The “I Want To Be Program opens the minds of children and their families to what they can become in their communities. It leads the kids on a journey of self-discovery using interviews with local professionals, teamwork and field trips to companies. The program is a combination of a computer application, homework assignments and field visits.
To Be Worldwide, founded in 2002 by Nellie Kirschner-Timmer (Ghanaian/Dutch), developed the concept of an Educational Resource Centers (ERC) to help children ages 6-15 of predominately from public schools were facilities are lacking, realize their full potential. The Centres include a computer lab with 40 computers, a children’s library and lessons programs. Over 12000 children have enrolled at our Centres. We cooperate closely with the Ghana Education Services, providing computer lessons to local schools during school hours as well. To Be Worldwide is registered in Ghana and the Netherlands, with a full board in each country. She has won the Global Junior Award in 2009 for her work.
Helping children realize their full potential for a better future includes helping them understand their talents and how to develop these. And most important “why” they need to be developed and what opportunities this can lead to.
An expanding middle class and recent oil finds off the coast introduce a host of new career opportunities. Children in Ghana, however, have a narrow and often unrealistic view of career options. When researching kids’ ambitions, 95% of children told us they wanted to be a ‘doctor’ or ‘lawyer’. It is also uncommon for children to voice their own opinions in Ghana, given the large role family and church play in their lives. Children base their ambitions on what their environment thinks will bring them status and wealth. As a result, with no understanding of the possibilities and with immediate financial needs pressing, most children forgo higher education. They leave school at age 16 to take a low paying job and help out with the family’s finances.
Compounding this issue is the fact that Ghana’s schools offer limited career counseling. Children choose orientation courses in Junior High School without much awareness on how this relates to careers. Many teachers don’t know the steps towards a certain career either. Children generally pick the same courses their friends have selected.
To help children and their parents explore more realistic career goals and understand paths to achieve them, To Be Worldwide developed the “I Want To Be” Program. View a short demo of the application here http://www.cnote.nl/tobe/demo/demo.html . (Demo mentions a 2 month period. With all learnings it is now run in 3 weeks consecutively).
The ‘I Want To Be’ Program and computer application aims to open the minds of children and their families to what they can become in their communities, and encourage them to stay in school longer. The program leads the kids on a journey of self-discovery using interviews with local professionals, teamwork and field trips to companies.
Children are selected to participate in this program by the Ghana Education Services in cooperation with the To Be Worldwide Team. This allows us to put together a group of children from members of the Education Centre and children from local public schools.
A typical “I Want To Be” Program is run over a period of 3 weeks with sessions of 4 hours a day. Homework assignments are also part of the program. 40 children are offered the opportunity to participate. A carefully selected team, including members of the Ghana Education Services, is responsible for running the program. The parents of the children are also involved at different stages during the program, to ensure their commitment to the changes and ideas their children may want and have. Children and their parents are invited to an introductory session, where the goals of the program are explained and the expectations from all parties are discussed. On 2 occasion groups of children will visit companies to learn about their operations and they also visit Professionals to interview them and learn about their jobs. On return to the Centre, the groups prepare their presentation for their fellow students and their parents who are then invited.
The children learn what the career opportunities are in their communities, while improving their writing, presentation and computer skills. At the end of the course, they are able to voice their own desires and ideas about their future.
View a short demo of the application here http://www.cnote.nl/tobe/demo/demo.html (Demo mentions a 2 month period. With all learnings it is now run in 3 weeks consecutively).
The ERC where the “I Want To Be” program is run, has 1000 individual new enrolments annually, plus 7 schools with a class of approx. 45 children each (total 315 weekly) that follow ICT courses. The “I Want To Be” Program caters to 40 children annually (permitted by budget). Weekly we welcome over 500 children. We have not measured what the interaction is on a monthly basis.
Children visit the Centre to read and borrow books, follow reading classes, work with educational material, take ICT classes and use the e-learning material. They can also take part in creative activities such as drawing.
We have learnt that the “I Want To Be” Program brings out an incredible change in the children participating. There is such a clear tangible development of the various skills addressed by the program when children are evaluated at the end of the 3-week program.
We feel that we could help others realise that you can develop educational programs for children that are layered in skill development, effective and very important, a lot of fun for the children participating.
To make such programs effective they really need to be embraced by all stakeholders (min. of Education, Schools, parents etc.) Such a process takes time and patience, particularly because a sense of ownership needs to be developed. Working closely with ministries of Education is essential to achieve such a success.
By documenting most of our programs at the Educational Resource Centre, including the “I Want To Be” Program, we believe we can make it easier to share our learnings with interested partner organizations in the future. Sharing could e.g. include access to the teaching manuals and on the job training at our Centre to experience the program.
