Jun 5, 2013 | FAWE, Female Empowerment, Kravis Prize
The Forum for Women Educationalists (FAWE) gives attention to “girls everybody else has dropped”—that was the message of the honorary secretary of FAWE’s executive board, Christine Dranzoa, in a recent interview with Women Thrive Worldwide, a key partner organization. The interview outlines the major issues facing women and girls in Uganda and traces Dranzoa’s involvement in FAWE, which is a past recipient of the Kravis Prize. When asked how FAWE makes a difference for girls, Dranzoa, who is also a professor in her native Uganda, gave this eloquent response: “Over 20,000 girls have gained access to education. Without, 20,000 plus would have gone another way. FAWE has impacted over 15,000 girls to get integrated into science, mathematics and technology – or engineering for that matter. FAWE has picked girls everybody else has dropped. Some of the FAWE beneficiaries are now medical doctors, lawyers, engineers serving their families and communities effectively. FAWE has transformed families who were desperate to see one kid get an education at higher or basic levels. FAWE has transformed the thinking of so many governments.” Also in May, the Huffington Post published an interview and profile of Oley Dibba-Wadda, FAWE’s executive director, by Augusta Thomson, who’s a student at Oxford University. The interview focuses on Oley’s personal journey, vision for FAWE, and her belief in the transformative power of identity. At the end of the interview, Oley shared her personal insight into how she relates to her identity as an African woman. “For me, as an African woman I believe in an identity. I believe in who I am, where I come from, and what... read more
May 2, 2013 | AIL, Johann Olav Koss, Pratham, Right 2 Play
“Maternal mortality is still a huge problem in Afghanistan, where being pregnant and giving birth are a risky business,” writes Sakena Yacoobi on the interactive women’s empowerment site, World Pulse. As executive director of the Afghan Institute of Learning, Yacoobi was invited by the media site to describe how AIL’s workshop for expectant mothers is combating misinformation and “old wives’ tales,” and encouraging more women to receive clinic care. Since the first workshops started in 2010, Yacoobi notes vastly better results in safe, healthy births for both mother and infant. She ends her report on an optimistic note about the power of education and the receptiveness of Afghan women: [I]t shows the situation within our culture is not intractable; change and improvement in outcome is possible. Afghan women just need the opportunity of education; they will seize the opportunity and then they will take responsibility to look after themselves and their children in the best way possible. There is no uphill battle to be fought in persuading a change in attitude; it is a question of access to knowledge which is the catalyst for a shift in what is normal behavior. **** **** Pratham co-founder Madhav Chavan finished a 9-city tour of the U.S. with a stop in Houston for the Pratham Annual Gala, held at the Hilton Americas Hotel in downtown Houston. His American travels included a visit in April to CMC to attend ceremonies for 2013 Kravis Prize recipient Johann Olav Koss. His Claremont trip included participating in a lively panel discussion with other past Kravis Prize recipients (Pratham received the Prize in 2010). In Houston, Chavan... read more
Apr 19, 2013 | Award Ceremony, Escuela Nueva, FAWE, Johann Olav Koss, Kravis Prize, Landesa, m2m, Pratham, Right 2 Play
Kravis Prize founders Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis ’67 visited the CMC campus yesterday to present the 2013 Kravis Prize to Johann Olav Koss and his organization Right To Play. They presented the award to Koss during an evening ceremony held in the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum (see photograph below). Click here to read a full update on the ceremony. The award ceremony wasn’t the only item on the day’s schedule, however. Koss also talked about his organization Right To Play with Kyle Weiss ’15, a CMCer who is also helping the world with FUNDaFIELD, which builds soccer fields to help disadvantaged children: Watch an interview between Johann Koss and Kyle Weiss: During the afternoon, five past recipients of the Kravis Prize (from Landesa, mothers2mothers, Escuela Nueva, Pratham, and FAWE) met for a lively discussion of high-impact leadership as part of a “Global Leaders Forum” sponsored by the Kravis Leadership Institute: Click here to read a full update on the Kravis Prize panel discussion... read more
Apr 17, 2013 | Escuela Nueva, FAWE, Female Empowerment, Kravis Prize, Pratham, Uncategorized
2008 Kravis Prize Winner FAWE’s work to educate girls in Kenya might have the added benefit of saving lives, according to a new article from the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics. FAWE’s Kenya chapter sponsors over 100 girls and 250 teachers in Kenya’s Western and Nyanza provinces, where women have a high risk of exposure to reproductive and sexual health problems, including complications during pregnancy and childbirth, exposure to HIV/AIDS, forced marriages, and female genital mutilation. The particularly high risk among rural women can be attributed in large part to the lack of awareness and education on health issues in rural Kenya. That’s where FAWE’s work comes in. The organization will teach girls about “adolescent sexual and reproductive health rights” in an effort to change the harsh realities for women in rural Kenya. This agenda fits well into FAWE’s overall mission of empowering girls and women in Africa through gender-responsive education, which it has pursued for more than two decades. FAWE CEO Oley Dibba-Wadda will talk more about the organization’s extensive education programs in sub-Saharan Africa at the Kravis Prize “Global Leaders Forum” this Thursday at Claremont McKenna College. She will be joined by Pratham co-founder Madhav Chavan and Escuela Nueva founder Vicky Colbert to discuss issues of education in India, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. KRAVIS PRIZE CEREMONY AND RELATED EVENTS: This week: Kravis Prize presents the “Global Leaders Forum” event This week: This year’s Kravis Prize winner Johann Olav Koss presents a CMC lunchtime lecture ALSO RELATED: FAWE students tackle the issue of good governance in Rwanda 15.6% or 38.57%? Pratham disputes Indian government’s education figures... read more
Apr 16, 2013 | BRAC, Civil Society, Community Development, Kravis Prize
Have you ever heard of frugal innovation? That’s what happens when you help improve people’s lives but have a limited budget—an all-too-familiar situation for the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. The 2007 recipient of the Kravis Prize, BRAC and its founder Fazle Abed have turned such limitations into a powerful learning tool by staging a Frugal Innovation Forum in March. Asif Saleh, senior director of BRAC Strategy, Communications, and Capacity, shared some of the lessons of this forum in a recent article in Forbes magazine. The reason for the BRAC forum was a simple principle: By providing a venue for the exchange of ideas, you increase the reach and possibility of individual organizations with limited means. It’s an old, familiar idea that novelist E.M. Forster once expressed perfectly in two words in his novel “Howard’s End” — Only connect. When organizations in the non-profit sector connect and share ideas, solutions to common problems can be found far more easily than when these organizations face them alone. As BRAC’s Saleh writes in Forbes: It’s easy to pay lip service to the need to learn from one other, but actually how one does that is not entirely understood. Rarely can a ready-made model be dropped into a new place. Even the process of creation is hugely important in developing a sophisticated understanding of not just what works, but why it works. “Everyone needs to reinvent the wheel,” wrote Madhav Chavan, founder of Pratham, an incredible Indian organization transforming education nationally, “it’s important because all of us need our own kind of wheel.” Among the other lessons that Saleh passes along? It’s important to... read more
