WISE Awards blog

Three of the 2011 WISE Awards winning projects have been featured in Learning World.
Listen to these inspiring stories and encounter some of the people who put these models into practice.

The first one features School-Business Partnerships, a project that aims to build a bridge between business and government schools in Morocco. Through a “school-adoption” scheme the business sector helps improve the quality of education not only through funding but by offering their management expertise and fostering the entrepreneurial spirit.

We meet Fatima Kadiri, the Executive Director of Al Jisr, who tells us about the partnerships that the NGO sets up between private companies and state schools in Morocco. She also tells us that for the first time a former student signed a three-year sponsorship deal between his own company and his former school, Idriss 2, making it possible to reconstruct the entire premises.

In this episode we also visit a school near London which has been adopting Creative Partnerships programs for the past nine years. The British initiative, a 2011 WISE Awards Winner, seeks to encourage young people to make the most of their creativity by bringing together students and professionals working in fields such as theater, dance, cooking and landscape design.

Listen to Jacqueline Laver, head master of Priory School, who described the impact the programs have had on the children. Paul Collard, the project holder of Creative Partnerships, talks about the importance of acquiring 21st-century skills to increase the children’s chance of future employability.

Lastly, we discover how Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) aims to improve teaching techniques in Ghana to enhance the quality of education in the region. Through its online database, teachers can access educational content in four different languages and share experiences with other teachers across Sub-Saharan Africa.

View the videos above and discover the innovative models of these three WISE Awards winning projects.

Applications for the 2012 WISE Awards will be accepted until May 31, 2012 through the WISE website.

Watch the video and spread the word to your contacts to make sure great projects get the recognition they deserve!

Episode 25: Lighting the way for women

WISE is pleased to announce that the Award-winning project The Citizens Foundation (TCF), which aims to improve girls’ education in Pakistan, is featured in the educational program Learning World on Euronews this week.

Based on the principle that education for the poor should not be poor, The Citizens Foundation promotes mass-scale quality education at primary and secondary levels for children from the most disadvantaged urban areas in Pakistan, a country where more than 70% of women are illiterate.

View the video above and learn more about The Citizens Foundation that is currently educating 102,000 children across the country and is working hard to achieve gender parity in its classrooms.

In this episode you will meet Nazish Karam, the head teacher of one of the 130 schools run by The Citizens Foundation. She expresses her views on the importance of female education and school enrollment, which historically have not been considered a priority. Thanks to TCF, this is beginning to change.

To view the web documentary produced for TCF, click here.

In September 2011, the WISE Haiti Task Force organized, with the support of the FOKAL Foundation, a seminar at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on "Rebuilding Education in Haiti: Sharing Success Stories and Global Experiences", that brought together 20 selected innovative Haitian projects in the field of education. One hundred participants gathered for the seminar, with representatives from Haitian government, public and private education sectors, many members of the international community including UNESCO, AUF, the World Bank, the African Capacity Building Foundation and WISE Awards winning projects' representatives Martin Burt (The Self Sufficient School - Paraguay) and Vicky Colbert (Escuela Nueva - Colombia).

Following this gathering, Martin Burt, Founder and CEO of Fundación Paraguaya, invited four young Haitians to study in his school in Paraguay. Last week, Minociene Cherestal, Jeff World Ilmo, James Pierre and Widancia Charles arrived on site where they will remain for three years, in order to complete two high-school technical degrees simultaneously, one in agriculture and the other in tourism. They came accompanied by Isaac Cherestal, Director of the Centre d'Appui à la Production Agricole du Sud (CAPAS), and by their teachers Joel Theodat and Junior Altidort. All will stay in Paraguay for the first few days, to see the school and make sure that the students feel comfortable in their environment.

Since the school covers 100% of its operating budget with income derived from on-campus educational businesses (cheese making, agricultural products, hospitality, etc.), this will cost the school and the foreign students almost nothing. Martin Burt hopes he will be able to invite many more Haitian students in the years to come. The idea is that, when they return to Haiti, some of them will start self-sufficient rural schools there. Commenting about his invitation, Martin Burt said: "I am an optimist and I am sure we will be able to sort out all the language and culture barriers and that we will learn a lot from this fascinating experience."

The first WISE Publication – Innovation in Education: Lessons from Pioneers around the World, by Charles Leadbeater – was officially launched in London today.

Illustrated by photographer Romain Staros Staropoli, the book examines 16 pioneering projects, almost all of which have been winners or finalists of the WISE Awards. It looks at some of the common features of innovation, how innovation happens, what it is focused on and when and how to scale up.

Published by Bloomsbury, the book is now available at major bookshops in the UK and at www.bloomsburyacademic.com and www.amazon.com