the efforts of the volunteers and the project will spread to 800 in the first three years.
- Not Registered as Any Organization
- 1
- Less than 1 year
The team brings together commitment, time, and enthusiasm to move the solution forward.
There is no firm revenue model at this time. In the future, the solution would be funded within each community on a donation basis from users and donors.
I am trying to get feedback from a reliable source and I also would like any assistance that can be provided.
I need time to implement my solution and funding to release me from my regular profession while I pursue this solution as a way to help more people.
- Organizational Mentorship
- Technology Mentorship
- Connections to the MIT campus
- Impact Measurement Validation and Support
High School Math and Science Teacher