Realising Education for Development

Problem

Illiteracy level among women and girls is high that lowers their social capital and make them vulnerable to protect and exercise their human rights.

Solutions

Increase women and girls capacities to access, own and control resources available and expose them to development opportunities.

This will be done through establishment of a holistic resource programs; 

1. Support them to access physical and online reading and learning resources,skill based development programs and provision of right based information hub.
2. Provide learning connection for girls and women to have access to functional literacy projects skills and practices.
3. Provide mobile showcasing best practices; e.g. streets stop centre program.
4. Provide link and learn opportunities.

If scaled up;

Social capital for women and girls improved to combat negative stigmatized traits and focus on development. Effective and functional literacy project implemented and improve target' livelihood and Improved information flow on girls and women rights and the socio-economic opportunities

In Tanzania, women and girls are most people who are illiterate which become a factor that lower their social capital and make them vulnerable to protect and exercise their rights,.  Tanzania Human Development Report (2017) shows that in 2015; 24% of women in Tanzania had no formal education. Among the factor contributing into this problem is low school completion rate, the report also highlighted that 1/3 of Tanzania population completed primary school while less than 1 in 10 completed secondary school and among the main victim for this are girls. This problem on the other hand lead to gender inequalities that remain underlying causes of poverty, as most women do not have equal rights to assets, employment and access to education EFA report,( 2014) and gender based violence including sexual violence is highly experienced by girls in Tanzania, UNICEF report (2009) "approximately 3 out of every 10 females aged 13 to 24 Tanzania reported experiencing at least one incident of sexual violence before turning age 18".  

Therefore this solution empowers women and girls improve social capital and combat negative stigmatized traits and focus on development. 

Increase women and girls' capacities to access, own and control resources available and expose them to development opportunities.

There will be a multi-purpose resource program that comprises different projects including;

Library project for the women and girls access to reading resources that improves the literacy reading, social and economic issues for them to empowered. Library will have vibrant reading club to empower girls and women improve their reading and writing skills.

Soma-Connect learning Platform; Women and girls will be exposed to technology application, training will be done on the use of digital devices, access to online materials and using of digital platform to interact for development. 

Educative communication; provision of learning opportunities regarding women and girls rights including right to education, gender right in resource mobilization, ownership, management and control. Training, mentorship and coaching programs will be emphasized.

There will be exposure learning and practical skill gaining programs; girls and women will be taken and exposed to the successful counterparts in the related field for them to learn and participate in their development.

Linkage and connection creation; women and girls will be provided with opportunities and Government, investors and supporter for them and their community benefit.

Target analysis: This project aim to reach and empower 200 girls and 250 women from four (4) wards at Chato district, namely; Bwanga(36,763 people), Iparamasa(30,378 people), Muganza(27,245) and Kigongo(23,718 people). The general total population of the district is 365,127 people.

The women and girls representatives engaged through our library projects in schools and in the community and through organisation research. women engaged in petty business including baking and fish selling were interviewed, women working as casual labors in mining were also engaged, school and out of school girls engaged, area government leaders specific community development officers, agriculture officer and business officer and lastly women led groups through VICOBA were engaged in the research.

Methodologies used to make them understand their need; we conducted a stakeholder planning workshop and we shared our finding result and together we identified the problem and analysed the data collected, then we agreed on the proposed solution. 

Gender perspective;women-led groups will be the lead for capacity building activities and have an active role in networking/dialogue with the Government and development partners.

The problem expressing the challenge of girls and women not being well educated on function literacy applicability that limits their access to learning opportunities, solution is to expose them in accessing these opportunities and this is in line with the dimension of increasing the number of girls and young women participating in formal and informal learning and training.

The solution also goes with this dimension; including Strengthen competencies, particularly in STEM and digital literacy, for girls and young women to effectively transition from education to employment

We empower girls and women in holistic and practical manner using both online and physical learning platforms, we unleash the power of education to alleviate poverty and show case the potentials women and girls have to support themselves, their families, community and national at large.

We ensure the beneficiaries' capacities are built in the areas of literacy reading and writing, understand how functional literacy work through development empowerment programs and positively transform their mindset towards resource mobilization, ownership, management and control as well as towards their gender rights.The beneficiaries will be empowered to use social media to improve their learning aptitude and to increase their earning for livelihood improvement. They will use customer App to increase their market share and up their market size

We provide them with connection and linkage opportunities to government loan access, investors and supporters for employment access and other support related to girls and women empowerment including access to grants(start up capital) and sponsorship to support girls further studies support. 

The core technology that powers this solution takes a mult-sectoral approach that encourages girls and women to take initiatives to address the challenges they are facing.

Soma-Connect; access to education learning resources, entrepreneurship learning resources , employment guide resources and other development opportunities through online platform that encourage people to read and connect.They can also interact online with their counterpart, government respective officers, investors and other supporters wherever and whenever connected in the world. Girls and women will be supported to develop social network and pledge to support through online platform to ensure there is a social return on investment.

Customer App;the beneficiaries will be empowered on the development of applications through digital devices, for them they learn on how to increase their market size and share, provide support needed to them and agree on how to further improve their relationship. Through this App women and girls will be grabbing their customer/clients/beneficiaries feedback and manage them. 

Street Stop Point- There will be a mobile project that will be done in the street to reach the target with intention to show case the importance of reading and the success stories came through reading and learning to improve livelihood.

Arts design and practice: The beneficiaries will have opportunities to learn and practice art based project through functional literacy approach. There will be online workshop available that provides coaching and mentorship technical support to women and girls. This will be done through "Nipo Hapa" adviser cartoon. Nipo Hapa means I'm here.

This business model works well and it is accepted technology. 

Soma-Connect it is used currently with our organisation, the practice is for schools participating in formal education and it works very well. The plan is to use the same platform to empower girls and women by adding all necessary information and features proposed in the solution and make them function.

Customer App; works very well and very supportive, taking example of Huduma yangu project implemented by a lady called Esther it has proved to have impacts to investors, when they get customers feedback improves their services.

This solution tells all about the integration and invests on mult-Sectoral approach; all programs are interlinked and build to each other. It is a model that builds, expose, coach and provide means and tools for girls and women to be productive, effective and efficient.

Goal: To have empowered, well-motivated and responsible girls and women capable of participating effectively in social-economic development of the society

Project objective 1.Ensure girls and women have access to learning opportunities.

Indicators;

1. 95% of girls and women are literate.
2. Number of girls and women express satisfaction with level of support regarding access to their gender right.
3. 82% of girls and women have access to physical and online learning resources
4. Number of girls and women are members of reading club
5. 67% of girls and women engaged in community development social network
6. Number of girls enrolled for further education

Activities linked to this objective;

1. Conduct adult literacy programs/sessions

2. Conduct development training such as gender right, resource management training, technology based training, partnership and networking training.

3. Conduct reading activities to promote reading culture for development

Outputs

1. Girls access further education training
2. Women and girls become literate
3. Women and girls increased awareness on gender rights
4. Girls and women fully participating in social network

Outcomes

1. Girls and women empowered to provide their own safety net and advocate for their gender rights. 
2. Girls and women capacities built to ensure they are able to respond to illiteracy challenges within their social network.

Project objective 2. Strengthen girls and women initiatives that aim at improving employment and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Indicators

1. Number of girls and women engaged in production
2. 55% of girls and women access to economic resource opportunities (grants, loan, sponsorship)
3. Number of girls and women have access to employment 
4. 64% of girls and women engage in socio-economic platforms such as VICOBA

Activities linked to objectives

1. Conduct development training related to functional literacy (Income Generating projects)
2. Provide opportunities for exposure and experience learning opportunities
3. Create connection and link between women and girls and service providers/supporter (government, investors, sponsors)
4. Support the formulation/strengthen of VICOBA, SACCOSS, HISA)

Outputs

1. Girls and women initiated and managed income generating projects 
2. Girls and women identify successful counterparts and establish working relationship.
3. Girls and women benefiting from their engagement in economic network e.g VICOBA.

Outcomes

1. Availability of strong socio-economic structure and system for girls and women.
2. Empowered women and girls able to support their livelihood.

Currently the solution will serve 530 girls and 552 women as directly and kick off beneficiaries to make a total of 1082 and the expectation is reach 1,082 beneficiaries in one year hence 5,410 in five years.

In direct beneficiaries are expected to be 5770 in a year which make a total of 28,850 beneficiaries. These are those will be benefiting from project outcome in one way or the other. Therefore direct and indirect beneficiaries will be 34,260 populations.

The total population we expect the project to benefit in one year will be 685,200 meaning each beneficiaries will have to support 20 people (women and girls) a year and in five years 3,426,000 girls and women will be reached at large.

More communities will benefit from this project and the knowledge, skills and best practices will be cascading down to reach as many people not only in Chato district rather in Tanzania at large.

The total population we expect the project to benefit in one year will be 685,200 meaning each beneficiaries will have to support 20 people (women and girls) a year and in five years 3,426,000 girls and women will be reached at large

There will be groups/organisations formulated by beneficiaries, to start with there will be 103 groups and each group is expected to have not less than 2560 girls and women in each year, meaning from 103 groups there will be 263,680 members. This means in Five year time the number of groups will be 515 and the number of beneficiaries reached through groups will be 1,318,400 members.

The impact is to reach many women and girls, within and outside Chato district to at least cover the whole Geita region. With the intention of building a strong support socio-economic structures and systems to advocate for women and girls rights including gender related rights, right to education and right to resource mobilization, ownership, management and control. 

The solution will be replicated in different regions in Tanzania by our organisation and also by women and girls who participated in this solution, their social groups and their networks.

Financial barrier-The solution currently was meant to be supported by a local companies, in order to  impact as many people as expected, unfortunate the support premature ended up due to this challenge the company faced and became financial unstable.

cultural restrictions;Most women in rural areas are not allowed to participate in education and in business activities,they are obligated to families responsibilities which in return hinder their self development.

Poor implementation of gender policy framework:The government have laid down strong policies to support women education and developments,although as a country we still need a lot of policy implements.Because of this Realising Education For Development is using a lot of time to create awareness before executing any of their plans in rural areas.

Limited entrepreneurship opportunities:Most of women do not know the value of market chain,saving, accessing of loans and grants to develop their business mostly in Rural areas.

Risk mitigation strategies

Financial barrier-We believe in local resource mobilization to reach our target and make impact. The government through department of community development is aware, when opportunity available they provide development training to the target and also they have basket fund for women and youth where our target can have access to loan and move forward (promote their learning initiatives and entrepreneurship development). 

We are also currently approaching different sponsors, supporters (good Samaritans) and donors to support the initiative by covering the solution cost either full or partly.

Realising Education for Development is a Non Government Organisation and Non for Profit. It aim at improving literacy level in Tanzania.

There is five (5) full time staff

There is ten (10) part time staff

There is fifty five (55) volunteers and interns.

There are contractors whom we once off engage them, not full time employed or permanently recruited. When we do infrastructure improvement regarding education facilities and other learning facilities including community resource centre construction, we engage them. 

In each building we engage only one (1) contractor.

Magdalena George-Executive Director. Have 15 years of experience in managing girls and women projects, youth projects, education projects.

Einoth Lekaaya- have 11 years experience on women empowerment and education projects

Antony Edson- Has 4 years experience on Education Capacity building projects and adult education psychology related projects.

Nixon Mpaji- Has more than 4 years experience in finance management and banking management.

Calvin Chalo- IT officer- Has one year experience in managing Information Technology related project and he manage Soma Connect initiatives.

All four team have vast skills on managing volunteers, and implementing community work. 

We have 10 part time staff  such as tax manager, gender specialist, five teachers, two community development officers and cashier

Also we have 55 volunteers from different field and they are attached to projects relevant to their expertise and academic background or skill set they have. 

We are partnering with TGNP, they provide us with gender based knowledge and skills, access to information resources such as magazine and newsletters and also the engagement of their team on facilitation of gender related matters.

We are partnering with APENET, Oxford Press, TPH and Mkuki na Nyota on publication and supplying books and other learning materials to school libraries, community libraries and to promote reading programs for the beneficiaries related to solution.

We are partnering with Local Government Authority specifically with the department of Education and Community development. Matters we are partnering for are on the issue of beneficiaries access to learning opportunities, girls and women access to loan, project monitoring and supervision. Also their human resources contributions on provision of the advises to beneficiaries.

The empowerment strategy through skills, knowledge, resources, exposure and link/connection provided will help them transform their mind set and employ technics provided to alleviate poverty in their clan.

The approach we use helps them to change and improve their livelihood. Currently due to illiteracy there are women fail to help their children essential needs including school essentials and there are girls who are staying at home and they are capable of progressing to further education but no one to support. And some who are supported to continue with their further education are not well guided on their carrier and talent identification, management and development.

Financial sustainability

Technical level(donation in kind) : project will support women and girls through a in kind constant coaching, mentorship, technical support and functional literacy capacity building activities. Therefore they will be able to make money to support themselves and the mentees as well as groups they are overseeing.

Economic level: by supporting women and girls led groups, network building in the field related to socio economic actions to improve livelihood and be able to promote and manage the resource programs in the area. The groups and networks will be built capacities to increase their visibility and to access potential new sources of funding for project running.

Donation in kind to ensure project sustainability: The high level engagement of the government ensures project sustainability. The provision of land to construct the community resource centre is one of the sign to welcome the project in their area. There will be joint action plan to manage and maintain the centre during project lifetime, and this will be taken as a laying down the foundation, then they shall phasing out the project and full engagement of the government management.

Civil Society organisation engaged will also been engaged into future management and maintenance, the joint action plan that will be developed, CSO’s will also be part of the owner and managers of the project. Among the CSO’s will be girls and women who were the project participants. The CSO's will contribute their technical skills through their human resources to promote the solution impact.

We would like to empower girls and women to improve their literacy level, and be able to address their socio economic challenges facing them, and make the contribution to their society development.

We are applying to Solve because we expect to improve our knowledge and skills on the issues we are helping the community including children, teachers, girls, women, men and boys. We are looking to become expert on the skill issues that needs more improvement among our team including developing a business model, doable and cost effective solution technology, developing funding and revenue model that can make our project and organisation at large more sustainable and marketing and exposure for the organisation to recruit more donors and partners.

We applying to Solve to also expand our learning network as well as our financial supporters 

On the business model: We feel we have great ideas and approaches but we feel we lack some skills to compile and connect ideas.

Funding and revenue model: we feel we are eligible to get funding from different partners/sponsors/donors, but packaging our application and using our products to raise fund is a bit a challenge hence we lacks funding to implement good ideas we have that can help many people and serve their lives.

Solution technology: We like to be as innovative as we can, but we have not yet implemented many projects regarding technology and when we implement we feel we lacks some skills because we are successful in whatever we have initiated integrating technology but with lots of struggle.

MIT initiatives and solve members. I believe I will get both mentioned above from these two partners and will raise our profile and build our capacity to move to the next level.

We are qualified for  Innovation for Women prize because as the organisation that deals with illiteracy issues we feel we are the right fit to improve the literacy level in Tanzania as this is a big challenge to women in Tanzania, about 24% of women never accessed formal education, this is according to Tanzania Human Development Report of 2017.

Empowering them to improve their literacy is enabling them to see opportunities available to improve their livelihood. Women are empowered through our library projects to improve their reading habit, improve their access to our soma- connect platform to get entrepreneurship learning resources and support them with functional literacy project initiation which in a long run enabling them to have access to both monetary and non monetary resources.

The platform also provide opportunities for women and girls to interact with their fellow women in other areas, share experiences and being exposed to new learning. 

Intervention will improve women learning opportunities and capacities to access entrepreneurship and employment opportunities.

We are qualified for  Innovation for Women prize because as the organisation that deals with illiteracy issues we feel we are the right fit to improve the literacy level in Tanzania as this is a big challenge to women in Tanzania, about 24% of women never accessed formal education, this is according to Tanzania Human Development Report of 2017. We have reading program activities that improves reading habit, our techniques helps beneficiaries to read for fun and see the applicability of the knowledge and skills gained.

Empowering them to improve their literacy is enabling them to see opportunities available to improve their livelihood. Women are empowered through our library projects to improve their reading habit, improve their access to our soma- connect platform to get entrepreneurship learning resources and support them with functional literacy project initiation which in a long run enabling them to have access to both monetary and non monetary resources.

The platform also provide opportunities for women and girls to interact with their fellow women in other areas, share experiences and being exposed to new learning. 

Intervention will improve women learning opportunities and capacities to access entrepreneurship and employment opportunities.