ROLE IN GLOBAL EDUCATION
Role in Global Education
Abstract
UNICEF is an organization that is involved in the improvement of developmental needs of children globally. Formed in 1946, after World War II, UNICEF has played a key role in furthering the cause of child rights and development across the world. It has achieved success through the use of a multi-pronged approach – strategically building partnerships with private and public sector, governments, societies and communities, volunteers, funding organizations and investments in technology and operations processes. Though it has played a key role in the success of the UN Millennial Development Goals, there are many challenges that persist – mainly due to the new conflict zones, new natural disasters and reach of programmes.
This paper reviews the background and key objectives of UNICEF with the aim to analyze one of the key programmes – Education. The education progamme is detailed out, with key emphasis on some target countries where new innovations are implemented. The paper further looks at the success criteria and maps these to those achieved by UNICEF - the three criteria being, Performance of Project, Impact of Project and Performance of Partners. The paper concludes by recommending key improvements on the resourcing and delivery of education programmes, with the use of technology and a new delivery model, with Digital at the core.
Overview
UNICEF is a global organization which was formed in 1946, after World War II. Since then, the main aim of UNICEF was to serve as a relief organization to children. UNICEF then enhanced its mission and began to serve needy children in developing countries that were at risk. Today, UNICEF employs more than 7,000 people who work in 157 countries and territories, helping children around the world. 90% of the people partner with national and local governments and other partners to bring UNICEFs mission to life.
UNICEF believes and strives to protect the basic rights of children – by providing quality education, health and benefits. This right to quality of life has been enshrined by world leaders in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was pioneered by UNICEF. Based on its research and experience, UNICEF strives to provide children with the opportunities and avenues to “survive and thrive” in emergency situations (like wars) and get a good education (UNICEF, 2012). The work done by UNICEF is linked closely with the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations and its members in 2000 and is committed to help meeting those goals.
Mission and Objectives
UNICEF works with a single aim to help needy children around the world. Their objectives can be broadly classified in to five focus areas. All these five come together to bring about progress and development for children around the world, supporting the Millennium Development Goals. These five goals together help in alleviating poverty and increase the chances of children’s survival. UNICEF works globally with various partners and groups to achieve these goals.
One of the main problems children face is mortality. UNICEF works closely with various advocates and partners to combat infant mortality. This is done with support at the national levels and at community levels in countries and involves providing technical and financial impetus to launch education programmes on nutrition and medical care. These programmes involve education on immunization, preventing diarrhea, respiratory and worm infestations. The programmes also focus on a key disease affecting children – Malaria. Anti-malarial programmes and anaemia also form part of these trainings (UNICEF 2012).
UNICEF believes that the care of children starts with the care of pregnant women. To this end, antenatal and neonatal care is provided and breastfeeding is promoted. UNICEF also supports other agencies that provide emergency care to pregnant women. UNICEF programmes also involve the vaccination of children against many diseases like measles, diphtheria, polio and tuberculosis. UNICEF provides the technical support and delivery with cold storages of these vaccines. The vaccination programmes also help in enhancing nutrition of children (UNICEF, 2012). UNICEF also protects children in wars and emergencies with timely medical aid, food and clean water.
A key objective of UNICEF is to support the spread of primary education and gender equality. They ensure that children who are needy get the right education and health. These programmes aim to also reduce gender inequalities in education. UNICEF works with national governments and partners to impart quality community based education to improve learning outcomes. UNICEF also supports needy children with school books, supplies and tents during emergencies so that children can continue their education in a normal environment.
Another key contribution from UNICEF pertains to HIV/AIDS. Since the disease is known to create challenging life situations for children, UNICEF works with partners on AIDS prevention programmes and helps orphans. It also helps in providing antiretroviral drugs to combat the spread of AIDS. An area where UNICEF has a key mandate is around protection of children. UNICEF helps in raising the awareness of child protection, prevents the abuse and violence against children and motivates governments to frame new laws to combat child exploitation.
Working closely with the UN Millennial Development Goals, UNICEF helps in building global partnerships, investments and resources, local policies, to further the cause of children and their right to live in a normal safe environment and become successful world citizens. To monitor its progress, UNICEF is involved in global surveys on the various objectives related to children (UNICEF 2012).
UNICEF in Education
One of the key roles UNICEF plays is in furthering the cause of education. According to UNESCO, universal primary education remains a key goal that is yet to be met. Though the school enrollment ratios across regions have gone up to around 90% by 2015, the rate of growth has not been encouraging (2012).
UNICEFs ‘Innovations in Education’ initiative, aims to drive the objective of primary education in children. Due to reasons ranging from poverty, wars, natural disasters, there are close to 58 million children in the world who are unable to attend primary school. These situations adversely impact a child’s ability to learn and grow, and is proving to be an impediment to the goal of universal education. UNICEF is working closely, through its Innovations in Education programme, to understand unique challenges that children face based on their environments, social status and culture. UNICEF tests unique ways and methods to impart learning to children in challenging situations (Hughes, 2015). Five countries have been identified among others, to run this unique programme. The education program is customized to the unique needs of the country. Progammes in Brazil and Ghana have shows considerable success and impact.
According to Hughes, children in Ghana for example did not have quality kindergarten facilities, so UNICEF trained many volunteers and teachers to create local learning content and resources to engage children. This innovation with 100 teachers is going to touch 56 rural primary schools, and more than 5,600 children (2015).
In Brazil too, the challenge was to improve literacy rates in children who are 8 years old. Eight million children in Brazil are living in poverty, making it impossible for them to attend school and learn. UNICEF’s Brazil programme was customized by assessing the needs of children and building curricula for teachers to train on. According to Zhonghua and Behbud, even in the case of Afghanistan, which saw a transition from a war-torn, post –Taliban regime to an elected government, UNICEF is investing in education and healthcare for children (2012). UNICEF has contributed remarkably well to the education sector in Afghanistan in the post-war period. With its collaboration with the education ministry, UINICEF has been able to increase the number of children attending school, from 1 million to 8.3 million, with 40% of them being girls. Though the numbers have increased, the literacy rate in Afghanistan still remains at 26%.
Evaluation
As per the IFAD guidelines, if we look at evaluating the work done by UNICEF in education, there emerge 3 criteria – Performance of Project, Impact of Project and Performance of Partners. In terms of project performance, UNICEF’s education initiatives have gone a long way in providing children with basic rights under primary education. As detailed above, many of the focus five countries have shown good successes and improvements. The impact of these programmes is clearly visible, and has enabled children to attend schools with the Net enrolment ratios close to 90% in many countries (UNICEF, 2016). The scope and role of partners to help UNICEF achieve its goals are well defined and have played an important role in the changing global geo-political and educational scenario. According to Novelli, even in the case of Sierra Leone, the partnership with the government, Netherlands and European Commission, helped in improving the education outreach (2011). UNICEF has partnered with UN, many governments, civil bodies and society, global communities, teachers, technology providers, volunteers to make the Millennium Development Goals achievable.
However, there are challenges in a world that is constantly evolving. New conflict zones are emerging, new natural disasters are occurring and the nature of skills needed to learn and get employment has changed. There are only 66% of secondary school children globally, who are attending school. Many of the out-of-school children are from the poorest families and the gap between the poor and wealthy households is increasing. Poor quality of education has led to the global learning crisis. Assessing the skill needs and assisting children in learning job skills are proving to be a challenge. More than 5 million teachers are needed to achieve the goal, which is again a challenge. Armed conflict zones in Middle East, Africa and now the Syrian Refugee crisis, have emerged to make it more difficult to implement quality education programmes. It is imperative that the outreach and penetration of these programmes be enhanced to meet the UN MDP goals. The non-achievement of these goals will affect the present and future of millions of children worldwide and disrupt global economic development and peace (UNICEF, 2016).
Conclusion
The global learning crisis can be ameliorated by deploying a multi-pronged strategy. One is to ensure that governments, however rich or poor the country, invests a certain percent of GDP on education. UNICEF should also strive to build local language models with local training and technology delivery of learning, to improve learning outcomes and enrollments. Vocational skills need to be enhanced to improve job prospects. The partnership base should also involve key technology majors (like Google, for example) to ensure that they contribute to developing technology based learning solutions and digital delivery methods. Use of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), will help enable more volunteers to become teachers of basic educational content. Digital technology can help increase reach and penetration dramatically to make Education for All a reality in the near future.
References
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The International Fund for Agricultural Development. 2003. ‘A Methodological Framework for
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