INVESTING TIME IN CHILDREN’S EDUCATION IS IMPERATIVE NOW TO ASSURE BUSINESS CONTINUATION IN THE FUTURE

Keywords: #education, #project, #volunteering

Motto: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela

ABSTRACT

Successful projects require highly educated team members and contractors with experienced workers. Unfortunately, COVID19 pandemic corroborated with the financial crisis have exposed humanity to new means of communication and new ways of learning and teaching.

This new learning style revealed the weaknesses in the education systems, and a higher negative impact was observed on the pupils who were already in an unfavorable position before the pandemic crisis started.

A recent EU statistic presents a depreciation of quality of children’s education and the EU reported an increasing number of early leavers from education and training in 2020 throughout Europe along with higher underachievement in science, math and reading. A similar trend was also observed in adult participation in learning.

To ensure availability of highly skilled professionals for future projects, we need to increase today participation in the early education of today’s children starting with early childhood education, exposing them to basic project concepts: project scope, resources, project controls, quality, project closing, end-product and project abandonment.

Resources are available – professionals, education systems, ideas of projects targeting any education level and children’s age, education materials and curricula, non-governmental organization, etc.

It is paramount to start involving the young generations in early education by spending time with them, sharing our knowledge, educating by example, playing games (e.g. role-play), innovating and teaching them about sustainable projects. Thus, we improve the school retention, increase the awareness about project working environment, improve school achievements and thereby influencing the youngest to choose a career in the project management domain.

We can make the difference! It’s up to us to give back something to society!

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Education is shaping us as individuals, it helps us become better versions of ourselves.

It empowers us to become emphatic individuals, to become aware about our strengths and address our weaknesses, build our confidence, and boost our personal growth.

We are living in an unprecedented time in history. The COVID-19 pandemic changed our World, affecting nearly every aspect of our lives and impacted all individuals worldwide. The pandemic is a scary and confusing occurrence for children. Schools went online, many parents started working from home overnight and only a minority number of homes allowed simultaneous activities to run under the same roof, being properly equipped with Wi-Fi and educational technology (EdTech).

Unfortunately,?124 million children across the world are out of school and 250 million are not learning basic skills as a result of poor-quality education.

In the last 2 years it was observed an increase in education abandonment and in early leavers from education and training (statistics presented in the STATISTICS chapter). This will have an impact in 10-15 years from now on when it will be observed a shortage in the availability of fresh graduates trained to become a valuable resource for project teams, indifferent of the specialized domain (e.g. project manager, project engineer, operation engineer, cost engineer, cost estimator, planner, scheduler, document management.

DIGITALIZATION IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

In the twenty-first century we cannot pretend that we will be able in 20 years from now on to fully-digitalize the Project Management processes by replacing the human resources with machines using artificial intelligence.

We still struggle to become more agile in classic project management environment and final-product oriented by switching our mind from “what’s in it for me” to “what can I do the best to contribute to deliver a happy project”.

We succeeded to automate the reporting, to optimize certain processes, to minimize the level of bureaucracy, to ensure autonomy of processes, to train ourselves to become more flexible and agile, to implement innovative business models.

All of these digitalization initiatives require highly skilled professionals with experience in project implementation who have boarder view on processes and interfaces between different work packages (WP) and responsible departments for delivering the WPs.

CHILDREN LEARNING

“A child without education is like a bird without wings” – Tibetan Proverb

International Academy of Education issued Educational Practices Series (Ref.1) focused on learnings improvement and provides timely syntheses of research on educational topics of international importance. In the 7th booklet highlights that the children learn best when education is performed:

• with active involvement and engagement of the learner, in a room for discovery experiential learning through inquiry and reflection
• with social participation with peer collaboration and adult support
• with meaningful activities
• through connections between new information and prior knowledge
• engaging in self-regulation and being reflective
• iterative with chances to form, test, and revise hypotheses about how the world works
• in such a manner to create motivated joyful learners
• allowing sufficient time to practice
• being strategic to understand and solve the problems in ways that are appropriate for the situation in hand.

These guiding principles are recognized by child psychology and are essential for quality learning in the twenty-first century. A quality education can transform a kid into a future valuable professional resource that will contribute to successful project implementation. Educating the next generation helps ensure future resource availability in all the domains. The children of today are the cost engineers/project managers of tomorrow.

The pandemic period severely impacted the quality of education and the immediate consequences consists in school abandonment and leaving education early.

STATISTICS “99 percent of all statistics only tell 49 percent of the story” – Ron DeLegge II, Gents with No Cents

EUROSTAT published a statistic related to education attainment level and early leavers from education and trainings in 2020 in Europe (Ref.2).

In EU Member States, school attendance is compulsory at least for primary and lower secondary education. The pupils who completed the lower secondary education, they may enter upper secondary education that typically ends when students are aged 18 years. Afterwards, the student may continue with the next education level (tertiary level provided by universities or tertiary educational institutes) or to start a specific occupation or trade (vocational programmes).

In 2020, 16.3% of EU population ageing from 20 to 24 years have less than primary, primary and lower secondary education (Fig.1), 64% of the 20-24 year-olds in the EU had completed at least an upper secondary level of education (Fig.2) and more than 40% of the 25-34 years-olds completed tertiary education (Fig.3).

In addition, there is observed almost 10% early leaving from education and training of the population aged 18-24 years-old.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

“As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.” – Antoine de Saint Exupery

People involved in Project Management domains are highly skilled professionals who can MAKE THE DIFFERENCE in the education of the young generation!

TODAY is the proper time to INCREASE our PARTICIPATION in the early education of today’s children starting with early childhood education, exposing them to basic project concepts: project scope, resources, project controls, quality, project closing, end-product and project abandonment.

There are resources available and professionals who can act as teachers, mentors, models for the young generation (Ref.3), guiding them through the project management disciplines, making them aware about different future career options, helping them to find their way and the suitable field of expertise where their contribution will make the difference.

By constant support and presence in their education, we can improve the school retention, and rouse the ambition to continue education beyond tertiary education attainment, influencing the youngest to choose a career in the project management domain.

Our continuous and constant involvement in the education of the younger generation will make the difference and at the end we will be proud also by our trainees’ achievements (Ref.4).

HOW TO INVOLVE “Knowledge is power” – Sir Francis Bacon

Our involvement will imply spending qualitative time with the young generation, to be persevering and to be committed to ensure continuation in delivering education – no fortune to be spent is required.

One option would be to choose to do it by your own in case you identified in your circle of acquaintances a young person whose education quality is jeopardized.

The second option would be to become volunteer in one of the Non-Governmental-Organization (NGO) established in your country. There are a multitude of NGOs involved in children education:

International

Childhood Education International – https://ceinternational1892.org

CARE – https://www.care.org

It works in over 100 countries to save lives, defeat poverty and achieve social justice – impact on 50 million people.

Plan international - https://plan-international.org ?

Its strategy is to work?with vulnerable children and especially girls so that they can?learn, lead, decide and thrive - impact on 100 million children by 2030.

Education Development Center – https://www.edc.org

It is focused on projects addressing many of the major education, health, and social challenges facing our world – impact on 2 million students.

Save the Children – https://www.savethechildren.org

It works worldwide saving children’s live and their work address children’s unique needs, giving them the chance to live, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm – impact on 1.2 million children.

Europe

European Association for the Education of Adults – https://eaea.org

It is a European NGO whose purpose is to connect the European organizations directly involved in adult learning, it represents the voice of non-formal adult education in Europe impact on 60 million people.

Roma Education Fund – https://romaeducaionfund.org

It is an international foundation dedicated to closing the gap in educational outcomes between Roma and non-Roma by providing grants and scholarships to entities and individuals who share its belief in quality, inclusive education and desegregated schools and classrooms.

Ajungem Mari – https://www.ajungemmari.ro

It is running educational program for the Romanian institutionalized children – impact on 2000 Romanian children

Gapminder – https://www.gapminder.org

It fights devastating misconceptions and promotes a fact-based worldview everyone can understand; it offers free trainings (Swedish foundation).

USA

Kiron Open Higher Education for Refugees – https://kiron.org

Kiron offers an online learning platform for refugees worldwide and underserved communities in the Middle East

The Education Trust – https://edtrust.org

It is a national nonprofit that works to close opportunity gaps that disproportionately affect students of color and students from low-income families.

?AFRICA

Foundation for African Children’s Education – https://www.faceforafrica.com

It was started in Canada and it aims to provide opportunities for children in rural parts of Africa, who could otherwise not be able to go to school - impact on 800 African children.

Educational Foundation for African Children – https://educationalfoundationforafricanchildren.org

It provides a Christian education to underprivileged children in impoverished areas of Africa – managing 5 African schools

African Orphan Educational Foundation – https://africanorphaneducation.org

It offers orphans and disadvantaged children in Africa access to educations by identifying the needs and educational sponsors to pay it forward or leave a legacy.

The third option is to promote toward tertiary education the concept of project management, ways of project implementations, discipline that contribute to a successful project implementation. The young people need to learn more about set-up targets, Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) analysis, economic profitability, project management, cost management, time management, resource allocation, planning activities, marketing, stakeholder’s management, etc.

The professional companies voluntarily can deliver webinars or seminars to the youngest people studying in the tertiary education level to generate their curiosity and willingness to embrace a future project management related profession. There is a variety of content and presenting style that will fit the purpose of arousing curiosity of the young generation.

CONCLUSIONS

It is the time to think over the long term, and not just to fill immediate gaps. It is required TODAY our involvement to ensure availability in the future of professional resources for successful projects implementation.

We Can Make the Difference in Children Education! It’s up to Us to do Act Today!

REFERENCES

Ref 1) Conrad, H. and Acedo, C (2017) Guiding Principles for Learning in the Twenty-first Century, International Academy of Education, International Bureau of Education (www.unesco.org )

Ref 2) https://ec.europa.eu/

Ref 3) Dewey, J. (2017) Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, Free Press

Ref 4) Natarajan, N. (2014) Knowledge Go, Get it, Free-eBooks.net