Informal Education

As part of an effort to increase the participation of South Sudanese in the peace process and now the civic life of their new nation, the Sudan Radio Service provides access to balanced and useful information through radio-based education, news, and entertainment programs presented by local presenters in nine languages. Independent research found that Sudan Radio Service has approximately one million listeners.

Sudan Radio Service also builds the capacity of Sudanese journalists through its Certificate in Broadcast Journalism program and through on-the-job training.

The Educational Quality Improvement Program 3 (EQUIP3) is a Leader-with-Associate Award that is designed to improve earning, learning, and skill development opportunities for out-of-school youth in developing countries.

EQuALLS2 increases access to quality basic education and livelihood skills in areas most affected by conflict and poverty in the Philippines (primarily the Muslim areas in the Mindanao island group in the south). EQuALLS2 is a large-scale project that seeks to benefit 345,000 children and youth in 37 municipalities and four cities by training 37,238 educators and school officials, building the capacity of 850 local education stakeholder groups, and expanding local education resources through public-private partnerships.

Ruwwad, taken from the Arabic word for “pioneers,” is a ground-breaking program created by Palestinians, for Palestinians. Its mission is to empower Palestinian youth and the adults who serve them, so that both groups can become strong local leaders and change-makers. Since 2005, Ruwwad has been planned, designed, and implemented “by youth, for youth,” with a focus on positive leadership development for young women and men ages 14 to 30.

The Garissa Youth Project (G-Youth Project) aims to empower youth in Kenya make sound career and life decisions as they transition from high school to the next phase of their lives. The project is also building the capacity of local institutions and networks to sustain the much-needed services that G-Youth will provide.

The Shaqodoon program was created to provide Somali youth with greater access to training, internships, work and self-employment opportunities in order to productively engage youth and add to the stability and development of the region. Shaqodoon is Somali for “jobseekers”.

Prepara Ami ba Serbisu (PAS), which translates to “Preparing Us for Work,” is a workforce preparation program in Timor-Leste that assists rural youth (ages 16–30), many of whom dropped out of school and have little opportunity other than subsistence farming. These youth gain the skills and expertise needed to find self-employment or job opportunities and more promising futures. Over 1,500 men and women graduated from the program’s eight-month combination of off-the-job classroom instruction, on-the-job training, and livelihood accompaniment.

The Southern Sudan Interactive Radio Instruction (SSIRI) project is a program of the Southern Sudan Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST). Four SSIRI activities provide learning opportunities for children, adults, and teachers in South Sudan.

• THE LEARNING VILLAGE: IRI programs based on the Southern Sudanese Primary School Syllabus.

‘Be a Scientist!’ is a full-scale development project that examines the impact of a scalable, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) afterschool program which trains engineers to develop and teach inquiry-based Family Science Workshops (FSWs) in underserved communities. The project targets underserved youth in grades 1-5 in Los Angeles and New York, their parents, and engineering professionals. The science activities are provided in a series of FSWs which take place in afterschool programs in eight partner schools in Los Angeles and at the New York Hall of Science in New York City.

EDC works with The National Girls Collaborative Project to: (1) maximize access to shared resources across projects and with public and private sector organizations and institutions interested in expanding girls’ participation in STEM; (2) strengthen capacity of existing and evolving projects by sharing promising practices, research and program models, outcomes, and products; and (3) use the leverage of networks andr collaborations of individual girl-serving STEM programs to create the tipping point for gender equity in STEM.