Education for Life
What is an education and what purpose does it serve? Is it simply to memorize arbitrary numbers, dates, facts and theories? To be able to copy notes from a blackboard or recite a poem from memory? More and more, the definition of education is expanding to a more holistic vision and purpose: preparing a young person to tackle the complexities of life with confidence, creativity, and a fair amount of grit.
In many places around the world, including the US, non-profits and after-school clubs step in to fill the life skills and leadership gaps left by our formal education system. Community-based programs like Girl Scouts allow girls safe spaces to dig into the real issues they face in their everyday lives, engage in discussions and share opinions with other girls, and build confidence and communication skills. Rarely does a school itself have the resources and perspective necessary for providing this more well-rounded form of education to their students.
How can schools prepare girls “for life”?
There are some shining examples of schools who are doing it all, however. At the SEGA Girls’ Secondary School in Tanzania, life skills and leadership is built into the foundation of the school. In addition to the required Tanzanian curriculum, Life Skills classes take girls through four steps to leadership, starting with self discovery before expanding to connecting with and relating to others, then planning for the future they want and how they will set themselves up to get there, and finally defining their role in the community and world and taking action. They receive career guidance and partake in an entrepreneurship program to build tangible business skills and begin savings their earnings for graduation. School counselors work with alumnae to figure out next steps after graduation, whether it’s continued schooling, vocational training, internships or starting their own businesses.
Throughout their time at SEGA, girls engage in leadership experiences including peer-to-peer mentoring, morning talks at school assemblies, giving tours to visitors, and more. A few girls each year are chosen to attend the East African Girls Leadership Conference in Nairobi, meeting with girls from around the region and learning leadership skills that they can bring back to SEGA and their communities. They receive capacity building trainings and hear from inspirational speakers who expose girls to new ideas of what they can become. Coming from vulnerable situations themselves, SEGA students are able to give back to the community through outreach trips to orphanages and hospitals.
Together with a safe, supportive environment and caring and attentive adults who believe in them, these programs prepare SEGA graduates for life beyond the classroom. They give them the resources, practice, and knowledge to overcome the multitude of barriers against them in order to live the kind of life they want for themselves.
How can schools know their efforts are working?
In the end, a program is only as good as it’s impact. There are two main ways to measure the impact a program is having: monitoring, or ongoing assessment of an intervention to test how it’s working in real-time, and evaluation, or a large-scale, long-term assessment of a program. Having the tools to measure the impact of a program gives people the information to know what is and isn’t working in their intervention and the power to fix any issues, improve outcomes, and scale up their reach.
During my time at SEGA as a Global Advocate fellow, I am working with the incredible team that is their English for Life department to design and develop tools such as surveys for graduates to see the long-term impact the program is having on their lived experiences. We’ll be deciding which simple indicators or questions can give us the best picture of a girl’s increased self-confidence, self-reliance, and decision-making power. Finally, we’ll be giving girls an opportunity to share their stories of how they are taking charge of their lives and inspire the girls who will come after them.
Do you believe in education for life? Give today to support the English for Life department at the SEGA Girls’ Secondary School: give.classy.org/NatashaSEGA
