Tagged: Senegal

  • April 10, 2019

    Three ways to develop education curricula for youth in emergency settings

    Written by
    Paul Frisoli, Associate Director, Education in Emergencies, FHI 360
    Kristin Brady, Director, Youth, FHI 360

    Education is important for all young people, but it can be lifesaving to youth in emergency settings. Adolescence is a period of significant cognitive, emotional and social change for every young person. For youth in emergency contexts, education can help to protect them from recruitment into armed services, sexual exploitation, abuse and early marriage. It can also build inner resilience by offering stability, normalcy and hope.

    Given the increase in emergencies worldwide and the number of youth who are out of school, it is critical to ensure that educational curricula are holistic, relevant and meet learners’ social-emotional and developmental needs. We believe there are three elements that must be considered to successfully develop curricula for youth in emergency settings.

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  • July 21, 2015

    The power of ICT to catalyze learning

    Written by
    Rebecca Potts, Program Officer, Global Learning Business Unit, FHI 360

    One effective way of improving the quality of education in low- and middle-income countries is to invest in information and communications technology (ICT).

    Providing schools with internet access and computer hardware opens doors to an abundance of information that teachers and students can use to make lessons more relevant and effective. Teachers can use online portals to connect with each other and to share lesson plans and best practices, while students can use ICT to access online libraries and to master new technologies.

    Many of FHI 360’s education projects use ICT as a tool to enhance the quality of teaching and learning, encourage community participation in education and increase school access. Bringing ICT to middle school classrooms in Senegal was a critical part of FHI 360’s Education de Base project. This project, which was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and reached more than 93,000 students and 4,500 teachers in Senegal, won the Innovating Secondary Education Skills Enhancement Prize from the group Results for Development. The prize was awarded, in large part, because of its effective use of ICT.

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  • March 12, 2015

    Taking a student-based approach to youth development

    Written by
    Elizabeth Buckner, Research Associate, Education Policy and Data Center

    How do we best meet the needs of adolescents, recognizing that the world they are entering is rapidly changing?

    Youth programming should focus on the successful transition from adolescence to adulthood, rather than on the reduction of behavioral problems, a past trend. Such programming ensures adolescents’ mental and physical health, as well as provides opportunities to develop positive social values, human and social capital, a sense of well-being and an ability to make sound choices.

    Unfortunately, donor-funded discourse on secondary education reform is still dominated by a dialogue on expanding access and improving quality in education. Youth development and large-scale secondary school reform usually operate on parallel tracks, with youth development approached through afterschool, extracurricular or nonformal programming.

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  • February 26, 2013

    Addressing grievances and giving everyone a voice are key to peacebuilding

    An Interview with
    Elizabeth Hume, Technical Director for Peacebuilding and Conflict Mitigation, FHI 360
    Anne O'Toole Salinas, Program Director for Peacebuilding and Conflict Mitigation, FHI 360

    How does conflict affect a country’s long-term development?

    Violent conflict sets a country’s development back decades, especially when it is protracted as it was in Sri Lanka and as it is currently in the Casamance region of Senegal. Even countries that create peace agreements but do not address the grievances or the sources of conflict are more likely to experience conflict again within 10 years. It is critical to work on mitigating and managing conflict in countries. Otherwise, we are simply pouring hundreds of millions of development dollars into a country and seeing those gains wiped out by violent conflict. That is why working on conflict is so critical.

    How do we deal with conflict?

    The first step is understanding the grievances that led to the conflict. Grievances can arise in a number of areas and can be found across many sectors. Because we are a global organization that works across sectors — such as health, education, economic development and the environment — we are able to address specific grievances in these different sectors.

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  • June 13, 2012

    Increasing transparency and participation in the 2012 Senegalese Presidential Election

    Written by
    Jean-Michel Dufils, Chief of Party, Senegal Country Office, FHI 360

    International media coverage paints a bleak picture of how fair, open and representative many recent presidential elections have been. Thanks to Programme Gouvernance et Paix (PGP), an FHI 360-led program funded by USAID, the 2012 presidential election in Senegal saw increased transparency and also increased participation from women and youth.

    Senegal is an island of stability in a tumultuous region. Peace and democracy in Senegal have helped it become a hub for regional and international organizations that work in West Africa. And though the country has a long democratic history, there had been a regression in democratic indicators over the last ten years. FHI 360 teamed with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) to support the electoral process in Senegal.

    Before the election occurred, PGP launched a civic awareness campaign that increased voter registration by 120% in Grand Yoff, a working-class suburb of 200,000 in Dakar. This initiative worked with women’s groups and youth organizations to boost voter registration in two underrepresented demographics. The project’s daily dialogue radio campaign was so successful that AFIA FM, one of the 17 implementing stations, incorporated it as a permanent fixture.

    Beyond simply helping the public monitor the election, PGP took proactive steps to increase transparency in the pre-election period. PGP experts worked with leaders of both opposition and ruling parties to amend the election code. Negotiations reached consensus on more than 85% of issues. As a result of these negotiations, a single ballot was approved and a gender parity article was inserted. The next legislative election will, for the first time, provide gender and religious parity in the country’s General Assembly.

    Working closely with print media, PGP trained journalists to monitor elections and provide objective coverage. As a result, those reporters published more than 30 election-related articles in prominent newspapers. Youth and female journalists trained through PGP interviewed presidential candidates about issues important to their respective demographics. Subsequent monitoring by journalists and interested constituencies has confirmed that Macky Sall, the current president, is adhering to the promises he made during these interviews.

    PGP also coordinated a “situation room,” which connected election observers to a centralized technical center. This initiative, funded by USAID and implemented by local CSOs, deployed more than 1,500 election observers for each round of elections. Utilizing the mapping technology of partner OneWorldUK, the program facilitated the first real-time monitoring of a Senegalese election.

    This program exemplifies the FHI 360 tagline, The Science of Improving Lives. We know the context in which we operate — the key actors, stakeholders and issues. We used an evidence-based approach to deliver an integrated solution with measurable impacts.