In response to the contrast he saw first-hand, Chris said, “Without access to school, it’s tragic to think they will most certainly grow up to be illiterate just like their parents.“

Rita Melo Lizardo

Rita Melo Lizardo, the director of Aprendi*, has played an instrumental role in the progress made with the Edify training programs in the DR. Through Aprendi, Rita has hosted two of the four AMO trainings, and has held teacher training workshops for hundreds of teachers and directors.

Last week I attended a follow-up AMO session with Rita where she met with two school directors who needed extra support. She gave a brief overview of AMO’s key elements, walked through a complete lesson plan step-by-step, and provided examples of what other teachers had done so far; different creative ways of saving money and using limited resources wisely. Rita shared pictures from other schools of wall murals and visual aids that are important tools used in AMO. Both directors asked great questions in an attempt to better understand AMO and Rita provided them with clarity, direction, and encouragement.

AMO is a more comprehensive Christian curriculum than many teachers here have worked with, and therefore implementation is intimidating for some. That is why the follow-up work we do is so crucial. About half way through our follow-up lesson one director, Filomena Peña Guzman from Colegio Luminares said with enthusiasm “Everything we need is here in the teacher guide!” Filomena didn’t realize that she had everything she needed all along. Thankfully, having the personal attention from Rita changed that. Filomena recently finished chemotherapy treatment which is why she got off to a late start implementing AMO. Filomena has endured a lot in the last year but she is done with chemotherapy for now and we pray that she will remain healthy and strong. Her hair is growing back beautifully, she is in the midst of expanding her school facilities with an ASPIRE loan, and she is eager to begin teaching AMO to her students. The adaptability and personal attention that Aprendi provides clients like Filomena is what makes our training and follow-up dynamic and transformational.

Filomena and Jeannette

At the end of the session we were talking about ASPIRE and about the other teacher training workshops that Aprendi offers. I felt a surge of joy and gratitude when the second director, Jeannette Tejeda said, “I told my husband just the other day, I feel like I have learned more from ASPIRE and Aprendi than I ever did in college!” We all laughed together at the comment, but I was touched by her words as I realized the significance these trainings have in the lives of directors and teachers.

Rita closed the session in prayer and encouraged the directors to pray constantly for their classes and for the students. It was a wonderful experience.

*Aprendi is a nonprofit organization created with the primary objective of promoting comprehensive development, education and values ​​ in schools located in disadvantaged sectors of the Dominican Republic.

Alexis is a 26 year old “edupreneur extraordinaire”. After graduating from the Kigali Institute of Management (one of the better business schools here) Alexis began praying about what God wanted to do with his life. Alexis felt God’s call to work with street children. As a single young man, he began by inviting a few of them to his home, and they became like younger brothers to him. When Alexis began to look for a wife, he decided that she must first “pass the test” (his words) – she had to be open to street kids living with them and to living a life devoted to full-time ministry.

Alexis took out his first loan from Urwego Opportunity Bank in 2006. It was a personal loan, and it was technically for “home improvement”. But he used it to renovate his then-bachelor pad so that he could accommodate more street children to live with him! He was and is a client in good standing with Urwego, which was a significant factor in his loan approval.

After coming into relationship with these street children and with the encouragement of his wife, he realized that the way he could provide the most impact in these children’s lives was to educate them. So he started a special kind of school called a “catch-up school” specifically designed for the needs of street children. His school takes children through 6 levels of primary school in only 3 years and is intended to help them pass the difficult test to get into Rwandan secondary school.

When asked why he started the school, Alexis responds that “Evangelization – reaching the children for Jesus” was his primary motive. Alexis already provides more than 3 hours of Christian instruction for his students and is ready to implement additional programs offered by Edify.

Although his school is for impoverished street children, Alexis as a businessman still charges tuition. The 8,000 Rwandan Francs per term ($5 per month) he charges in tuition is enough to cover his operating expenses. (Though about 25% of his students attend on full scholarships from local donors.)

Alexis’ loan for 11 Million Rwandan Francs ($18,333 USD) was approved for the construction of 1 additional classroom and a playground for his school. The Rwandan school year started last month, and Alexis had the classroom built in time to accommodate students for this school year.

During our Financial and Accounting training last month, Alexis (wearing the plaid shirt) took it upon himself to lead the group of school proprietors in prayer before lunch. This young man is truly an inspiration for all of us!

So here’s an example of a question I’ve gotten:  “Edify. Wow, sounds like meaningful work but why do you limit your work to just Christian private schools?”  It’s a good question and one that I wrestle with myself.  There is a lot of discussion among policy makers and educational philosophers about the true goal of education.  Many secular humanists argue the primary aim of education is to impart knowledge and skills to young people in a way that will make them productive and independent members of society.  The role of religion within this perspective varies widely. Richard Dawkins, in the preface to his best-selling The God Delusion, commented that he liked the newspaper advertising for a TV programme he made for Channel 4 in the UK because: “It was a picture of the Manhattan skyline with the caption ‘Imagine a world without religion.’ What was the connection? The twin towers of the World TradeCenter were conspicuously present.” Others see the role of religion in education as less offensive but fundamentally at odds with the need to develop in students a rational and objective world view.

In contrast, I see education as a powerful symbol for how God seeks to restore man in relationship with Himself.  Rationality and objectivity are helpful skills but they are only building blocks toward a full view of the Gospel and as a result what is means to be human.  For many that ask the question, we are now on different pages so let me go back and take a running start at this.  One response might be, “We fund Christian schools exclusively because Christianity teaches universally accepted ethics that in turn produce just and fair citizens, not just self-centered materialists and consumers.”  Trevor Cooling summarizes the position well, “…the argument for “doing God” [in schools] is that worldviews are integral to educational policy and practice since they are the source of the underpinning vision for what it means to flourish as a human.” (Check out Professor Cooling’s work for the UK based think tank, Theos here.) This response is valid because it sees education as an inherently moral process – so if a school teaches morality explicitly or implicitly, it might as well ensure the values being taught contribute to the common good.  And they do, those Christian values, but there is so much more to it.  Not the least of which is the idea that thanks to our fallen, sinful nature good morals only gets one so far!

Another response might be, “We fund Christian schools exclusively because we believe that a Christ-centered school is one where students can explore what it means to be in right relationship with others: their peers, their families, their communities, their governments.”  I like this response too because it applies to schools regardless of cultural or socio-economic context.  Sure, we at Edify aim to serve the world’s poor.  However, material poverty is just one piece of the puzzle and as North Americans we often over-emphasize this version as Brian Fikkert so helpfully points out in “When helping hurts”.  Relational poverty is really at the heart of what a school community can seek to address.  Just think about the potential for reconciliation among different ethnicities as we’re seeing in Rwanda and South Sudan, the former Yugoslavia and so many other places. Professor Cooling points to Croatian-born Theolgian Miroslav Volf on this point saying,

His [Volf’s] pragmatic concern for alleviating human suffering drove him to uncover theological insights into situations of conflict, where people naturally tend to pursue the interest of their own identity over and against the interests of people with another identity. His conclusion was that the solution lay not in focusing, as policy makers tend to, on particular social arrangements, as for example in structuring education so that all schools are mixed, but in “fostering the kind of social agents capable of envisioning and creating just, truthful and peaceful societies and on shaping a cultural climate in which such agents will thrive”.  In other words people’s characters are ultimately more important than the institutions created by public policy. (Doing God in Education, pg 59)

In other words, schools should be about creating communities for students and teachers to be in right relationship with one another.  Christ-centered schools can be an ideal community for this kind of reconciliation.

So if you are tracking with me so far – and still reading way down here at the bottom of this post – then it’s not a huge leap to think about how Christ-centered schools might be a powerful symbol for the Gospel.  The best kind of reconciliation is at the center of the good news: God and man can be reconciled thanks to the atoning work of Christ’s work on the Cross.  In my next post, I’m going to explore this idea of school as symbol a bit more fully but don’t worry, I don’t pretend to think that Christ-centered schools are without fault.  In fact, they’re full of people like you and me: sinners in need of a Savior.

  It is amazing to see the love these teachers have for their students. They treat the children like their own!

]]> http://www.edify.org/photo-of-the-week-14/feed 0 http://www.edify.org/leadership-amidst-challenges http://www.edify.org/leadership-amidst-challenges#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:37:57 +0000 Travis http://www.edify.org/?p=1633 more »]]> Martin Luther King, Junior said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

In the non-profit world we often like to tell success stories.  It is these very success stories that encourage those of us who work in the sector as well as those who support the sector in some way to continue what we are doing. However, we sometimes forget that the successes we share are not simply stories. Rather, these successes are glimpses into the lives of real people.  They are insights into the lives of people who face incredible conflict, struggles, sadness and frustration but have continued forward through it all.  It is through these day-to-day challenges that we see leaders being formed and emerging in our communities and countries.

In a recent visit to a school that has received a loan from Edify’s microfinance partner, ASPIRE, I had the chance to witness a leader at work in a moment of challenge and controversy.  We had sat down in Isabel’s small office where she spends her mornings overseeing 13 teachers and 222 students. School had been dismissed for the day and teachers walked passed us as they headed out the door.  Isabel comfortably danced back and forth between our conversation and friendly reminders to teachers about various details and responsibilities for tomorrow. She seemed to prioritize running her school, but made sure to apologize for the interruption with a kind smile and would immediately return her full attention to me. It seemed she had her priorities straight.

We continued in our conversation as I asked her various questions about the school and the next loan she was interested in when the front door suddenly swung open.  She recognized the woman as a parent (actually the aunt) of one of the children and asked her how she was.

“Horrible,” the woman replied, “Why did your teacher hit my son?”

“I don’t know anything about this? Please explain more,” Isabel coolly responded.

Now clearly the last thing you want when speaking with the organization that helps provide you financing is for a parent to walk in and claim that their child was physically abused that day.  But Isabel’s reaction truly surprised me. Rather than being flustered or quickly becoming defensive she calmly asked the perturbed parent about the details of the situation. The calmness in her voice and the knowing look in her eye told me that she knew with certainty the teachers in her school would NEVER use physical force on a child. She told the parent that what her 7-year old had described was very unlikely because in her words, “Here we do not discipline children by laying even a finger upon them. However, I have no way of clarifying this as the teachers have left, but why don’t you return tomorrow morning for a meeting with your son, the teacher, and me to resolve the situation and learn the details of the story?” The child’s mother avoided the question and murmured something about how she was still upset.  She paused for a moment and then said, “A second thing I want to talk to you about, are you offering any scholarships?” A scholarship here means cutting the tuition in half.

It did not take a genius to see the set-up.  The woman came in with threatening accusations about the alleged mistreatment of her son only to reveal that the main motivation of the trip was to try and get a discount on the tuition. Isabel spent another five minutes sympathizing with the woman letting her know that scholarships aren’t available right now, but that she hopes to offer them in the coming semester. By the end of their conversation, Isabel had the woman laughing and smiling.  She walked out the door with a sense of hope and it was clear she didn’t still feel the need to come back in the morning to clarify what had supposedly happened that morning.

It occurred to me that there are a lot of people who probably have the technical skills to run a school, but it takes an incredible leader to make a low-cost private school thrive in the face of the constant controversy that is face by most of the proprietors Edify works with. Isabel is one of the leaders in her community that is daily confronted with hurdles to overcome, but continues to lead with a calm presence and firm resolution to educate those living in poverty and run her business with excellence.  Many people are able to manage others beneath them, but it is leaders like her that can quickly defuse controversy with justice, make friends out of enemies, and stand strong in times of challenge.

A classroom full of young Rwandans enthusiastically greet the Edify Rwanda team upon their visit to Imena
Academy in Kigali. The young students were eager to learn more about the Edify team and where we all came from.

When we arrived here at the beginning of August last year, we were tasked with building relationships with a local microfinance institution and training organizations. We often say that at Edify we are assemblers rather than builders, meaning that we would prefer to piece together existing programs than create our own. Being open to implementing existing solutions rather than insisting on implementing a proprietary (and potentially redundant) solution really sets Edify apart from so many other organizations and allows us to better meet the needs of our clients.

After an initial period of evaluation, we were very impressed with the curriculum that was developed by the International Finance Corporation for private schools. And now, here we are watching the proprietors/proprietresses of schools that are charging between $3 – $20 USD per month in tuition receive training, provided by Edify, that they have never received and so desperately need.

Even though this current training surrounds budgeting, cash flow management and other financial concepts, one of the key points the trainers have been stressing is that “quality is the best marketing”. The trainers’ insistence that proprietors use the provision of a quality education as a marketing tool to help their schools grow is a key element of Edify’s desire to see schools reach economies of scale without sacrificing on quality.

This same cohort of 12 schools will be participating in a second 5-day training at the end of February on Teaching Methodologies. This training will focus on improving academic performance at the schools with which Edify works. Concurrently we will be piloting several “faith-in-action” Christian after school programs in these schools to give school communities an opportunity to serve the communities that surround them.

Central to our training philosophy is an “outcome-centric” approach, where schools are openly told on what points their performance is being evaluated by Edify and specific steps they can take to improve. Incentives are given for participation and for improvement of performance.

I personally never cease to be amazed by the passion of these school owners and the drive they have to see their children succeed both in school and for the rest of their lives. It truly is an honor to assist them in achieving their own goals for their schools.

Alpha Akariza, Program Manager for the International Finance Corporation’s Africa Schools Rwanda program, kicks off the training session.

Innocent, one of the IFC’s most experienced trainers, giving a lesson on cash flow management.