The Film Panel Notetaker

Education Obstacles and Solutions in Africa

Envision: Addressing Global Issues Through Documentaries

A Joint Program of IFP and the United Nations’ Department of Public Information

TheTimesCenter

New York, NY

July 10, 2010

By Erin Essenmacher

This panel directly followed the screening of Jennifer Arnold’s documentary  A Small Act.  The film follows the parallel stories of Chris Mburu, a UN worker from Kenya and Hilde Back the Swedish woman who sponsored his secondary education and paved the way for law school and a degree from Harvard.  30 years after Ms. Back’s small act of generosity transformed his life, Chris is a UN Official and has founded the Hilde Back Education Fund, which offers scholarships to a new generation of Kenyans so that they, too, may be able to attend secondary school. This sponsorship is not simply a means to education, but a lifeline that can lift these young people from poverty and allow them to reach their full potential in the world.

The panel that followed was moderated by Stephane Dujarric, Senior Advisor and Spokesperson, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and featured the subject of the film, Chris Mbutu, now the Chief in the Anti-Discrimination Section, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations

Other panelists included:

Penny Abeywardena, Senior Manager of Education/Girls and Women, Clinton Global Initiative

Allison Anderson, Scholar, Center for Universal Education, Brookings Institution

Michael Gibbons, Education Partnership for Children on Conflict at the Council on Foreign Relations and International Training and Education Program, American University

Heather Simpson, Senior Director, Education and Child Development, Save the Children

SD: The UN charter talks about “We the People” and the film really embodies this sentiment.

CM: I would go a step further and facilitate.  Private schools are starting to supplant public schools, which is worrying because teachers are moving from public to private schools.

SD: It’s important for people in the community to understand their role in facilitating better schools, we can’t leave it to the government and the international community.

CM: It’s not always about money. People who are passionate about teaching want to be able to the best job possible. These private schools have books, science labs, field trips.  All of that is gone from the public schools.  The school I attended is worse off than it was 30 years ago when I was there.  When we talk about fixing education, we must involve individuals at the community level of these initiatives won’t work.

AA: To improve education we need to empower people and documentary filmmakers can do that, but we need true partnerships and to make sure they hear the voices of the people. There are 72 million kids out of school worldwide and over half of those are in countries in conflict. But even as these countries face enormous obstacles, crises offer opportunities for transformation and change, there’s a window of opportunity where we can build better education initiatives.

PA: The Clinton Global Initiatives strives to be a curator for an international marketplace of ideas and we’ve found that some of our most effective partnerships come from NGO’s.

We’re trying to create a thought leader platform to explore some of these ideas.  One good example of opportunity coming out of crisis is what happened in Haiti after the earthquake – they were able to start from scratch with their education system.

MG: We need to re-imagine leadership not as having control or being in charge, but as convening and linking partners. How do you get education to work in varying circumstances?  The film [“A Small Act”] is a great example of building on the power of one. We need new forms of leadership and need to look beyond the traditional model of politicians as leaders, like a quiet convening to bring about change and new ideas.  Note that the government presence in this story is at the local level. Of, by and for the people is usually on the humble level.  In the film you don’t see a domed building, but a group of teachers and parents checking papers and ensuring the integrity of the exam.

HS: I hear what you’re saying, but let’s not let government off the hook. It plays a huge role in making changes that are systemic and will last. Save the Children evolved from a sponsorship program to supporting whole communities and whole schools. Access isn’t the only issue, we need to focus on quality as well, for examples literacy rates, etc… A lot of kids are leaving the sixth grade without being able to read five words a minute. Going to school is one thing, but what are they learning?

Audience Q: What other types of projects have you seen that harness the power of one?

MG: There are a number of good examples. The toughest nut to crack is renewing commitment to quality and excellence. There’s no such thing as free school. Someone pays and that’s usually the government.  We see that as access goes up, quality goes down. Everyone thinks that that the great success is access, but in this model every child can go to school but we’re filling classrooms with the poorest, most malnourished so the most ill-equipped. The system is struggling to cope with an influx of poor kids. The breakthrough in quality comes from partners. Local actors and translate to local organizations, provide tech skills and training.  Government can help provide things like teacher training. For example Ethiopia and Uganda have benefitted from a partnership between USAID, UNICEF and EU to improve systems and the effectiveness of teachers and to help systems struggling to cope with the influx of poor kids.

Audience Q: Which in your opinion is most important – to have free education for all first, or to improve schools and teachers first and then provide free schools for all?

HS: We need to address both at the same time, we can’t just open up access. In Malawi for example, when they opened up school for all, first grade classrooms went from 25 or 30 students to 300. And we see massive drop out rate – parents don’t see the value in sending their kids to school.

CM: Kenya is struggling with the same issues. The keyword is enrollment – enrollment has soared and created tremendous challenges.  When I was in school we had a library and one radio that everyone would gather around to listen to lessons.  They don’t have that anymore. The system has been totally overwhelmed. There used to be 25 to 30 students per classroom now there are 85 to 100, and this means the quality of learning goes down.  On study found that students in level 7 couldn’t solve an arithmetic sum meant for level 2.  We need to be asking the difficult questions and we can’t let them off the hook with just increasing enrollment.

PA: We need good ideas to be taken to scale. The Clinton Global Initiative provides a platform for NGOs doing amazing work in communities and is showing that with the right partnerships, these ideas can be taken to scale.

Audience Q: Chris, do you have any plans to “scale up” the Hilde Back fund?

CM: We started as a small organization focused a small village with an operating budget of $5000 to $8000 a year pooled mostly from our UN salaries. After the movie premiered at Sundance all of a sudden we had $90,000 in donations. We had to call an emergency board meeting!  Our poor accountant had never seen more than $2,000 in there at one time. He left a message on my cell phone that said “call me! There’s an emergency!”  Even though out budget expanded, we wanted to maintain this focus on one village, because these are the people who understand the community best and it promotes individual empowerment.  But because of the political violence in Kenya, we wanted to be able to provide assistance to schools around the country, but also stay rooted in community.  We provide research and work to other communities so they implement this in their communities. We now have 150 schools. We showed the film in Kenya in April and we got letters from people wanting to do more but we don’t want people to give to Hilde Back, I want my successful Kenyan friends to back to their home villages and do this themselves.  We’re not trying to reproduce the answers, we’re saying go out there and create alternate funding methods based in communities.

MG: India American Foundation and other Diaspora organizations are doing similar work.  They use the community foundation model to provide support for the next generation of leaders and mobilize support within the community. All of us have our own origin points and can move out globally from there. Origin points are a powerful mechanism, using social networks for change.  Most governments are closed systems – they feed up, not down, but they’re based on local building blocks. Citizens need to find ways to reclaim government.  We need to return to open systems that are more accountable, that will make educational systems more accountable to demand. It’s about listening to citizens are partners and seeking those who embrace a new citizen-based leadership model.

SD: And Chris I think that brings us back to the power of film and its ability to create the change we need and forcing government to listen.

Audience Q: I want to address the question of gender.  We need to help girls but I’m shocked by the absence of fathers in the film. What’s the role of fathers and what can be done to improve the role of fathers?

CM: In emergencies women gain more prominence because boys and men go to the front line and get killed. One of our board members has started a boy’s school. He’s the father of three girls and is afraid that girls like his daughters will not have husbands when they’re ready to marry because so many boys are killed or recruited as soldiers. So we need to nurture boys. A World Bank research study shows that if you don’t educate boys they go to war.  You can see examples of this in Sierra Leone and Rwanda.  When boys aren’t in school, they’re just sitting by the road, warlords ID them and give them cigarettes and Kalashnikovs and you have war. The Rwandan genocide was carried out mostly by an army of small, uneducated boys.

HS: We need to address both boys and girls.  They have different issues and we need to support teachers to understand these differences. There needs to be an emphasis on reintegrating boys who have been part of conflict into classrooms and communication.

AA: Research shows that the biggest way to reduce risk of conflict is through education.  A high quality, secondary education translates to a 20% reduction in conflict.

Audience Q: What about focusing on a holistic approach to education – can you talk more about that? The most educated during World War II were the Germans, so it’s not just about education but what kind of education.

AA: This is a huge challenge. We need to shift to look at secondary education, not just primary. The community has to develop a set of minimum guidelines.

HS: Measuring student learning is important.  The 3-pronged test is communities, teacher training and assessment.  For example, within communities even illiterate parents can help kids learn.

MG: The digital revolution is being led by youth who are finding their voices and a new source for those voices.  We need to honor and support it. They need to know that their voices will be heard and that they can speak to politicians in a positive way. Digital technology – cell phones, online platforms – give them this voice and this power. For examples citizens have started using cell phone cameras to monitor elections. It shows that individual citizens can work together and it provides greater transparency.