Educational Digital Divide

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we’re going to go ahead and get startedand for those that are joining usuh hi and welcome from wherever you arein the world good morning good afternoongood evening to someum it’s very early for some and verylate for some so welcome from all sidesof the spectrumum my name is hazami bermata and I’mvery excited to be hosting thisconversation on education and thedigital divide I am very very excited tobe joined by an amazing panel of peoplethat I will introduce you to um shortlyso what we’re going to go through todayis a quick overview of the state ofeducation and how it’s impacted by thedigital divide we’re then going to opento a discussion with our panelists whohave different perspectives in the spaceof Education uh closing the digitaldivide and social Innovation initiativesto help address the social and economicinequities that are birthed from this uhproblem and then we’re going to open itup to q a so you can feel free to usethe Q a box to ask us questionsthroughout this we’ll try to get to themat the end or I will try to interspersesome of the questions to the speakersthroughout the presentationum really quickly to give you a quickoverviewum we are the digital Equity acceleratorum and what we do as a uh entity is helpaccelerate digital Equity globallyspecifically by investing intonon-profit organizations that areworking to address the social andeconomic inequalities that result fromunequal use and distribution ofTechnology around the world and what wemean by that is that we know that thedigital divide has real consequenceswhen it comes to access to health careaccess to educational opportunities andaccess to employment and theorganizations that we invest into uhboth with cash grants with Hardwaregrants through HP and then trainingspecifically education and knowledgebased trainings to help organizationsaccelerate their own impact and work welook for organizations that areaddressing the consequences of digitalinequity in their communities and thesespecific organizations that we’retalking to today focus on my educationpillar of digital inequity so how do weDefine digital Equity digital Equity iswe Define it is a reality in whichindividuals and communities have theinformation technology skills so theyknow how to use the tools but also theaccess whether it’s access to theinternet access to computers access tomobile phones access to Reliable andsteady high-speed internet for exampleto actually have meaningful and fullinclusion in their societies andeconomies we know that increasinglywe’re living in a digitized world whereaccess to Healthcare Services access toEducational Services for example duringcovid we saw that kids that didn’t haveaccess to the internet fell further andfurther behind and we’re going to getinto unpacking that more in this sessionthe tools and access and knowledge ofhow to navigate them and what to do withthem people are increasingly fallingbehind not in the real world but also inthe digital sphere which unfortunatelyexacerbates issues that aretaking place in the world around usso quickly to introduce myself and mypanel um I am the lead and director ofthe digital Equity accelerator I’m hereat the Aspen Institute and I come tothis space from an InternationalDevelopment background specificallyhaving worked with the United Nationsum for multiple years on an innovationspace and really looking at socialimpact and how to actually get peoplearound the world to realize that we’reall in this togetherum and I am joined by uh Jessica Angeleswho is the international project leaderfrom idiac which is the researchinstitute for educational developmentbased in Mexico and she leads idiac’swork specifically in the area of teacherand management training as well asimplementation of international projectsand we’re really excited to have youwith us Jessica really excited to learnfrom you and have you share some of youryour insightsand we have oh uh we have James uhDonald who is executive director of eq’dum dbe threeum and he’s gonna explain what thatacronym means for usum but uh ecubed addresses youthunemployment crisis by cultivatingentrepreneurial mindsets and everylearner and prepares them for employmentand further education and James prior tobeing in this role served as the CEO forthe tomorrow trust which is anothernon-profit that delivers holisticeducation for uh orphaned and vulnerablechildren and we’re excited to have youwith us James joining us from theairport in South Africa you’re inJohannesburg I believeand we have Rebecca Lynn uh who’s thehead of education for dignity forchildren Foundationum and in that role she also overseesthe welfare and wellness arms of theorganization in addition to the Headserving as the head of educationprograms she’s an educator with ajourney that started with uh dignityfoundation in 2012 but has also been inmultiple roles in Academia uh beginningfrom primary programs all the way tomentorship and secondary programs andyou could definitely look up all of ourspeakers connect with them on socialmedia connect with their organizationsum after this and through this eventso I’m going to start by giving us aquick Global landscape of Educationwhere are we today you’re going to usesome of this data to preface theconversation and then with our paneliststo dive into a more Regional contextso in the today in a world today 200 andaround 260 million Children andadolescents are out of school that’s 17of uh youth population and of those 75million had education interrupted due toconflicts and emergencies and we do knowthat these numbers got worse duringcovid which we will get into so theseare just general um statisticsum the portion of uh children that areout of school change based on countriesand as you see sub-Saharan Africa andCentral Asia are have higher numbers anda lot of developing and emergingeconomies than in Europe and NorthAmerica which has three percent ofchildren in that age that are out ofschool ninety percent of the world’schildren’s were impacted by the pandemicwhich worsened the global educationcrisis which did exist prior uh to tocovid I think oftentimes we we want tojust look at covid as being the culpritof uh The Edge Global education crisisbut this issue has been ongoing formultiple years prior in all theorganizations that are working with ustoday and are here have been dealingwith education uh for quite somesometimes in some cases decades but wedid see with the impacts of covid led toclosing of schools and in some casesschools were closed for 75 weeks or moreum but on average most schools wereclosed around 30 to 35 weeks around theworldum this is not just an issue indeveloping countries and I want tostress that because so often in the workthat we do with the digital Equitypeople think that this is you know awest of the world and it is not we havea lot of digital inequity also righthere in the United States or in Europeum and in other emerging or sorry otherdeveloped economies and uh you see forexample last year we did invest intoalso us-based non-profits rural issuesuh socioeconomic status these issuesimpact geographies around the worldregardless of the state of the countryitselfnow where does this intersect withdigital Equityum educational and Equity has to do alsowith children not being able to accessinternet and the tools necessary tosucceed in their studies we right noware having a conversation on Zoom if youdo not have internet or do not haveaccess to a computer or a mobile deviceto get on the Internet or reliableinternet service then oftentimes youmiss out on opportunities for furthereducation for doing curriculum andmodules and homework at home or foradditional learning opportunities toapply for example for scholarships orother things that require access to theinternetwe also know that students that do nothave digital skills are unable often toget higher paying jobs and the digitaldivide as we know disproportionatelyimpacts students from marginalizedgroups there are divides insocio-economic status but also ruralversus Urban there’s a lot of parts ofcountries including the United Statesthatdo not have access to infrastructure forinternet towers for example and thisincreasingly is a problem 40 of ruralhomes today globally do not have accessto the internet which is almost doublethe uh inaccessibility compared to urbanareas and what that does and what thatmeans for children is two-thirds ofworld’s school-aged children which isaround 1.3 billion children aged 3 to 17do not have internet connection at homeof the youth aged 15 to 24 63 do nothave internet at home and as we justtalked about and we’re going to dive infurther with our panel covid whathappened at a time when education wentvirtual and these are the statistics oflack of access at home and here’s alittle bit more of a breakdown of thatlack of access to the internet andconnectivity based on region andgeographyso without further Ado I am going toturn it over to our lovely panel andstart by askingum each of you to provide a context ofthe education landscape in your countrywe’re going to get into the digitaldivide and the impacts of covid but helppaint a picture for our audience on whatis the state of education today in yourcountry and in your region Rebecca we’regoing to start with yousure thanks hazami hi everyone all 58 ofyou joining us it’s a pleasure to behere so during the pandemic I thinkMalaysia we we saw it was a very suddenum movement for us our countryintroduced what we call movement controlorder which means businesses are closedum schools are closed everything have tomove online so the majority of theschools had to suddenly scramble rightokay get the laptop okay move everythingso suddenly overnight you have zoom andGoogle Classroom being a top twofavorite apps um just for us to copeum and I think in Malaysia we also inJune 2020 we had a very famous alreadyInfamous story of a university studentshe had to track up a hill and sleep ona tree just to assess uninterruptedinternet in order to sit for herUniversity examination and you might bethinking oh this is a secluded case butthe it’s actually a case that happenedtoo often we have people tracking for 45minutes just to have access to Internetum and even in the urban area wheredignity the school that I’m with inurban area we have students same teacherI have to walk to the nearby shop I haveto go to the parking lot just to accessto Internetso you can see thatyou have the international schools andschools thatum more equipped and have more resourcesthey can overnight no issues adapt butat the other hand you have the schoolsthat are really struggling to just getthe teachers and their students to be onboard with this Sudden Changegreat James I’m going to come over toyou in the South Africa context what isthe state of education todaysharing about those experiences I mean Ithink maybe to try and make it a bit umeasy to get your head around maybe I canshare not quite a story because it’shard to tell stories like Nationalstatistics but um the year before lastSouth Africa had the most successfulgraduating class High School leaders sothey were about 750000 children that finished high schooland we have quite a relatively wellrespected internationally understoodsort of comprehensive exam at the end ofmatriculumum and it was also exciting about backto us because it came you know at theend of the covert pandemic is it wasalso it had the largest proportion ofthose 750 000 that qualified for forpost-secondary education and also theabsolute numbers of those thattransition chat to a second educationwas the highest everso they are good news stories ineducation everywhere but to put thatnumber in context so if any of you arefollowing the the football World Cup theWomen’s World Cup in New Zealand andAustralia so in 2010 was South Africa’sWorld Cup so in 2010 that same class ofwhat we call matriculants they werestarting their first year at school sothey were great onesum in a 728. there were a little bitmore than a million of them so of themillion that started school in 2010 theywere to become South Africa’s mostsuccessful High School class ever butonly 750 000 of them completed thatfirst hurdle towardshow have you went to define atraditionally successful career in lifeum and then in and amongst them SouthAfrica still has the most unequalSociety on on well arguably on theplanet but certainly on the continentsbecause of South Africa’s schoolswe divide them into ranges of firebecause Woodland tiles based on on theincome of the households that thosechildren attend well quintal 5 which arethe wealthiest schools almost 100 ofLearners are on track in other words ifyou’re supposed to be in grade ninebased on your assessments and maths andothers you’re probably in the grade 9class that number falls off the cliff asyou go down lower at grade threeum less than 30 percent of Learners fromthe lowest point are on track and theynever catch up on the time they had todrink it so we’ll talk about Kobe justnow but it’s the impact on schoolclosures in South Africa was about 54 ofSchool contact time on averageum but Learners from the lowestquintiles in some cases lost as much as90 of actual learning opportunitiesum so you can see how those inequalitiesjust keep accelerating and we haven’teven spoken about the changes intechnology needsthat’s some very helpful contextum James uh and Jessica over to you fromuh Mexico and how the state of educationtodaysure thank you thank you for theinvitation I would like to start withwith this story we have been servingthese communities in the south of MexicoYucatan pretty near to Cancun so you canlocated and this community have no nointernet access so what we did was to tosend every material by WhatsApp and wediscovered that Facebook was the themain mean to contact the parents most ofthe parents are illegally they theyspeak Mayan so we have to creatematerials in Mayan so so students cancontinue with their studies but I I mustsay that the shutdown schools in Mexicowas one I think it was the the most uhthe longest one because it was over to250 days I think the the average inLatin America was like 100 days but inMexico got further and uh I would saythat uh this was terrible because asRebecca said at the beginning everythingwas a mess at the beginning in March thethe principals and teachers thought okaythis will go this will end soon andafter vacation summer came education wewill get we will get again in theschools but this wasn’t this wasn’t trueand what the Ministry of Educationdecided to do is to have these TVprograms because uh I think 20 of the ofthe students had one device in order toget it to have the internet access so uhin spite they trained the teachers inthe Google suite and the Microsoft toolsthey they cannot be useful due to thelack of Internet access as well as thedevices I think this was really terriblebecause this increased the DropoutMexico usually have like a 90 percentum coverage of uh elementary elementaryschool so so uh 90 percent of studentsin elementary this is from 6 to 12 yearsold they finish the elementary schoolthis goes down up to 72 in in secondaryschool when they are 12 to 15 and itgoes further to it goes down in highschool and down in in University I thinkwe now we have like 500500000 students in Dropout which is reallyreally a problem for us thank youyou all touched on the importance of ofinternet connection and the role ofTechnologyum but I think up until covid majorityof the world saw the internet as aluxury right it’s something we go towatch funny cat videos and YouTubevideos and and play games and and usesocial mediaum but but as we know the internet has avery serious Side Access to Health CareServices access to uh governmentservices in a lot of places where formsare online uh Educational Servicesaccess to videos tutorials additionalinformationtranslation mechanisms and translationtools I use Google Translate all thetimeum and soI’d love to ask you to expandspecifically on the role and theimportance of technology and Technologyaccess including the internet anddevices in education what role does itplay in education today uh Rebecca we’llstart with you pleasesure I think for us we see an increasein Opportunities so for our graduatingstudents our alumni they get to accessscholarships that before they didn’teven heard aboutum so we had I think last year startedum where everyone was kind of forcedonlinethe students actually we have a higherrate that actually assess morescholarships more University applicantsso we weresuddenly trust into that light whereokay we have to use the internet to ouradvantage so that is a really good thingand it’s not just education andscholarship we also see an increase ofopportunities in terms of internship andemployability so they also get to writeemails they get to search about thecompany more find out more internshipopportunity so it really really doesopen a lot of doors for our kidsJames I know you were talking aboutusing Whatsapp chat Bots also and I thatwas also a commonality between Jessicayou guys usingalso WhatsApp uh to disseminateinformationum James talk to us a little bit moreaboutum the role not only of technology andaccess as Rebecca talked about toopportunity but how Central is it toeducationyeah I thinkum so to give some insight into it Ithink it’s around the ability fordigital Technologies to improve learningdecision making I think that’s sometimesthe piece of the story that we weunderestimate and and we don’t realizethe world it plays um in how quicklyeducation is changing in the same sensenot only can a young person who’s ableto be self-directed around the thingsthat they are curious about if they haveaccess to good Technologies and theright support they can get access toalmost anything that’s true butdepending on the tools they use theadults supporting them the people tryingto help them understand who they are inthe world the ones who are trying to getthem toexplore and develop their identitymeaning you know and purpose in lifethey can get insights into them thatwould normally or traditionally takemuch longerum where their weaknesses might be incertain maths problems where theinterests might be and where they mightbe behind on certain areas or ahead ofothers so um keep that question in mindand then because that same data can thenbe served by education systems as wellso during covert um South Africa onlyhas about in 2018 about 90 percent ofhouseholds didn’t have access toInternet at home so it’s obviously adifferent story when it comes to mobiledevices right so almost every householdin South Africa has access to um to asmartphone into social media so when thelockdown started in South Africa mostteachers were organizing WhatsApp and agroup of ngos got together to try andsee if we could serve them with WhatsAppadvice you know about what they neededto do in the same way that the HealthCommunity was and that’s how teacherconnect was born so this WhatsApp linehas more than 500 000 exit users now butwe learned some interesting things thereas well is we served alternatevulnerable children so by marginalizedcommunities at about grade nine almost80 percent of the Learners that weserved were able to get onto a WhatsAppgroup often they weren’t doing it ontheir own devices often they were usinga SIM card from someone else then wealso found of those that could get ontoWhatsApp this was during the hardlockdown right in the beginnings wecould get almost 80 percent of those toregister onto free online maths practicewebsites you know like in many placesthere are services like that this wasone called Sierra ruler and then we wereable to keep almost 100 participationrate for the school term on thoseWhatsApp groups so that was a phenomenallearning because before covertorganizations like civil they would finduptake amongst trying to served Learnersof well less than 20 even when data anddevices were availableso the demands of covert sort of pushedpeople onto the internet but then theother amazing insights that you now haveis you can start learning so the servergroup is one technology exampleum around about 90 of Learners who wrotethe matric exam at the highest mathlevelum two years ago at some point you useciabulla as a learning tool and theywere able to give the governmentinsights into how far behind a learningthose math students were on average indifferent areas in the country based onwhich practices the Learners would doour curriculum is National and sort oftimed and scheduled the same way so theycould give these levels of data andinsight to government that didn’t existbefore similarly with teacher connectwhile the service was meant to be forteachers within six weeks there weremore than twenty thousand principlesthat were using teacher connect and sowe were able to serve really simplesurveys around issues schools are havingin covert response and very quickly givealmost live data for the school to makebetter decisions so I think those twothings connecting to each other is oftenleft over out of the story and then thelast piece I’ll just add that’s so hardto understand but if you imagine if youthink of a child that you know who’sobsessed with roadblocks or Minecraftparticularly when they’re eight or nineyears old and particularly when they’replaying with friends and watch theminteract as they get lost in that worldthat sort of sense of belonging andDiscovery and exploring you know umthere’s an argument that technology issomething likethat that self-directed learning playit’s the simplest way to put it in adigital space is what the vast majorityof Learners who are households don’texperience at all so they already had ahuge disadvantage around just thecomfort and learning within a digitalspaceum before we’re even talking about theactual educational benefits um so justthink about belonging and and learningas key to this discussion as well notjust accessand James you talk about something veryimportant which is I I think somethingwe don’t think about often which is theentire cycle of Technology you talkedabout use of data to develop bettercurriculum um the ability to connectwith parents the ability of teachers toalso be supported which unfortunatelyteachers and the school systems areoftentimes neglected and overlooked whenwe’re talking about development andsupport uh in education spacesum and so it’s really importantimportant I think as you’re talkingabout this uh you know thinking abouttechnology as a comprehensive holisticuh Viewpoint because we do know thatthere’s multiple factors we oftentimesjust talk about access to the internetand access to tools but access to thedata that they produce or access to theoutputs or the capacity to createcreative videos or the ability toJessica in your case and I’m going tocome to you with this question reallythink about engaging parents so thatthey then are part of the learningprocess because children do not learnin a vacuum Jessica help us understandthe role that technology plays in theprogramming that that you guys work onum and also you specifically work invery underdeveloped and marginalizedcommunities when you talked aboutum you know the folks that you guysserve oftentimes these school systemsare not equipped with the technologythat maybe private schools or otherschools are connected to so there’salready an equity built into the schoolsystem which we’ll get into in just amoment but help us understand the roleof technology and and the ways that itinterfaces and impacts educationaloutcomessure I I would like to to say somethingthat an assim tale that one of the BlackSwan share when when the pandemic beganhe said thank God internet was createdbefore pandemic but unfortunately itwasn’t uh it was it wasn’t a reality youwere talking uh had Sami about the 40percent of rural inhabitants to have noaccess to Internet in case of Mexicoit’s almost 56 percent so it goesfurther and uh when talking about theimportance of internet and Rebecca wastalking about scholarships and to haveto look for jobs and this kind of thingI would like to to share with you anexample of a principle he is in a in aindigenous school near near MeridaMerida is the capital of Japan and uh sohere is a he received a notice that hehad to shut down his school because hehad not not students for the next schoolyear and he said why because all of mystudents love to be here because she’s avery nice School the thing wastechnologythe the parents must register thestudents online most of the parents theydon’t know how to do it so the principalhad to go to each of the houses to helpthe parents to register the studentsthat’s how he saves his goal that’s theimportance of of internet I think andwhat we have been working is we havethis uh these systems for schools thereis this program comes from profoturothat is this system that needs nointernet in schools they we need aninternet and they have this software andstudents can do it this works very goodin this community that have no internetaccess but when pandemic began it wasn’tworking anymore so what we focused wason the teachers so the teachers gettrained in order to help the students tocontinue learning and when I waslistening to James I remind that all thetraining was focused on using apps forthe mobile devices because the more manyof the teachers just have mobile devicesthey don’t have computers and besidesthat the students they have just mobiledevices so we have to focus on that so Ithink technology need to gives us giveus data but it gives us a barriers ofpossibilities that we must adapt to thecontext we cannot we cannot use the sametechnology in the urban areas than inthe rural areas that I that’s what Iwould like to share and Sami thank youthank youyeah and and so you guys all work fororganizations that are not-for-profitorganizationsand a lot of the issues that you’retalking about are also structural innature uh what I mean by that is partsof the solution live with governmentsparts of the solutions live with theprivate sector which in a lot ofcountries the private sector are thepeople who uh put up telecommunicationsinfrastructure right these are privatecorporations and a lot of of areasum and access and affordability ofinternet internet tools whether it’s acost of access to the internet whetherit’s the cost of a computer the cost ofa mobile device the cost of asubscription uh to these Services theseare often set by the private sector alsoso non-profits are often doing moresubstantially more in a social goodspace in the social impact space thanfor example the public and privatesector which are often Capital driven myquestion for you all is how does yournon-profit organization partner andcollaborate in the space to ensure thatthere’s a uh a kind of a group solutionor a cross-sectoral solution to changecan nonprofits solve this in a vacuumand what needs to be done to facilitatecollaboration to for example change theschool systems or change the waytechnology is distributed or changeaccess and affordability uh totechnology uh James I’m going to changeup the order here and come back to youand you have the questions againprogressively harder like a an AI fueledexam is that the intentionI I think I think again there’s there’sum you know ngos kind of by theirdefinition really should focus onInnovation because ngos usually serve apopulation that eitherum are underserved by you know theirGeneral resources themselves orgovernment isn’t reaching themum but it is very difficult for NGO toscale a submission purely because theway ngos are funded you know there’sthere’s a handful of transactions umthat you have to spend a lot of time todo and so so you know for a solution tobe scaled if there’s a a market for itthen that’s usually the best way toscale it and then there isn’t then thengovernment should do it and I thinkeducation as much as all these hugechanges are happening there needs to bea really good and clear focus on whatBasics public education needs to providebecause the scale at which governmentsfund public education you knowcompletelyum overwhelms anything that can be donelike in the in the private or thenon-profit sectorum and I think but the challenge ofgovernments is very very difficult forthem to innovate you know so for examplein our case the ability to get aWhatsApp line up and running within amatter of weeks to bring a number ofdifferent partners involved that kind ofprocess is very difficult for governmentto do and ngos have set up a property soin our case you know we had an mou withgovernment you know know it was like wasalmost able to do something like apublic-private partnership but withoutthe long lead time of a big PPP becausethe risks were sort of aligned in theright ways I mean so governments I thinkum are responsible for trying to improveum Innovation themselves but we alsoneed to put more pressure on them tomove faster and provide the basics youknow South Africa has had a white paperon Bridging the digital divide since2004 and most of our provinces havefailed miserably in providing thosebasic services and there are lots ofreasons for that you know South Africaduring the 70s and 80s invested heavilyin education but only for limitedproportion of our population and wewrapped up a lot of dates in doing thatsomething like 20 billion dollarspost-aparte South Africa focused onpaying off their heads and as we try tocorrect our education system at the sametime we very consciously decided tounder invest in education so the amountof money that we spend as a governmentper learner is hugely unequal based onwhere you are and that kind ofinequality you know is not acceptableand countries that have succeeded likeFinland which in the 60s was far behindits peers you know people think thatstory is about innovation in a way it’snot it’s just about a nationalcommitment that the best school will bethe school closest to me for everyfamily you know and and you see thatagain even post covert in places likethe US where sadly there’s thisrecognition that you have to invest ineducation so if you look at the 50billion dollars the US recently notquite wrote off but but restructuredaround student debts it’s a massiverecognition that those debts need to beworn by the public groups otherwise usas a society need to invest in our youngpeople so that we can reap the rewardsand you’ve seen those benefits in placeslike Singapore you know in Malaysia tooyou know and in you know toughercircumstancesum China has been the leading examplethe amounts of money that’s been so Ithink ngos can innovate but ngos mustalso keep putting pressure on governmentwhich should be representing Us indemocracies to be making the Investmentsthey need to make and the private sectorneeds to notum constantly encourage A system thatpurely focused on onprivatizing profits necessarily withoutbeing able to put its fair share backinto Investments and we need to investto get the outcomes every Wednesdayit’s very helpful uh and I’m sure Mearsthe needs in a lot of other geographiesand placesum Jessica uh can you speak about publicprivate Partnerships and NGO Solutionsin in your uh realityyes I I agree with James that uh ngoshave a very important role in this butuh thinking about how how public andprivate can work together I was thinkingthat the thewe must find these points of into acommon point of interest in order tocreate this this project and ngos mustget into politics I think we have to toget these uh these bills in order topressure for changes I think that CivilSociety must uh must push in order tohave these changes Mexico needs Mexicohas been suffering for different reformseducation reforms that we don’t haveresolved we don’t have research abouthow the accurate the changes of work outwe only have pizza and the results arenot very not not very optimistic so I II would say this I think the ngos mustmust read what’s going on in the publicin the public sector and to look forthis common points of interest in orderwe can work together and then we have toget into politics in order to pressurefor changesRebeccaover to youso much so many good points has beenshared but I think I agree about themulti-stakeholder engagement I think ina perfect world we might not neednon-profits or NGO to exist because thegovernment will be doing a really goodjob but I think it’s notright to also say okay you know one isbetter than the otherum so I think government have beentrying to create space where they inviteNGO the private sector the public tocome and share and give ideas so I thinkthat’s a really good moveum in Malaysia we also have for theprivate companies we have what we callCSR or corporate social responsibilityum so even companies like HP they workwith teach for Malaysia to empower thebottom 40 of the country population bygivingdevices and trainings with teach forteachers and students so I thinkprivate companies pay a really big roleum government as well and so NGO and Ithink also there’s an increase of whatwe call impact investorsso people who want to you know invest tosee the growthum and impact that you can see in thestudents in a community and not justdollar and centsum so that has been really encouragingto see different parties play them rolethanksand I just want to encourage ourlisteners if you have any questionsplease pop them in the the chat boxthere’s a question uh q a box and we’rehappy to to get to thoseum alsoum I want to follow up on something youlike you all mentioned which is kind ofthe role of public private Partnershipsand in all of your organizations arevery uniquely addressingum parts of the educational Gap inaccess to educationum when we were talking you know inpreparation for the session I wastalking kind of about traditional versusnon-traditional educationand I do think it’s an important thingto talk about because in the educationspace there is increasinglyconversations around what are weteaching and is it important and all ofyou mentioned kind of the pipeline toemployment like what is the purposefundamentally of an education system isit to help people get a job is it tohelp set you up for a successful lifeand these are all questions that I thinkwe’re asking ourselves and we’reincreasingly talking about and makingspace forum you know I jokingly shared that youknow I graduated not knowing how tocreate a financial spreadsheet to managemy finances but I knew trigonometrywhich you know I’ve never ever used eversince I closed my textbook and leftcollege or left uh high school so myquestion for you all as you’reapproaching your work and the work thatyour nonprofits are doing how do you alllook at education how may I even ask howdo you Define education what is itspurpose in the work that you are aredoing and I know James you said myquestions were getting harder and harderand here we are now getting intoexistential crisis of the educationsystem but I do think it’s importantwhen we’re talking about kind of therole of also the government and you talkJames about Innovation and innovation inthe space of non-profits but you knoware we also having conversations aroundwhat we teach and why and what is thepurposethan of Education because if we don’tfundamentally just because you talkedabout agree on the purpose then are weall collaborating to solve around thesame problem JamesI I love to answer that one I thinkactually while that question isdifficult I don’t think the answer to itis necessarily that contested and it’squite Universal in some ways so soeducation used to be in a cynical senseprimarily about controlling people so itwas about you know what children had todo during the day so the parents wouldgo to work and then it was aboutstreaming in other words who’s going tobecome the manager who’s going to becomethe soldier who’s going to become thethe blue collar worker and and thatsystem itself in a place like SouthAfrica but around the world has hasevolved and changed in such a way thatum the pipeline approach the sort ofmechanical understanding of how schoolsystems should work doesn’t hold toanymore you know so so in South Africawe look at young people as younger than35 and we haven’t been able to get thatemployment rate of of that sector below40 for almost 10 years um so there’s nodoubt that we are failing visibly atthat if that’s the purpose of EducationWe are failing completely um so thenwhat should the purpose be and you knowour mandate is to support governmentsaround entrepreneurial education so ifyou’re going to go into an environmentwhere there’s not much formal employmentit makes logical sense that young peopleshould be job creators not just jobSeekers right so I mean that is as anendurance support governments and tryingto figure out what shouldentrepreneurial education look like wehave entrepreneurship education bothinto some of our curricula already andso it looks long and hard at the scienceof learning which is again a lot ofglobal consents and survivors itbasically says that human nature is toself-actualize it’s defined purpose andmeaning in your life and any child willlearn if they have a combination of asense of belonging so that’s everythingfrom cloth size to whatever if thelearning itself is actually engagingjoyful iterative you know you guys allthe experts in that space if there’sspace for them to grow the socialemotional learning parts and then ifthey’re getting supports you know thosefour kind of components first things arenotoriously difficult to do and that’swhy income is such a proxy for Successyou know people always say education isthe way out of poverty the sad realityis that it often works the other wayaround you know poverty destroyseducation outcomes but we do know thereare certain things that are our leversthat are triggers up and so we focus alot on an entrepreneurial mindset whichfor us is this innate desire to exploretry things do new things and to addvalue for others we all feel good whenwe make a difference and children areconstantly trying to explore and try newthings so it’s not about finding anentrepreneurial mindset or evendeveloping it it’s about making surethat school doesn’t destroy it andallowing teachers to focus on therelationship with the child you know tocreate a caring environment for them andthen this is where the public privatePartnerships come in it’s recognizingthatthe path that young people have definedthe journey that they are to figure outhow are they going to add meaning youknow that that guy idea of like whereare the biggest problems in the worldwhat are my gifts and strengths and howcan I add that again if we can helppeople find that journey and that’s avery local question in your localcommunity enables and that’s what’sgoing to drive the economy too that’swhat’s going to make sure thatactivities are happening Solutions arecoming and so much of that economicactivity is going to be driven by dataso edtech is not just about using greatdevices it’s about having betterinsights into what people might needthat you get through the data and thenmaking decisions and how to add valueand run businesses so I think that bigmental switch is really important andthe most powerful way to do that is tofocus on building relationships andcaring environments which are verydifficult to do with technology alone sothat of course is the you know the thetrick there is no Silver Bullet um buttechnology is a great way to get gooddata and you can’t and improve things ifyou don’t have good data that you canconstantly assess and iterate and getbetterwe should talk about the entrepreneurialmindset and I think um so often again wetalk about entrepreneurship as as a as aprocess it’s an outputum but you’re absolutely right it isdefinitely also a process of thinking aprocess of iterating the skills that welearn through an entrepreneurial processis really learning how to adapt how tobe agile how togather information make informeddecisions uh but so often it’s boileddown unfortunatelyum to a conversation on a product outputwhich uh is a part of it which is whyincreasingly we use the term socialInnovation uh and not necessarily justum just entrepreneurship Rebecca youguys through the programs at dignity forchildren Foundation also work outside ofthe Traditional School Systemum and as the head of Education I’d posethe same question to you around what isthe role of Education as you all see areare you trying to close the gap withwhat the government is not providing tothe students that you all serve throughyour centers or you know have youdefined your own model for whateducational needs these children areneed in order to succeed in the worldthings has beenbecause I think we are continuouslylearning andimproving ourselves but what we havefound in our 25 years of learning andstill learning is thatthe traditional way of teaching or doingeducation limits creativityum it justgo with what the teacher want to teachso what we are trying to do in ourCenter is child what we call Childdirected learning so it’s veryMontessorium so how we do that for the youngerchildrenum the environment is very important sothey come into the space we have childsize tables and chairs for example eventhe toilets is child size for exampleand you don’t go in and be attacked bylike rainbow colors right blue greenum it’s actually very calming if youcome to our Center you will seeeverything is neutral color verywelcoming so we believe that it startsfrom the environment where the childneeds to feel welcome many of thesechildren come from very traumaticbackgrounds so they need to enter aspaceis welcoming and for the older kids webring them away from the comfort oftheir home anywhere from one month tothree months we bring them for what wecall travel and learnum so they learn to be independent theylearn to have to wash their own clothescook and we also have what we callskills so they learn practical skillsbecause we feel that learning has to bebased in real lifeso they have to sew they have to cookthey have to do all these things thatthey don’t normally like the traditionaleducation system might offer but I thinkthe most important thing is probably theCuriosity to learnbecauseeven after they graduate if they couldsomehow instill that they will findtheir own answers like the Gen Znowadays do you need to really teachthem anythingum they could just click and they’relike teacher this is what it sayst-shirt that do you not know thisum so I think we can’t really teach themsomething that they won’t be able tofind out by themselves so I think if wecould somehow instill that Curiosity tolearn or find your own answersum and that resilience and theircharacter I think that would be reallysomething that we all want to try toachieve thank youand Jessica you are working throughidiac through the Traditional SchoolSystemum if I’m not mistaken does idiotic haveexternal centers are you guys primarilyworking through the school systemuh we are working through the throughthe traditional system doing in publicschoolsyeah which is a very important Point toobecause you’re also supporting andboosting the work of the educationsystem in a traditional way so you’retrying to innovate within thetraditional education system which is anuphill battle in and of itselfum so my question to you around kind ofinnovationum and and the purpose of Education asyou see it through the work of of idiotcould you uh talk to us a bit more aboutthat sure I I was thinking about thisquestion and I would say that educationthe traditional education used to takeeverything for granted that teacherteachers and the students used to obeyright and but now it’s not it’s not likethis I don’t think if it is in any partof the world but in Mexico it’s not thatthat but I would say that the purpose ofeducation is students may may choosetheir future and they can participate indemocracy and also education must be theway of uh to have equity and and inMexico there’s no social equity and thesocial social Mobility has going hasgone down so if you if you are born in ain a poor neighborhood you will probablydie in a poor neighborhood which is notvery nice and I think it’s not fair foreveryone so we must we must work inorder to have education to be a changeto to make all the students who have thesame opportunity because we have now wehave this gap between the private schoolstudents and the public school studentsand the private school students are just10 percent of the population so that’sreally really bad and when talking aboutuhabout the working in the traditionalschools it has I mean I I would say thatuh we must work on on the printing withthe principles because the principlesmust have this uh this open mind inorder to innovate and the leader is oneof the is it’s a key it it’s a keyfactor in the schools to be successfulbecause if the leader goes for changethat change will be done but if we don’thave a change a little focus on the onchanging Innovation the schools won’t goand there will be just a little effortfrom from innovators teachers and that’sit that’s why that focus on the on theprincipal trainer so they have this openmind in order not to take a not to takeit for granted but to think about whatuh what the students need they need newskills they need the learning to learnthey need cognitive flexibility theyneed Multicultural teamwork abilities sothese kind of things is the ones thatthey need now just Ido we need another another point of viewthey need another skills in order tohave success and this doesn’t mean thatwe don’t need how to how to read and howto do math but we we have to focus andand I think we have to focus on the onthe teachers training too because weneed teachers to think in another way tome and they these teachers need torecognize themselves as they arepromoting changesso they have to be very responsible ofwhat they are doing not to not to do thesame thing every year to repeat thatcurriculum but to have these newactivities and to have this uh to havethis uh new new view and to get incontact with the world I I think thatschool used to be very close and not tobe in contact with the world and nowthey should do it in order to satisfywhat the society needs to have a bettercountry and a better worldwhen it’s interesting you talk aboutcountry uh also on a global level and abetter world one of the questions thatwe have from our audience is how do weengage policy makers and stakeholders toacknowledge that education is not just adomestic policy issue but also anational security issue because thestability peace and prosperity for bothpeople on the planet which is thesustainable development agenda as manyof you may be aware is impacted also bystability of young people we know thatthere is oftentimes unfortunately apipeline where children do not receivesupport that they need um ends up youknow we have increase in bullying andgang violence andum and all types of things that areimpacting young people Mental Healthcrisis around youth that we haven’texperienced in decades prior it’s animportant question because we’re talkingnow about how do you then have aconversation about education that’s notjust about education but about Nationaland security and global piece feel freewhoever of you feels like you can answerthat feel free to jump inyeah I canum Rebecca spoke about um teach forMalaysia and a really interesting uhpiece that teaches role in a bunch ofother education education thinkers puttogether that really resonated with mewhere they spoke about if you want tochange in education system the threethings you need to work out are purposepower and practice obviously that theygot their integration rightthey’re very active getting people totalk about what should our education doyou know what are our local situationswhat do we need that itself will approveeducation so in South Africa for examplethere’s a conversation at the momentsLED through the unions through theacademics through others about how do weInfuse skills and competencies into theschool curriculum so it already existsin certain ways um but it’s not reallymeasured or assessed in the same way sohow can we explicitly decide what’simportant to us and how do we measurethem you know and the things that areemerging there are some cross-cuttingthemes one of them is sustainabilityanother one is livelihoods and then alsothis idea of values you know and SouthAfrica has a tradition of Ubuntu thesense that I am because of those aroundme and there’s a steepee there accordingto many people hear me you say he was aacademic in the in the 70s who said thatthe waste gift to the world is anindustrial and a military dog Africa’sgreat gift to the world is going to bein the field of human relations it’sgoing to be a more human face right andthat was so appreciates because that’sthe same thing without the world thatbelonging Forum says about you knowprotecting ourselves from from rapidlychanging Technologies is we focus onwhat makes us unique human we focus inour relationships and so for all thequestions people are asking there is noeasy answerum but collaborative problem solving isanother skill that the word learningForum says should be taught in schoolsand countries like South Africa wouldbenefit economically from bettercollaborative problems and it’sdifficult to do it and you know there’slots of evidence that says the bestthing you can do for teachers is givenpaid time to solve problems together noton top of the normal day-to-day work butwhen someone else is living after bigclass let them focus on on problems andif you can give them good data about forexample their math levels that helpsthem think okay not just I’m going toget wrapped over the knuckles because myclass is worse more important than theother teacher but what am I going to trythis week that might improve the resultsjust a little bit and what am I going totry next week and then iteratively makethings better and make things better andthat’s very much the way that thecorporate sector works you often focuson the bottom line of you know either orcash or return our investments but it’sthat laser focus on one indicator thatcan make the business sector workbecause no Magic Bullets in business sowe in education need to pick a fewindicators that we really care about forus it’s intrigueneal mindsets for othersit might be you know social emotionalindicators pick some indicators use themto get better at what you do and usethem to collaborate around issues youknow so someone spoke about blockchainhere in a blockchain sector in aspecific industry you know get somepeople around the problem and worktogether and then when the incentivesare aligned at this scale you know theteacher connect service that we runright now is more than 500 000 userswe’re very proud of it we think we do afantastic job it has a very playfulpersonality it’s very well run very verylow cost it’s an amazing amazing toolbut what made it grow so fast is it washelping to solve problems there wereyoung people that were serving inschools as part of a stimulus projectthe Department of Education was managingmore than a hundred thousand of them ata time to go and help schools open afterthe covert lockdown and there was no wayfor the principals and those youngpeople to communicate and get on boardand talk to each other so they useteaching connects and it became thisamazing Innovation space and every weekall the different managers in theDepartments ourselves other ngos wecould meet weekly for an hour we couldSATs out problems we could try thingsiterate do things again the next weekyou know it’s very difficult to worklike that across different departmentsbut that collaboration is what we needto do and ngos believe the way inshowing business and government how todo that kind of collaborationand we are we are dwindling down on timewe have a a lot of questions in the chatbox and several speakers have asked ifyou all can share your email addressesor several of the attendees if you’reinterested in staying involved so umspeakers if you uh don’t mind uh pleasefeel free to pop your email uh addressif you wish to share it in the chat boxuh the as we kind of conclude our time Ido want to ask somebody did talk abouthigher education and I know we focused alot on uh primary secondary educationum and all of your organizations Focusprimarily on childrenum and primary and secondary educationbut as we’re thinking ahead about kindof education can you touch on theeducation system as a whole what do weneed to do to close the digital EquityGap that exists in also colleges in highschool graduate programs and variousother programsum can you kind of maybe give us somehope as we wind down on our timetogether on how can we close the digitaldivide across the entire spectrum of theeducation system including college levelJessica if you want to start yes I wasthinking about this because yes therethere this this digital Gap it’s heavyit’s very visible when when the kidsfinish when these young people finishcollege because there’s a differencewhen hiring people from private collegesand from from public colleges but uh I Ithink I need your ngos can be this uhthe this bridge between the the collegesand and maybe the the private theprivate organization the this kind of umbusiness and they they will be they willbe interested in supporting as uh asthey see that they have more uhprofessional people that they can hireand this will be this there will be abenefit for their organizations so maybeI think we can as NGO we can make uhmake them umrealize that it’s it’s very very good toinvest in education especially incolleges because they will they willhire better peoplethat that’s what I would sayand Rebecca do you want to add I thoughtas we wrap upyeah there’s always needum but I think good people like you knowAspen and HP I thinkthat gives me hope I think that givesall of us hope that there is somethingbeing done about that so I thinksomewhere in the participant was askingyou know what what is being done youknow what can we do and I think thatcould be one of the feeling that everytime we go for these conferences we wego away okay how what can I doum so don’t lose hope don’t bediscouraged I think if anythingum there is definitely hope there’s allthese good peopleum and all of you were sharing differentorganizations that you were with I thinkum we are moving in the right directionif all of us can just do our small bityeah yougreat well thank you all the speakershave shared their email addresses andtheir contact information in the chatbox so please do check that out um andwe do invite you to attend our upcomingum and finalum Series in this uh conversation inthis series which will focus onentrepreneurship in the digital divide alot of what we talked about todayum and we’re going to be presenting thatin collaboration with our colleagues atthe Aspen Institute the Aspen network ofdevelopment entrepreneurs so do sign upfor our newsletter to be notified on thedate for thatum but please join me in thanking ouramazing speakers James Jessica andRebecca for not only the insights thatyou provided on this conversation butfor the work that you’re doing everysingle day to impact the lives of peoplein your communities so thank you to youand your colleague colleagues and foreveryone who is joining us uh we lookforward to continued conversations thankyou

The numbers are staggering: 1.6 billion students faced learning disruptions as a result of COVID-19 – and half of those did not have access to a computer at home. Without digital access, use, and fluency, students are excluded from access to economic opportunity, education, healthcare and experience worsening discrimination and social isolation. 

New research shows these effects are lifelong, affecting not just the student but their families’ and communities’ ability to build strong economic futures. 

Not all interventions are created equal. What do we know about what works – and what doesn’t – for closing the generational digital divide? How can we build robust cohorts of young people skilled in digital literacy and with access to job pathways? What are effective models of closing the “last mile” access gap for educators and students?

This conversation showcases organizations around the world that have been working in their communities to close the generational digital divide, do it equitably, and build solutions that work so that youth can use technology to achieve their dreams.