International Day of Education
January 24 is International Day of Education, a day to recognize education as a human right. At Heifer International, we support transformative education around the world to help smallholder farmers learn, adapt and transform their lives.
Nearly?771 million people worldwide are devoid of basic literacy skills, most of whom are women and people in rural areas — making them vulnerable to unemployment, poverty, hunger, discrimination and crisis.
Heifer’s development approach?employs several key strategies to offer safe, equitable learning opportunities to empower producers in the agricultural value chains they depend on for their livelihoods.
Heifer partners with farmers to build and strengthen community-based groups, such as self-help groups and?farmer-led cooperatives, in which producers come together and engage in learning financial management, enhancing production capacity, building market connections and establishing profitable businesses.
Driven by values of accountability, reciprocity and solidarity, the groups leverage the power of the collective to spread knowledge and spur development.
Community trainers are Heifer’s frontline workers, trained and mentored by Heifer experts to become agents of change in their communities.
“When I joined, I received many trainings,” shared Chhoti Kumari, a community trainer in India since 2020. “Now, I take these trainings to other women in my village."
"And I want to do this work because I want the women of my village to become self-reliant.”
Community trainers like Chhoti play an important role in bringing women together to instill the skills and values communities need to rise above bias and build social cohesion. This collective growth helps individuals and communities challenge other prejudices that hold them back, one of the strongest being gender-based discrimination in education.
While many boys get opportunities to attend school, girls are often assigned duties of taking care of their younger siblings and assisting with household chores, due both to gender roles and inadequate household income.
When Chhoti started conducting Heifer’s gender training in her community, she started uprooting these prejudices.
“Earlier, the belief was boys should go to school and girls should stay at home,” she shared. “All these beliefs are now shifting. They acknowledge that girls and boys are equal and should be treated that way in all aspects.”
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Every year, millions of students face hunger that can have devastating — and sometimes permanent — consequences on a child. Hunger affects learning by curbing a child’s physical development, inhibiting their ability to focus and perform, and limiting their future achievements.
“The simple issue is the full potential that they have gets compromised because of the kind of food they eat,” said Neena Joshi, Heifer’s senior director of programs — cooperative development for Asia.
Globally, undernutrition is widely linked to loss of development potential, with hunger and undernutrition causing low academic achievement, behavioral problems and limited economic opportunities. An?estimated 250 million?children under 5 in low- and middle-income countries are at risk of underdevelopment.
The effect of hunger on learning can be lifelong and cyclical. Improving access to a higher variety of foods is one of the most direct ways to help children avoid the permanent consequences of an insufficient diet and stop hunger from affecting learning and future outcomes.
Emmy Nswana is 13 years old, precocious, and leading her class at school in Zambia. Not long ago,?she and her?cousin Prudence were struggling to keep up at school, due in no small part to consistent?hunger.
Emmy lives with her great-grandmother and six other family members. Life used to be very difficult for Emmy and her family. They didn't have extra money for food and didn't know how to grow their own vegetables.
Primary school education was free, but they still had to pay for school uniforms, shoes and school supplies. Emmy remembers only having flip-flops to wear to school.
After Heifer gave them four female and one male goat, things improved quickly. They also learned to grow their own vegetables. With the money from selling goats’ milk and vegetables, Emmy’s family was finally able to afford food, clothes, soap, medicine and more.
She is now eating well and thriving and even became one of the top students in her class.
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