Teachers (either government employees, or volunteers from an NGO), will travel to communities and work together with the community’s super-mama (https://openideo.com/challenge/zero-to-five/ideas/super-mamas-for-low-income-communities) to gather all of the community’s young children together. There, he will teach them a number of subjects which will greatly aid young children’s development. The reason for the collaboration between the two individuals, is that the teachers will be travelling between different communities, whereas the super mamas will be staying in the same community. So, the super mama will be knowing most people in the community and the people will know the super mama. Obviously, it will be easier to gather the community's children together, if the super mama arranges the gathering and that will be her only contribution. The subjects that will be taught, include:
- The importance of reading and the alphabet. Reading books greatly develops a child’s imagination, cognitive reasoning, empathy and intelligence. Of course, children at that age, cannot successfully be taught to read, but they can be taught the alphabet, which is an important first step. The teacher, will read through some picture books with compelling stories. Furthermore, he will have some printed copies of picture books, which he will be able to give to the children for free.
- The history and culture of their place. Research shows that children who don’t relate to the values and traditions of their culture, have increased chances of becoming alcoholic or drug addicts when they become adults.
- Interactive stories about successful individuals from their nationality or area. Research suggests, that having role models that children can relate to, from such an early age, will subconsciously develop the goal setting area of the children’s brain, a characteristic which is positively associated with personal success later in life.
- The importance of personal hygiene. Furthermore, the parents that will drop their children, will be given a free package containing a toothbrush, soap, shampoo, towel, tablets for cleaning the water, etc. In the past, such kits were manufactured and given for free to poor children in India, for less than 1$ each. Fund raising campaigns could be run, with the aim of raising enough money to produce a large amount of cleaning kits.
- Food with mottos printed on it, could be given for free. In the past, Unilever has printed mottos on Indian bread, about the importance of hand washing before eating. The initiative, proved successful, as people saw this before eating the food and the numbers of people washing their hands before eating, dramatically increased.So, an actual solution to the problem, will be to specifically hire and train teachers on the above subjects and then send them travelling on different communities for a session lasting a whole day. The teachers will be hired, trained and paid by NGOs interested in helping young children to thrive in the future, or socially responsible companies, wanting to boost their public profile.
An important part of the initiative, is the logistics and the volunteer recruitment of teachers. Regarding the organization, I suggest that a minimum 0-5 children population threshold be set, and all of the communities that have at least this number of children be visited. The trip planning, would be decided centrally by the NGO/voluntary organization that provides the teachers. The teachers shall be based in a central location and all of the communities that fulfil the minimum criteria and exist in a pre-determined radius from this location, shall be visited by the teacher.
The recruitment of teachers, could be conducted by student organizations such as AIESEC, or other voluntary initiatives. The programme duration time, should also be set in advance, in order to manage variables including VISA issues, where the volunteers shall be hosted and who oversees them.
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CommentMeena Kadri
André Fernandes
ISMI Group4
André Fernandes
Isabel Farchy
ISMI Group4