Appropriate education - Enfants du Monde Appropriate education - Enfants du Monde
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Our Approach to Education

Goldbach
Education tailored to students’ needs

In our schools, we emphasize quality education based on an active and innovative teaching approach developed by our specialists following the numerous failures of literacy campaigns in the 1960s. These campaigns were based on rote memorization and mastery of a limited number of skills.

We advocate teaching in the local mother tongue and the official language of the country, tailored to the needs of children and linked to the local culture. This approach stimulates children’s participation, encourages them to think and act for themselves, and to solve problems independently.

5 Principles for a Quality Education

1. Contextualisation

The content of the lessons is rooted in the everyday reality of the students. We adapt the school curricula after analyzing the educational needs and issues faced by local communities. The subjects taught are relevant to the communities because they can be used in their daily lives.

2. Interculturality

Cultural differences are highlighted in a positive way, enabling students to develop a critical and open mindset. In addition, students’ empirical knowledge is brought into dialogue with the scientific knowledge they need to acquire.

3. Multilingualism

Classes are taught in the official language and in the children’s mother tongues. This facilitates learning and motivates students. Different languages are used complementarily in teaching, with a view to promoting better knowledge acquisition.

4. Interdisciplinarity

Synergies between school subjects are encouraged in order to address key social and sustainability issues in the community in the classroom; language and math skills are used for teaching and learning science subjects.

 

 

5. Active Learning

Classroom projects and varied working methods encourage students to participate in learning how to learn, i.e., to develop skills (collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity) that are useful for lifelong learning.

 

 

Diagnosing Educational Needs

Field surveys enable us to:

  • identify practices and social representations, as well as problems in the daily lives of communities, that can be addressed in education;
  • understand the thinking and behavior patterns of students and their communities that may act as levers or obstacles to new learning;
  • understand language practices in order to promote respect for the languages spoken by children in their families and encourage learning.

Innovating

  • engage in dialogue with academia: take into account advances in educational science and feed research with concrete examples;
  • place our five principles of quality education at the heart of education systems in the countries where we operate;
  • use new technologies: distance learning, educational radio programs, digitization of monitoring tools.

Monitoring and assessing

Our interventions are continuously monitored:

  • assessment of student learning;
  • observation of teaching and learning practices in the classroom;
  • continuous improvement of the quality of teaching materials based on an analysis of their use in the classroom;
  • impact assessment.

Our principles in practice in the countries

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Bangladesh

By enabling students to acquire not only basic knowledge but also practical skills that can be directly applied in their daily lives, Enfants du Monde has offered better prospects for the future to thousands of girls and boys.

 

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Benin

We have set up a Master’s degree in bilingualism, multilingualism, and interculturalism to address recurring challenges. Local languages are not sufficiently used in education; subjects are often disconnected from context and have no direct link to the lives and environments of children and young people.

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Burkina Faso

For over thirty years, Enfants du Monde has been working in several regions of Burkina Faso as part of its education program to offer a better future to thousands of disadvantaged children.

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Guatemala

In 2001, Enfants du Monde began its work in the Alta Verapaz region to improve the quality of education and train teachers in bilingual and intercultural teaching.

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Niger

Enfants du Monde works actively in Niger to offer a second chance to children who have dropped out of school or left school too early. The goal is to improve the quality of and access to education.

 

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Chad

To help children in Chad and enable them to receive a quality education, Enfants du Monde is improving the national education system in a sustainable manner, on behalf of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

 

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Adrien Bitibaly/Enfants du Monde/Fairpicture

My donation makes a difference

For example:

With 70 francs:

I provide 250 children in Guatemala with a bilingual textbook to help them progress.

With 140 francs:

I am offering a day of in-service training in bilingual education to 5 teachers in Burkina Faso.

With 200 francs:

I fund continuing professional training in bilingual education for 17 teachers in Guatemala to improve the quality of their lessons.

I MAKE A DONATION
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