When we set up the Condor Trust we did not think too deeply about larger issues. Over the seven years we’ve been funding students though, we’ve had plenty of time to reflect on the larger issues, to see the results of what we’re doing and to think how we can work more effectively. Without our financial backing, most of the students we support would be working informally, probably selling anything from clothes to Coca Cola, or would be hanging around at home or on the streets. “If I wasn’t studying at university, I’d have been married years ago and already have several children”, Mireya (pictured with her family above), one of our students told me last year – before adding “I’m so pleased I’m studying!”

Mireya lives in an indigenous community at the edge of the rainforest, where very few people have more than a basic education. Some of the older generation can hardly speak Spanish, which makes daily life difficult, and many cannot read or write. They are generally very supportive of Mireya and see education as a way to prosperity and a dignified life. Mireya has also had a clear impact on her younger brothers and sisters, who see her as a model of what can be achieved with hard work and a bit of support. In another year or so, Mireya should graduate in accountancy and should have no problem finding a good job in the town near where she lives. This will give her not just a regular income, but also respect and dignity for herself, her family and her community. “I’m the first in my family to finish secondary school and to go to university, and I want everyone to benefit from it,” she told me.

In Quito, similar transformations have happened. Young people usually come to us lacking confidence, unsure of their abilities or the future. Meeting other students from similar backgrounds, talking to our volunteers who can help with problems, whether academic or social, and being able to go regularly to school without money worries, all this nearly always changes them gradually into bright and confident young adults. And this optimism spreads quickly to their mums, many of whom were depressed because they couldn’t give their children the education they wanted, and also to their brothers and sisters and friends. On my last visit, I introduced myself to an enthusiastic young woman helping at our Homework Centre and had been speaking to her for some while before I realised she was a mum I’d met the previous year, when she’d looked ten years older and been unable to talk through her tears.

Although the young people we support go to several different schools, depending on where they live, they come to our Homework Centre in the evenings and at weekends, when we organise classes and other events. As a result, they get to know each other and form friendships. One of the best things to have happened, more or less spontaneously, has been that many of the older students regularly volunteer to help the younger ones. Several of them have also recently spent their holidays volunteering with a charity that builds houses for homeless families. We hope that when they complete their education this spirit of solidarity and participation will continue to be something our students bring to the communities in which they live and work.

The young people we support see education as a way out of poverty for themselves and their families. Gradually though, many see it, as we do, as far more than the ability to earn an income. It is the difference between, on the one hand, sitting on a windblown hill on the outskirts of Quito or in a sticky hut near the rainforest and feeling abandoned and hopeless, and, on the other, in feeling part of society and in control of your own life. And once people feel this, they can begin to change things. Whether they become accountants, dentists, bricklayers or electricians, we hope that our students will pass on to others what they have fought so hard themselves to achieve.

Here at EdGen we’re in the midst of developing a new campaign whereby community members “give up” their birthday in support of EdGen scholarship students. The plan for now is pretty simple – 1) you let us know if you’re interested (either via email or HERE!), 2) we find some exciting scholarships to challenge your network to fund for your birthday, and 3) we put up a blog post like this one to kick it off!

Our first participant is Sean Peters – check out his pitch!

This February I’m turning 28. The past few years have been pretty amazing, and I’m really excited for what 28 holds. I’ve been lucky to receive a great education in Canada, and all of the opportunity that holds. Unfortunately, for many people in the world access to quality education is difficult to realize.

I don’t really need the new Justin Beiber CD or another pair of socks, but it would make me really happy to see some amazing students gain access to education. So, instead of buying me a gift, I’m asking all of my friends to help me support two students through Education Generation:

• Ninah Kenyana, studying Hospitality Management in Kigali, Rwanda.
  

  Jimmy

  

  Ninah

• Jimmy Vicente, studying Environmental and Resource Management in Quito, Ecuador. Jimmy is with the partner organization that riders meet with on Global Agent’s Riding to Break theCycle Ecuador tour I did last summer.

Access to quality education is one of the most impactful ways for those living below the global poverty line to improve their own lives, and its terrible to think that those who deserve it don’t get the chance to grow their abilities. Lets change that.

Let EdGen know if your birthday is coming up and you’d like to celebrate with us! Send us a note to info@educationgeneration.org

Tell me about yourself and the work of 2020 Communications.

Four years ago I started 2020 Communications. I was working in a corporate job and was miserable. I took a personal development course with Bob Proctor, and woke up to the truth that I wanted to do something with my life. I wanted to change the world by sharing what I learned with other people.

With an angel investor, a hearts desire to start something, and no business plan, I started my business as a life coach. I want everyone to live their dream. Everyone can go out, embrace life and do something meaningful. As a life coach, I help people design their life in a way that matches their most authentic self. But I think of myself as a teacher more than anything.

How did you hear about us?

I follow the work of many female entrepreneurial leaders and one of them is Marie Forleo. She had exponential growth in her business because she had taken time to align herself with a philanthropic cause that was meaningful to her. I took her advice to heart and started to look for a partner who I could share my success with.  That’s when I found Education Generation.

Entrepreneurship is challenging, you have to take a tonne of risk and it can take a toll. I want to do something I believe in. I needed to follow my internal compass.

What attracted you to support the work of Education Generation?

There are two main drivers:
1. Education is a primary value in my life. Many people helped me learn something new, and helped me entertain new ideas about life – that’s how I’ve continued to grow and change.

2. The majority of the financial impact at Education Generation is actually going to the ground, at the grass roots. I want to make a ground-level difference. I was impressed with the diligence Education Generation has gone through to make sure this was the case.

What does a quality education mean to you?

A quality education, to me, is about implementation. It means giving people knowledge that’s actually going to make a fundamental difference in their life and quality of life. It comes down to action. How can you take information and act on it – that’s where you’re going to see the difference.

Tell us about someone who has inspired you, and why this person has impacted your life.

I could list 100 people. One of those people is Hanh Nguyen, who I met while working at Gordon Food Service. I was called into the Director of Sales office, and was handed what was deemed a ‘challenging’ account.  I had allocated 20 minutes for the first meeting with my client Hanh, who was the chef. We ended up meeting for three hours as I sat in her office listening in awe to her life story. She grew up in Vietnam during very trying times. In hopes of a better life, her parents risked everything and put all their money together to put her on a boat and send her off to North America.

Hanh’s story is amazing. She lived in a refugee camp in Malaysia, came to Canada and learned English for the first time, got her red seal culinary accreditation, and on top of that started a business Simple Bookkeeping Systems. She’s now on to studying for her CMA while being a mother to three kids.

When I don’t know if I can do it, I just think about Hanh. I talked to Hanh recently, and asked her to look back at her 12 year old self, and ask ‘what would you say?’. She was speechless. She realized what she had achieved.

Favourite quote:

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
- Rumi

Find Heather White on Twitter and Facebook or at www.heatherwhite.ca.

As a deadline warrior you become part of a tribe that makes the commitment to collectively fund (or find others who would want to fund) just $20 towards an individual scholarship – as a warrior, you can choose your challenge and choose to participate, or be excluded from one. We understand that even warriors need breaks.

We are starting with 14 warriors (myself included), we are each donating $20 and convincing ONE other person to do so then BAM, we’ll be done.

All a warrior does is:

a) go to www.educationgeneration.org and donate ONLY to one of the students with an urgent deadline.

b) Post the following to their Facebook wall, Twitter or E-mail – even better if you substitute the link with a link to the student you supported. i.e.

“Alice, Claudette and Irene in Rwanda need their scholarships funded by Sunday. I’ve joined a group of people contributing $20 each, and need ONE of you to join me – that’s it, and we’ll have all three funded. Who’s in? www.educationgeneration.org“

OR

c) find two people who would want to donate towards an urgent deadline. The post might read:

“Alice, Claudette and Irene in Rwanda need their scholarships funded by Sunday. I am Deadline Warrior (linked to this page) and need TWO of you to join me – that’s it, and we’ll have all three funded. Who’s in? www.educationgeneration.org“

Below are a few of our own staff deadline watchers in some of their favourite “warrior” photos. Let us know if you’d like to be part of this passionate tribe- as part of the tribe you’ll get weekly inspiration, updates from our team and a whole lot of gratitude and love from everyone at EdGen.

Shawn Smith

Zaya Kadyrova

Mila Lukic

Rebecca Peel

In preparing to share my thoughts for The Briefing, I’ve been thinking a lot about what has attracted me to be a part of EdGen, and why a quality education is something that’s such a core part of my values. I realized a lot came down to my upbringing in a family with immigrants parents. My dad was a Chinese immigrant who took a risk, studied really hard, and came to Canada to get a university education with almost no money (just a small loan from his uncle). He was the only one out of all his siblings to go to university and that opportunity transformed his life and also mine. When he established himself as a dentist and opened his own dental office, he took his nephews in from Hong Kong to live at our home so they could be educated in Canada. It was like getting a new older brother every few years! Unfortunately, he didn’t have long to enjoy the quality of life that an education provides. He passed away from cancer when I was only 12.

When I read about amazing women like Irene, Claudette, Alice and Anita, it reminds me of my dad’s journey to Canada in search of a quality education, and how he took that knowledge to build something that was his own. Knowledge really is power, the power to shape your own life. I hope that my work with EdGen will live up to his legacy. It’s my way of paying it forward, transforming lives the way my dad did for his nephews.

Join us this May or August for the 2012 Riding to Break the Cycle Ecuador Tours. Take two weeks to immerse yourself in Ecuador! Witness Quito’s colonial past, visit the world’s third highest active volcano, white water raft into the edges of the Amazon, take a dip in the Andean hot springs and cycle 300Km of the Route of the Spondylous- a costal stretch of pristine beaches where we’ll surf, whale watch and take time to enjoy fishermen’s towns, national parks and costal cities.

Get to know Ecuador beyond the surface, and get in touch with Ecuador’s political and social climates as we learn from people and organizations who are driving change in their communities. During your time in Ecuador you will have the opportunity to meet our Ecuador partner, the Condor Trust.

ROUTE: Quito to Quito (14 days, 300 km)

Option 1: May 6th to May 19th

Option 2: August 19th to September 1st

FEES: $1750

What’s Included: All accommodations, bike rentals, support vehicle and driver, local guide, group activities (whitewater rafting, surfing, whale watching, some museums, etc…), breakfasts, and one lunch or dinner each day.

What’s Not Included: Riders are responsible for transportation to and from Ecuador, personal travel insurance, entrance and exit fees, one lunch or dinner each day.

FUNDRAISING: $250

Each rider is responsible for raising a minimum of $250, although we encourage riders to raise a lot more and will help you in your efforts. Funds raised will support Education Generation’s work.

Read blogs from the inaugural tour at www.ecuadoragents.posterous.com

Email our friends at RTBTC for more information on the Ecuador tour: ride@globalafc.org, or call ride manager Jake Moir at 604-842-1055.

Education enhances lives. As a society, we’ve structured a good 20 years of our lives around this sector recognizing that it is crucial to our development as individuals and as societies. However, somewhere along the line, a disconnect has occurred. Between 1990 and 2010, the percentage of children who completed primary school in low-income countries increased from below 45% to more than 60% (World Bank, 2010). However, despite this progress, two regions of the developing world – South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will likely not achieve the UN Millennium Development Goal of universal primary completion by 2015. In many countries, this failure to achieve this basic threshold of education is primarily due to poverty. When we take a closer look into the sources of this disconnect, two main culprits emerge:

1) Inequitable Spending

In 2010, developing countries spent an estimated 5% of GDP on public education, comparable to the average public spending on education in OECD countries. The question then arises: if the amount of public expenditure on education is comparable in OECD countries vs. developing countries, why there is there such a gap in the percentage of children being able to go to school? A study by the World Bank suggests that the answer to this lies in the bias allocation of public education spending – benefiting the rich rather than the poor. The study found that in six different African countries, more than 30% of education spending benefited the richest 20%, while only 8 – 16% benefited the poorest 20%.

2) Funding Leaks

When you start tracking the budget allocation and education expenditure form the federal budget across state lines and finally to school, it is no secret that there is substantial ‘leakage’ in this form of public funding. In a 2005 European Journal, an article by Reinikka, Ritva and Svensson highlighted that actual share of education funding that reached Ugandan schools was less than 20%. It took concerted government action over 8 years to raise that percentage to over 80%. Now stepping back and look at the issue at hand, it almost seems overwhelming. Alarming? Yes. Solvable? Yes. At Education Generation, solving this disconnect is the core of what the team strives for by providing a funding pipeline where others fail to do so effectively. In an interview with Eileen Knowles, EdGen’s Executive director, she pointed out that one of the key things to focus besides solving this disconnect is to change donor’s mindset. EdGen wants to challenge their donor base to think of youth as equals in developing worlds. They want to continue pushing the sector and instead of using poverty as a frame for telling these kid’s stories, focus on their talents and hunger for learning as the centre for who they are. Ultimately, “education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another” – Gilbert K. Chesterton. It is our responsibility as a society to help solve this disconnect to whatever capacity that we can.