Southeast Asia, 2019–2020.
In brief: The Fitzroy Academy is bringing its platform, skills and support to teachers and communities in SE Asia, starting in Cambodia.
The mission:
Support SE Asian enterprise and impact education programs, on their terms.
Q: Why Southeast Asia? Why now?
A: We were funded to do so!
Our new funding partner discovered us online last year, and over the last year have gently brought us into their ‘sharing and learning’ strategy.
They’ve been delivering work in the region for 25+ years, from the basic needs of the very poor through to education, knowledge-sharing, and more.
Our funders are a humble, private crew, and prefer to have the people they fund and serve as the heroes of the story. We admire that quite a lot. 🥰
Through their advice and some early testing in Cambodia, we’re learning that online education can be super useful in SE Asia, especially in helping existing organisations to scale their reach without overstepping their grasp.
There’s some clear SDG alignment and need with what we’re doing already, and tons of room to deliver more good work on these goals.
We’re approaching our small role with care and patience.
Put simply: Online education is a ‘nice to have’ in places like Australia and the USA, but good, affordable education is even more important in SE Asia.
Our lead Khmer partner: SHE Investments.
SHE Investments have been doing acceleration and education in Cambodia for women-led micro enterprise since 2013. Read their story for more.
How we support SHE:
- Low cost access to the Fitzroy Academy, with Khmer translation.
- Training for in-house video staff, in country and online;
- Partnership and support for funding and growth.
SHE’s co-founder and MD, Celia Boyd says it well:
Many women in rural areas are unable to travel to Phnom Penh every month to access our support services, so online and blended learning is important for us when we think about scaling responsibility and sustainably.
SE Asia is certainly moving in this direction more broadly, and so many more opportunities will be opened up to those living outside of major urban cities if high-quality learning is made more accessible.
Obviously, the map is not the territory and we’ll be approaching every partnership, province and platform carefully on as as-needs basis.
Put simply: We fill a few key gaps so that our partners can do the tricky work of scaling and sustaining what they already do so well.
If you run a similar program anywhere in Southeast Asia, particularly in Cambodia, please get in touch, we’d love to help: will@fitzroyacademy.com
What does this mean for Australians?
We’re certainly not neglecting our existing customers and friends!
By working on complex scaling problems across Oceania, we have the opportunity to increase our capacity in both scope and depth at home.
We are currently:
- Rebuilding our entire tech stack, with multi-language and region support;
- Creating comprehensive learning and impact analytics tools;
- Formalising our support material for K-12 and university teachers;
- Training local video producers and teachers to build their own lessons.
We wouldn’t be able to do this without re-thinking our work from scratch.
If you’re teaching enterprise and impact skills within Australia, get in touch, we love working with teachers and we’re excited to help! 🤓
But what does this have to do with our work in Australia and America?
Australia, cultural exchange and entrepreneurship.
Australia has clear priorities in our national curriculum around sustainability and engagement with Asia, as well as a focus critical and creative thinking and intercultural understanding.
The strategy is profound and important, but implementation can be patchy.
One common story is that ‘engagement with Asia’ can often be under-executed in the classroom with a blanket “teach kids an Asian language” approach, which can miss a lot of the cultural depth and diversity of the world’s most complex region. Yes, countries like China and Indonesia are a key part of Australia’s future, but there are many amazing neighbours with which we could be developing better intercultural experiences, through the entire lifelong learning experience.
From a capabilities perspective, social enterprise and entrepreneurship skills are an exciting new vector for these priorities. We’re hyped to bring expertise, stories and connections from SE Asia directly into the Australian classroom.
For example, we’re a big fan of TIPIAC, which brings indigenous perspectives into the Aussie classroom. We’d like more of the same but we’re conscious that it’s not our story to tell, so we are supporting partners outside of Australia, and helping them to find places for their stories back in our home.
Put simply: Most of the tech and teaching challenges we face in SE Asia are similar enough to Australia that we can and should do both at once. Southeast Asia + entrepreneurship = good stuff for Aussie kids.
Want to be involved?
We have our work cut out for 2019, and even bigger plans for 2020, so we’re looking for education institutions and funding partners to help us get there.
If you’d like to start, email us directly: will@fitzroyacademy.com 🥰
You can read our public master plan online: bit.ly/fa-19–20.
