Sign Language for Incusive Education.

Lily Kudzro is a Vital Voices Lead Fellow, recipient of the 2015 future awards Africa prize in education, an inclusive education activist, Founder of Devio early childhood institute(formerly Devio Arts Centre)and organizer of Global sign Challenge.
http://twentytentalent.com/exe...

https://www.seechangemagazine....

GPE Profile

Lily is an extremely passionate and hardworking early childhood innovator who believes that every child is a future change-maker. She is championing the inclusion of national sign languages in all early childhood programs in Sub-Saharan Africa and worldwide, and also through innovative training programs for parents and educators. Lily is also a strong voice for inclusive early childhood education and leads various advocacy and community outreach campaigns at the local, national, regional, and global level. 

In 2014, she was given a pacesetter recognition by the Lego foundation and also awarded a sponsorship by the US Embassy Ghana in 2015, to participate in President Barack Obama's Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Kenya.

Learning in the early years hugely depends on language acquisition, comprehension and communication, yet about 80% deaf and hard of hearing children, start school with inadequate language development for the 2nd tier of their learning.
Also according to UNESCO's 2020 report, only 41 countries worldwide recognize sign language, even though it is the primary language of deaf people. Additionally, governments and policy-makers are not being held accountable, while local communities aren't well informed to take action. We are in the last decade to achieving the SDG 4, inclusion for deaf children is impossible without first bridging the existing language and communication barrier.
That is why my goal is to ensure that communities and primary stakeholders are well informed, motivated and well trained to take action in introducing sign language to all young children, while holding secondary stakeholders accountable to ratify and implement existing inclusive education policies.
https://www.change.org/p/unesco-introduce-sign-language-education-in-all-early-childhood-development-schools

https://www.educationinnovatio...

https://www.change.org/Introdu...

https://www.globalpartnership....

The United Nations SDG 4 encourages the need to promote inclusive, equitable, quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all children by 2030. However, over 34million deaf children worldwide, including children with speech disorders do not have access to equal educational opportunities as their hearing counterparts, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
Also according to the 2020 UNESCO GEM report, all over the world, layers of
discrimination on the basis of remoteness, wealth, disability, language
and other beliefs deny students the right to be educated with their
peers or receive education of the same quality.https://gemreportunesco.wordpr...
Moreover, research reports also indicate that 7% of hearing children 0-8yrs have speech and language impairment issues, marked as a prevalent childhood disability. Globally, but more especially in developing continents like Africa and Asia there is also a very low amount of investment in quality, inclusive and affordable early childhood programs, for children from poor families to access and patronize, instead of it being only available to children living in developed countries or only affordable by those from affluent families. Also, governments, education stakeholders and policy makers are very reluctant in ensuring that this basic children's right and needs are adequately met. http://www.filipinohomeschoole...

1. Through advocacy, I persuade leaders, education groups, civil society organizations, policy makers and implementers to take action on the inclusion of sign language in all early years programs in their working countries. I run these advocacy campaigns at the local, regional and global level, aligning my campaigns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4.

2. Educators need training in inclusive education, which is why we https://www.devioearlychildhoo...
offer
trainings at our institute using creative arts, learning through play,
sign language and technology to help them succeed. We also recruit and
train unemployed youths, and offer them skills to explore job
opportunities. This would help reduce the shortage of qualified teachers
in Africa as indicated in UNESCOs' report https://qz.com/africa/801571/w...

3. Through our Global sign Challenge, https://www.globalsignchalleng...
we
invite individuals from any country around the world who are using
their national sign languages to engage children to participate in our
annual competition. Winners are awarded a book development prize,
trained and mentored to collaborate with early years centres in their
local communities and develop book ideas for publication and use. Early
years centres get excited to introduce sign language in their programs
because they were part of the resource development process.

We serve both DEAF AND HEARING children 0-8years who are learning from home or enrolled in any form of early years educational program. We train and support their caregivers and educators, enhance their skills, provide them with the inclusive tools and resources they need to make learning fun and interactive for them, while ensuring that their language and holistic needs are also met so they can reach their full potential.

Our approach prioritizes the needs of the 21st century learner and also ensures the highest level of interaction with learners and their immediate environments. Apart from the project promoting inclusive communication  for deaf children, and those with speech and language delays, it is enriching the quality of existing ECE programs and enabling accessibility of these essential programs and resources to the marginalized.
Our approach enables us to gather data and information on the existing barriers and problems facing our target beneficiaries, and captures some of the best practices that can be replicated in other communities and countries.

We also collaborate with experts in the ECE field, both deaf and hearing professionals, including those at the grassroots level who have great knowledge and skills, and passionate to help us create change.

We are solving a major global issue that is not only affecting the deaf community and children with delayed speech and language problems.About 80% of all children before age 10, would experience some challenges with their language development especially young male children. National sign languages are derived from the native spoken languages that various countries speak, it is like teaching children their native languages in a universal and inclusive way, that meets their language requirements needed for a holistic communication to learn and thrive whether they are deaf or hearing, and communities need sensitization so they can take necessary actions.

A few years ago, a 4yrs old deaf girl, joined our after-school program at the institute. She was born to hearing parents and was enrolled in a mainstream school where sign language instruction was not offered.The state deaf school in our our city was very far from where they lived and her parents couldn't afford private inclusive education. I could see that apart from she been withdrawn, her development and learning milestones were very poor, so I encouraged her mum to keep bringing her to our classes because our activities are play-based and practical. Her participation did not only help in improving her cognitive abilities and social skills but also the hearing children in the program developed more empathy and leadership skills. After a few months, she had made a lot of progress, so my team and I got more excited, and introduced more sign language activities, I also started doing more research on sign language. Because of the huge impact we saw in blessing's improved abilities and that of her hearing peers in the program, coupled with research and SDG 4, I decided to pursue this initiative to enlighten communities and activate people to take action to help children.

As a mother of two young children, I know that every parents' dream is for their children to be successful in their studies and become change-makers when they grow up. I also know the frustration and disappointment parents feel when their children have language problems, especially if it would affect the child's socio-economic participation in the future. In continents like Sub-Saharan Africa, where society places labels on children with speech and language problems, especially those who are deaf, parents are sometimes forced to segregate their kids from society, which eventually exposes these young ones to circumstances and situations that endanger their lives and future aspirations.

Additionally, about 80% of low and middle income households in developing countries cannot afford hearing aids, private inclusive education programs nor therapeutic services to provide solutions to their children's speech and language impairments, and reduce the prevailing frustrations, which sometimes may lead to depression, and marital challenges, especially when children are not performing well in their studies. The great impact from blessing's story and that of my son who had language delay issues, but improved his speaking skills because of sign language are the reasons why I am highly confident and passionate about this project.

I am an experienced human and childrens' rights activist who has been
promoting childrens' rights since 2012.
Before starting my organization, I worked as programs manager with the
Global Sachs Mentoring Women's Program in Ghana, which helped me build
my skills in advocacy and community work.

In 2014, I received a Global Change Leaders award of $75,000 from Stiftelsen Reach for Change, a Sweden based non-profit with operations in Africa, because of my vision,and commitment to creating a better world for children. Reach for change also covered the cost for me to travel to Stockholm, Sweden for training in Story Telling in 2015.

I was also awarded in 2017 and received a two years professional training by Vital Voices a ''Hillary Clinton Initiative''.https://www.vitalvoices.org/pe...

In 2018, I was selected to participate in EWB Canada fellowship program, where I traveled to Canada for six weeks, to lead various presentations and interacted with Professors and students at McGill University, University of Windsor, just to mention a few.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to lead fellows in the Atlas Corps Global Fellowship program on organizational resilience due to my experience and skills as a resilient leader.

I am currently enrolled in a TED masterclass sponsored by TED through the open ideo competition for me to polish my speaking skills and sign language idea, at the end of the class, I would be submitting a talk to the TED education team for consideration, an opportunity to present my advocacy campaign to a global audience.

The major adversity, I had faced with my project was in 2015. I had been nominated for the Ashoka fellowship program and the team visited us in Ghana to see the impact we were making. We passed that evaluation process, and was invited to Senegal to meet a  panel of Judges, I was 36 weeks old pregnant at the time. My doctor advised not to go to Senegal with the pregnancy, fast forward I had forced labor at 38weeks, and traveled to Senegal a week after. I passed the interview, we were to wait a few months for the Ashoka board to make their vote.Unfortunately the board rejected my application. I was really disappointed especially because of the sacrifices I had made. My mentor advised we write to the board, perhaps I being a new mother was part of the reason. The result was still no. So I moved on and continued running my project, with my mentors advice. That rejection has helped me to develop grit, and handle failure and rejection better. I've realized that by focusing on the reason why I started my project, and working hard, every other rejection and failure was just an experience for growth.

The picture above is a message from someone who was inspired by my story. My journey represents that of over 1000s' of the youth in Africa, every success and milestone I achieve is an inspiration to the youth that they can also make it, an amazing reminder for me to keep doing better.

I dropped out of university in 2009 due to financial hardships, however I never allowed the setback of not having a degree limit my potentials nor in preventing me from solving society's pressing problems, rather, I leveraged on the little experiences and knowledge I have acquired over the years. And because of my passion and desire to make a difference, I am willing to learn and grow in the areas where I lack knowledge and skills.

I am unhappy with our current educational and socio-economic systems, just like the many youths in Africa who have the same feeling, but I believe that our anger is in vain, if we cannot channel it into solving the problems we are unhappy about.

I could have relied on all the excuses and challenges that exist in our community, including the gender barriers that prevent women from creating big impact.

The Inclusive education project is created from our work at Devio Early Childhood Institute and the Global sign Challenge project.
https://www.devioearlychildhoo...

https://www.globalsignchalleng...

Most of the organizations providing early years services in Sub-Saharan Africa, and other parts of the world offer programs that are only focused on the service delivery of ECE professionals and curriculum content, without tackling the barriers to children's performance which is also highly dependent on their language and communication needs, especially considering that the early years 0-8years, is also the same developmental stage where childrens' language and communication skills are being developed. Our approach is different, even though we acknowledge that teachers, ECE professionals and caregivers are the bed rock of helping children succeed in their early years and in their overall learning outcomes, our work does not end there. We are bridging the serious gaps in the education delivery process, including sustaining the work of educators, and ensuring that the education they are offering children today would be relevant even in several decades to come.
Additionally, unlike other early years non-profit and for profit organizations, who are indirectly promoting special services to only a specific group of children, and also following the current education delivery system, our approach is different, we are challenging the status quo, through our trainings and advocacy initiatives. Our sign language initiative is the first project in the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa that is pushing for a regional and global initiative to get deaf and hearing children to have access to the same educational opportunities, so they can learn, play and thrive together, and has been recognized by UNICEF Global and Global Partnership for Education.

We are highly focused on upscaling the skills of early childhood education(ECE) professionals, increase accessibility to inclusive education resources, promote inclusive learning opportunities for both deaf and hearing children and reduce the shortage and increase supply of well skilled ECE professionals worldwide, especially in the Sub-Saharan Africa region.

LONG TERM IMPACT:

1. Increase access to quality, affordable, equitable and inclusive early childhood education in Sub-Saharan Africa.

2. Reduce all language and communication barriers that may limit childrens' learning potential, and the inclusion of deaf children in the early learning process.

3. Increase the enrollment and inclusion of deaf childrens' access to quality and inclusive early childhood education by 2030.

4. Improve all childrens' learning outcomes and potentials.

5. Reduce the shortage of skilled ECE professionals by 2030.

OUTCOMES

GRASSROOTS STAKEHOLDERS

1. Improve the personal development goals and skills of ECE professionals’ and caregivers.

2. Increase the participation and role of caregivers and parents’ engagement in the early years education process.

3. Increase access to coaching support, training, and resources to help educators and parents improve children’s social skills, cognitive learning and creative abilities.  

LOCAL AND NATIONAL CIVIC STAKEHOLDERS

Inform, consult and ensure the co-ordination, consistency and increased contribution of civic stakeholders in the development, implementation and enhancement of the inclusive early childhood education pedagogy.

GLOBAL STAKEHOLDERS

1. Increase advocacy and influence policies that monitor and improve quality, accessible and inclusive early childhood education programs worldwide.

2. Develop products and technology innovations that help in the promotion of quality and inclusive programs and standards of service and engagements in the ECE sector.

3. Open and create opportunities for employment and new investments in the early childhood industry.

We serve over 500 teachers and parents and over 60 schools in West Africa. We are working to scale into five more countries in Africa in 2021, train and support at least 1000 educators, and work with at least 120 schools by the end of 2021/2022.
By 2025, we would reach 5000 educators and parents, and would have worked with about 250 schools in West and Sub-Saharan Africa.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we launched a 2020/2021 quarterly online training series in partnership with various early years programs and organizations locally and internationally, this increased the number of international participants currently benefiting from our program, and helped us to reach 70 new parents and educators from over 15 new countries, with participants from UK, Egypt, India, United States, zingapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Canada and just to mention but a few.
We are working to grow this online early childhood community so we can extend some of our services to the countries that our participants are from, we are exploring an online masterclass training program by 2022.
We would reach 150 participants quarterly in over 30 countries by 2021, and 200 quarterly by 2025, and create avenues for distribution of our resources and products.

Our Creative Box TV, a hands-on remotely learning program for 2-18yr olds https://challenges.openideo.co... which started as a whatsapp group activity with about 50 members, currently reaches over 600 children in Ghana, our goal is to reach 30,000 by 2021/2022, and reach about 5million children by end of 2025.

Our 2020-2025 Goals:

1. Get sign language introduced in 1500 early years programs in Sub-Saharan Africa and globally by end of 2021 and 200,000 early years programs worldwide by 2025.

2. Produce educative advocacy documentary films in at least 20 national sign languages by 2021, and 100 by 2025.

2. Scale our online training program to 30 new countries by 2021, and over 70 countries by 2025.

3. Increase viewership of our Creative Box TV show on national television channels, across Africa, reach about 30,000 children and families by 2021, have the show on 10 Africa channels by 2025, and reach about 5million children by 2025.

4. Organize 5 sign language technology  hackathons by 2021, and 20 hackathons by 2025. The goal of the hackathon is to bring teams together to develop interactive and innovative ICT solutions to help children learn sign language in a very fun and interactive way. The solutions developed would be programmed on our communication devices. Our first hackathon would be organized in June 2022 in South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria.

5. Launch the production of 50,000 sign language e-book/video reader devices by 2025, for children in the early years, the device would help educators and parents easily teach their young ones sign language in very simple, creative and interactive ways. The device would also have our sign language books and videos published on it.

6. Speak at a Ted conference, world economic forum, and other relevant platforms from 2021-2025.

There are technical, systemic and financial barriers that limit us from achieving our goals, however we are working to ensure that we can overcome these barriers.

1. The technical barriers are with securing the services of professional advisors, board members for legal advice in partnerships and in relating with various governments and stakeholders.We also need connections to partner with powerful and great brands and businesses whose partnership can influence the reach of our campaigns and overall project, for an exponential growth in our work and impact.

2.The systemic barriers: Every country has a different national sign language, some schools in Africa who are using international curricular have the perception that, even if they would introduce sign language in their programs, they prefer the sign languages used by the international country whose curricular they are using. There are also schools and early years programs including therapists who are creating their own simplified versions of languages from their native sign languages, for instance makaton is being promoted in the UK and SEE is being pushed gradually in Kenya. Also globally, only 41 countries recognize their national sign languages.

3. Financial barriers limit us from scaling our project into more countries, and organizing and implementing more advocacy initiatives. People need education on why national sign languages are essential for all young learners language and cognitive development. Also the lack of finances limit us from developing new products and services, and employ full time professionals to work on the project.

1. Technical expertise barriers: Develop a long-term partnership program with University institutions and organizations whose students, professors and employees can volunteer and offer their skills and knowledge to our projects. We are also hoping that the Elevate prize can help us recruit advisors to coach us in designing strategic plans and build connections with businesses and university institutions who can support us.

2. Systemic barriers:
A. We would overcome this barriers by recruiting, and training local community advocates/volunteers who would raise awareness, lead and organize community sensitization workshops in their respective countries. With the production of our advocacy documentaries in over 70 national sign languages, we would be able to address these systemic barriers, and educate, and inspire communities and people to take action towards elevating the future of education for both deaf and hearing children.
We would also increase our advocacy on various global education platforms and gatherings.

B. Increase research, monitoring and evaluation and proper documentation of the prevalent problems, our interventions and achieved impact, to enhance evidence data in all our communication processes.

3. Financial Barriers:
A. Increase our internal revenue generating models, this includes increasing the effectiveness and patronize of our regional and online masterclass program, including the sales and distribution of our books.

B. Increase viewership of our Creative Box TV program, and shift to a monthly subscription model to increase revenue from the show. 

C. Increase sales and revenue by selling more than 5million pieces of our sign language e-book/video readers by 2030.

Our current partners are;

1. World Around You(WAY): WAY is a digital publishing platform led by Christopher Kurz a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology's National Technical institute for the Deaf (RIT/NTID) and School of Interactive Games and Media in USA, he and his team works with winners from our annual competition to design picture illustrations for our story books, and in publishing the final work on their digital library platform, https://deafworldaroundyou.org...

2. Ghana National Association of the Deaf: The association provides us with the adequate knowledge and advice on deaf education. We also work with some professionals from the association on various training programs.

3. UNICEF Ghana provides technical assistance and expertise to our project in getting sign language introduced in early years programs in Ghana.

4. Ghana Education Service (Special Education Unit), is a partner, providing support for us to access and distribute the Ghanaian sign language dictionary,to early years educators in Ghana.

4. There are also a few local and international organizations that offer
sponsorships and small grants and collaborations on various projects we
organize from time to time.

5. There are also people from the World Bank Disability Group, USAID and organizations who offer us support, advice and connect us with people who can contribute to our project. Their supports are on voluntary basis and not associated with any particular form of partnership. They are people who believe in what we are doing, and are doing their best to help us succeed.

1. The donor supported model: donations, grants and monies from prizes and awards.

2. We provide high value training programs to our target market at a very affordably price and flexible payment plan. The 2020 UNESCO GEM Report indicates that, teachers need and want training on inclusion, which fewer than 1 in 10 primary school teachers in countries in sub-Saharan Africa said they had received, giving us an opportunity to scale our training and generate more revenue.

3. Book publication program: In reflecting learners’ diverse needs requires textbooks and curricula to be inclusive, yet many still alienate by omission or false representation.
Through our Global sign Challenge book program, we are empowering individuals and communities to develop resources for publication and use in their own communities, thereby creating a chain of long-term supply of sign language books and resources that children can relate to, and identify themselves in. The books are published in both digital and print formats, for distribution, sales and use in the local communities that contributed in designing it.
The best part of this model is that, apart from us generating revenue from the sales and distribution of the books, the individuals and early years centres who worked on the book ideas also receive incentives for their work.

4. Revenue from sponsorship advertisements on our Creative Box TV show. 

5. We are hoping to raise money and develop new partnerships through the Elevate Prize to produce, distribute and sell sign language communication devices for children to use.

Our financial sustainability plan is to:

1.Generate revenue from the sales and distribution of the digital and print versions of the published books created by our winners from the Challenge. We are hoping that if we are selected as winners in the Elevate Prize, we would be able to support more winners and create a chain of over 500 exciting sign language story books and resources for sales and distribution in Africa.

2.Increase our fundraising efforts by building our relationship in the
donor and grant-making community, delegate and provide some staff
members with training in fundraising and grant-writing.

3. Increase revenue from our Creative Box TV program, parents can pay monthly subscriptions so their children can watch the programs. The program would be scaled to both local national and digital TV channels to reach more families.

4. Scale our inclusive online masterclass training program to enroll participants from all over the world, at a highly competitive rate. We would also be working through the Global partnership for educations' partner countries currently a network of over 50 developing countries. We would also lobby GPE, to cover a part of the training cost for educators in its partner countries.

5. Develop new products and technology devices to advance our work in inclusive education to increase revenue and double impact at the same time, we are hoping that the advisory support, and the Elevate prize can help us achieve this goal.

1. We have raised about $50,000 from our internal revenue generating services, this includes training programs and professional services we have provided to schools and organizations.

Teachers in Africa pay $120 for our training program spread over a
period of 6-12months, at a minimum of $10 per month. Teachers choose the
payment plan that best works for them. Parents also pay $60 for a
payment plan of up to 6months.

2. $200,000 from external sources of funding, this includes donations, sponsorships and in kind products and services.

We are also currently in the mist of a few applications and negotiations to raise money for the project.

We are looking for a grant of $1Million in grant funding and business deals by 2023.

1.We would invest $500,000 into the scale and innovation of our current projects: inclusive regional training programs, our online masterclass training program, Global sign Challenge and the book development and publication program, expansion into 70 countries by 2025, and in the production of our advocacy documentaries in 70 national sign languages, so we can push our message to large media platforms and increase advocacy and education worldwide. We would also partner with the World federation of the Deaf, Global Partnership for education, UNICEF and UNESCO to share the documentaries to all their working partner countries.

2. We would also invest $200,000 in our hackathon series project, and design of  creative products and hi-tech solutions to reach millions of children around the world.

3. The remaining $300,000 would be invested in the production, marketing,  distribution and sales of over 50,000 sign language communication devices by 2025. Revenues from the first production would be invested back into the second phase of the production, so we can produce and sell at least 5million pieces of devices by 2030.

2020 Direct estimated expenses.

Salaries and wages: $6500

Consultants and professional services : $3,000

Equipment : $2000

Materials and supplies: $1,500

Travel: $1,850

Internet and Utilities: $950

Rent and maintenance: $5000

Total: $20,800

Our indirect costs are not readily identifiable because it varies and depends on the nature of activities of each project, even though they are extremely necessary to our general operations.

I would be highly honoured when selected as a recipient of the Elevate Prize because, not only will the recognition, rewards and support that comes with the prize help me elevate my work and also the communities and lives of people who my work supports, but also the media and exposure platform associated with the prize would help me to use my advocacy campaigns to push the buttons of people, get into their hearts and inspire them to take action to bring sign language into all early years programs in their communities. 

The prize would:

1. The prize money would provide us funding to design and launch new products, scale our existing projects and training programs, maximize our impact and increase our internal revenue sources for our long-term sustainability.

2. The Elevate prize would provide advisory, coaching and management support to winners. We need this package to engage legal services, approach stakeholders and leaders, and in developing new partnerships to advance our work.

3. The media and exposure package would help amplify my advocacy campaigns and interventions. The recognition from the prize would also give us credibility in the donor and fundraising community to help us further draw in support for our project, from both individuals and corporations.

4. As a university drop-out, I would need the professional and educational training package associated with the Elevate Prize to expand my skills and knowledge so I can be well equipped to lead my organization and speak before world leaders.

One of the challenges we face with scaling our work is the lack of available funding, media and exposure and professional advisory team to guide us in our business strategy, legal frameworks, global reach and penetration.
The early childhood industry is not a top niche market for most organizations and grant-making organizations, making it difficult for us to access various pools of grant programs and in securing certain partnerships to scale our interventions even though our work is highly essential and creating a huge impact in shaping education. Also the concept of introducing sign language in early childhood programs worldwide is a new paradigm shift, that at this moment is not a widely accepted intervention in the current early years school program, even though there is enough evidence out there, that indicates its importance in helping childrens' language skills, overall learning outcomes and also its alignment with the SDG 4.

1. World Federation of the Deaf, UNESCO and UNICEF: We would 
partner with the Global and regional offices of these institutions to organize regional forums and workshops on implementation strategies to promote our campaign, and also in the dissemination of our upcoming documentary videos.

2. We want to partner with Google for our hackathon series.
Employees from google can volunteer as mentors and judges in the
hackathon series. We have worked with some volunteers from google in the
past through the Grameen foundation in Nairobi,Kenya.

3. We want to partner with a communication assistive device company to produce devices with sign language programming and technology for children.

4. We are looking forward to partnering with Global Partnership for Education(GPE). GPE invited me to write an article on their blog and to connect with leaders in their local education groups, and some of its partner organizations like Plan International and Oxfam, to collaborate and bring sign language into the early years programs those organizations are leading. We have not finalized the conversation yet, due to the COVID-19 interruptions. GPEs' partnership is highly important because of its operations and partnership with various Governments in over 50 developing countries worldwide, having them on board would give us direct access to all ECE programs in those countries.

5. We are looking for Partnership with a printing press to handle the
printing of our picture books. The printed books would be attached to
sign language videos for distribution and use in pre-primary schools.