ProFuturo and the NASCO Feeding Minds NGO have signed a collaboration agreement designed to improve the quality of the education of thousands of Ghanaian children by means of an innovative digital education project that seeks to create future opportunities for the local community.
Over the next 12 months, around 3,000 school-age children (chiefly in primary but also in secondary education) will benefit from this alliance, although the initiative has the potential to benefit more than 7,000 students in the midterm.
Digital education in rural areas
Despite the progress made in improving access to education for the entire population, Ghana still faces major barriers that prevent thousands of children from going to school. This problem is compounded by other challenges related to the learning environment, such as overcrowded classrooms, a shortage of trained teachers, the state of the facilities and a lack of school materials.
According to data provided by UNICEF and the World Bank, the primary school drop-out rate in the sub-Saharan country stands at 7%, a rate that rises to 20% in the rural regions in the north, the context in which this new alliance is being undertaken. The project led by ProFuturo and NASCO will be implemented at 43 rural schools, mostly state ones, in nine regions close to Mole National Park: Sawla, Tuna, Kalba, Kulmasa, Jintalpe, Nahare, Techiman, Gindabuo and Fiaso.
The cooperation began in September following an initial phase in which the 14 ICT classrooms set to form part of the project were set up. These will host the comprehensive training in hybrid format to be given to the 23 educators who will assume the roles of coaches. Their tasks will be to train and support the other teachers and the heads of the schools to guarantee the acquisition of digital and cross-cutting (management and leadership) skills and to benefit the children by incorporating digital contents and tools to promote communication, cooperation and teamwork skills and enhance the learning experience in the classroom.
A strategic alliance that’s sustainable over time
Together with NASCO Feeding Minds, ProFuturo will launch a new form of cooperation in the field to bring more sustainability to the project.
“This partnership responds to a strategic line that seeks to generate synergies and opportunities for sustainable growth in Africa and Asia, taking digital education further and further forward and reaching more and more people”, explained ProFuturo managing director Magdalena Brier.
In this regard, NASCO Feeding Minds introduces itself as a strategic partner, as its intervention is complementary to that of ProFuturo: ProFuturo contributes its platform, its content and all its experience in educational innovation to the infrastructure and technological equipment of the schools where NASCO Feeding Minds operates and to which ProFuturo adapts its Comprehensive Digital Education Model.
“With this project we’re acting from the roots. We believe that digital education is a seed capable of generating a brighter future for thousands of young Ghanaians. With the aid of ProFuturo, our computer classrooms will multiply their impact when it comes to delivering personalised and transformational learning”, stated Ousman Umar, the founder of NASCO Feeding Minds. This social entrepreneur, a native of Ghana, created this NGO in 2012 with the aim of “feeding minds” and with the conviction that education is the most effective way of providing solutions to the problem of immigration in the country of origin.
