image: These are students at a school in rural Uganda, where the Results for Development Institute has partners and programs working to improve education through localized monitoring of teacher absenteeism and searching for innovative models for delivering skills for employment to secondary-school aged students. view more
Credit: Courtney Heck/R4D
WASHINGTON – Results for Development Institute (R4D) is excited to announce the winners of the 2012 Innovative Secondary Education for Skills Enhancement (ISESE) Competition – a competition to uncover innovative, replicable models to equip youth with the skills for success in today's global economy.
"The winners and runners-up are very promising. Though having discovered this many innovative models in just 12 countries, imagine how many more outstanding examples there are for us to learn from in other parts of the world," says Nicholas Burnett, managing director at Results for Development Institute.
With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, R4D is working on projects that identify and explore innovative models of skills delivery at the secondary level in twelve African and Asian countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
R4D launched the ISESE Competition on the Ashoka Changemakers platform to recognize innovative models that are currently being implemented.
The competition's panel of judges, comprised of Angelique Kidjo, Grammy-winning West African singer, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and Founder of the Batonga Foundation; Bob Adamson, professor of Curriculum Studies, Hong Kong Institute of Education; Mwihaki Kimura Muraguri, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation; Nicholas Burnett, Managing Director, Results for Development Institute; and Rose Musau, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Preferred Personnel Africa, have selected the following participants for their outstanding education models:
Winners ($1,000 Cash Prize Each):
- India's Yuwa: Kicking It New School provides girls the opportunity to develop self-confidence and leadership skills by joining soccer teams, and a better education through its building bridges programs.
- Senegal's Improving the Quality and Relevance of Middle School program works with the Minister of Education, civil society, and businesses to reform middle-school curriculum to teach 21st century skills.
Runners-Up ($500 Cash Prize Each):
- IT Training for Youth with Disabilities addresses Vietnam's lack of employment opportunities for people with disabilities by providing advanced technical training, soft-skills training, and networking with potential employers.
- Lend-A-Hand India's Multi-Skill Vocational Training and Entrepreneurship Development as Part of Secondary Education program in government-aided schools blends traditional academic work and hands-on projects to emphasize relevant skills students need in rural areas.
- Tanzania's Emusoi Centre provides academic and vocational education for secondary school age Maasai girls. The center helps young women transition from traditional lifestyles to multi-cultural/multi-tribal environments by providing academic, social and psychological mentorship.
In addition to the recipients listed above, special mentions of five additional models will be featured on the Results for Development website in our ongoing educational blog series (http://resultsfordevelopment.org/blog/2012-07-23/isese-competition-yuwa-%E2%80%93-kicking-it-new-school)
For more about the competition, visit http://changemakers.com/ISESE.
For more about R4D's work in global education, visit http://resultsfordevelopment.org/focus-areas/global-education
About the ISESE Competition
The ISESE Competition aims to identify and explore models that promote innovative secondary education for skills enhancement in Africa and Asia. High quality and relevant secondary education provides youth with the skills, knowledge and competencies needed for employment, which results in an increase in future income and economic development.
About Ashoka's Changemakers
Changemakers is a global online community that supports everyone's ability to be a changemaker and to inspire, mentor, and collaborate with other members of the community at every level of changemaking. Changemakers identifies and connects the best social innovators and implementers through online competitions and changeshops, an online network for scaling-up innovation. Participants compete to surface the most promising solutions, and then collaborate to refine, enrich, and implement them. Changeshops offer a place to plug game-changing ideas into networks of resources, talent, and support. Changemakers builds on Ashoka's three-decade history of transforming the citizen sector by building the largest association of leading social entrepreneurs in the world.
About Results for Development Institute
R4D is a non-profit organization whose mission is to unlock solutions to tough development challenges that prevent people in low- and middle-income countries from realizing their full potential. Using multiple approaches in multiple sectors including, Global Education, Global Health, Governance and Market Dynamics, R4D supports the discovery and implementation of new ideas for reducing poverty and improving lives around the world.