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This week we were joined by a new Edify team-member, Rachel Christensen. Rachel moved from San Diego, where she worked with various non-profits and government entities on both sides of the US-Mexican border. During this bi-national work, she fed her love for multi-cultural and multi-national conversations and felt embraced by an active and compassionate community. She will live in the Dominican Republic for the next two years assisting with various projects, one specifically is a pilot project using a classroom reading and english acquisition tool called TeacherMate. Using an iPod Touch Students will be read a story and then read back to the device to practice pronunciation. They can also play games, listen to songs and answer comprehension questions as an adjunct to english classes from their teacher. For a taste of the program, check out this post by Brittany Roman with Edify Rwanda and this video of the students using the devices. Providentially, even this first week,… Read more » |
Edify Blog
Meet Rachel!
Rwanda by the Numbers
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Schools in Rwanda have just begun their 2013 academic school year. For sustainable, Christ-centered schools, this means working extra hard to ensure a quality education is being offered where all students are succeeding, while offering a Christian worldview to their students. As we plan for the year, creating new partnerships with local schools, it is always important to know the context in which we are working. Rwanda is a country of 10 million people in a landmass roughly the size of Maryland. Rwanda has worked tirelessly to recover and restart after the 1994 genocide, and according to the World Bank, they have a 8.2% GDP growth rate to show for it. The streets are clean, there is almost no crime to speak of, and children are all working hard to be in school and achieve on the National Examinations. Rwanda is working very hard to meet the Millennium… Read more » |
The Blessing of Director Retreats
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Twice a year Edify hosts a retreat, in partnership with APRENDI and ASPIRE, designed to reach school directors. The retreats are full of informative and relevant seminars focused on improving Christian education in the DR. This is an opportunity for school leaders to grow together spiritually, to rest and reflect, and to collaborate as peers.We believe these school leaders deserve a chance to experience something new, transformational and refreshing. Their hard work is not celebrated enough; many of them are silent heroes in their communities, accomplishing incredible feats daily and usually living very humble lifestyles. The retreats also give us as partner organizations the opportunity take our relationships with schools to another level. It is a rare blessing to have 75 leaders from small Christian schools gathered together for a time of fellowship. With each passing retreat I am seeing more cohesion and solidarity forming amidst school leaders. The most impacting… Read more » |
SALT: School Applied Leadership Training
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Rwanda is looking forward to the 2013 academic school year, which begins in January. As a new country that Edify operates in, we have been piloting a lot of different modules and interventions over the past year and a half, taking time to learn about the Rwandan Christian school context, and build relationships. This is a process that we know is both important and a continuous process. Throughout this process, we have begun to truly look at the teacher and school leadership training that we are offering. Our aim in training is to “raise the quality of education, increase Christ-centered learning and more effectively operate the school.” We have realized that in order to reach these goals, our schools need to not only integrate their Biblical worldview and values into the school culture at a foundational level, but to also take on the content being delivered in trainings. All too… Read more » |
Edify In 90 Seconds – Training
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This is the third blog post of a series in which I share about who Edify is and why we do the work that we have chosen to do, specifically why we focus on education training for teachers and business training for school leaders. If you missed the previous posts, the first post provides a framework for why Edify works in the affordable private school space and a general overview of our 3 interventions in education development. The second post delves into why we provide capital to affordable, Christian schools. While my original intention was for this to be a 3-part blog post, I have chosen to add a fourth and final post next month since I would have to gloss over too many details about out 2nd and 3rd intervention if I tried to cover all this material in just one post. This would also defeat the very… Read more » |
Prayer Requests from the Dominican Republic
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We thank God for those of you who are praying for us and with us. You are a blessing. Leadership Retreat- We praise God for a wonderful school leadership retreat last weekend with our training partner, APRENDI. There were 45 schools represented and 75 participants who were able to come together, being united in Christ and also by what they are dedicating their lives to: providing Christian education in the DR. We ask God's blessing for all the school directors we work with and pray that together we would be able to continue taking steps forward in improving education here. Esperanza Proprietor/Director Training- The series of five business administration trainings is wrapping up this month with Esperanza. Dozens of schools have been able to participate in the courses offered which included: budgeting, marketing, accounting, break even point, and overall school success. These trainings were offered in San Pedro, La Romana and Santiago. We pray that God will use the information presented to instill positive… Read more » |
Photo of the Week
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 Edify CEO, Chris Crane, visits with a group of nursery students in Kigali, Rwanda about what they want to be when they grow up. It is through the education being offered at Blessing School that they are able to dream about their future and dream big. |
Technology isn’t a Silver Bullet but…
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Improving academic quality is hard work but we’re committed to making gains through teacher training and technology. We’ve been making slow but steady progress with our use of Teachermate in Ghana and Rwanda to improve literacy skills. In Rwanda, we’ve been using iPods to deliver Teachermate over the course of two academic terms. Early results are really encouraging. In Ghana, we’ve been working with two schools for one academic term. When we initiated pre-testing with the students in Ghana, 90% of students scored below 50% on USAID’s Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA). None of the teachers have degrees in education. Kofi Essien, Country Manager from our implementing partner, Open Learning Exchange - Ghana, comes this important observation: With each passing day the confidence levels of both teachers and pupils rises tremendously. Pupils now have moved from working in pairs to working on the TM as individuals. Each has an iPod assigned to him/her. Teachers have started to multi-task… In order to make… Read more » |
Prayer Request from Ghana
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We thank God for those of you who are praying for us and with us. You are a blessing to us. 1. Presidential Elections this weekend We want to commit the upcoming presidential elections this weekend into God's hands. We ask for peace during and after the exercise. we ask that God chooses a president after His own heart. 2. Schools End of Term (Semester) Exams As most of Edify sponsored schools begin their end of term (semester) exams, we ask that the exams activity that usually last for two weeks begins and ends successfully in all the schools. We ask that each student will be healthy and fit during the entire period to write the exams 3. Ghana We ask for peace for the nation as the year comes to an end in a tense moment where there could be change of government. We ask for God's divine protection for all Ghanaians in such a tensed moment. We believe God for peace as always and… Read more » |
ACSI Rwanda Roundtable
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Speaker Samson Makhado (left) from ACSI South Africa Rwanda has pulled together church leaders, school owners, business owners and many others who are invested in Christian education in Rwanda for what was a truly inspiring event. In collaboration with the Association of Christian Schools International, we held the first ever Rwanda Roundtable to discuss issues facing Christian schools and leaders here in Rwanda. Edify had the pleasure of sitting on the planning committee, and it was truly remarkable to watch it all unfold, being part of such a powerful momentum - one which I am sure sparked a movement. International speakers came to talk about what makes a truly Christian school, and why Africa's time is now. Rwanda's education sector was pushed to wrestle with the idea of what to do, when so many of the so called Christian schools have been given over to the government. In Rwanda, there… Read more » |
