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The I Can’t Funeral Amanda ended her first day of school with an “I Can’t Funeral.” “This is a stolen treasure that has worked wonders for my class.  During my years of college I had to bring in a classroom method that I wanted to use in my class.  While browsing the Internet I came upon a true jewel,” she said. The I Can’t Funeral started with every student thinking of one thing they either did not feel successful in last year, or that often made them think, “I can’t do that.”  They each wrote their “I Can’t” on an index card.  Then, while playing very sad music, they placed the card in a “funeral box” and said their farewells to their “I Can’ts.”  They buried the “I Can’t” funeral box in Amanda’s car trunk. Amanda informed her students they were burying the words “I Can’t,” and wouldn’t be seeing them again.  They would dig up the funeral box at the end of the school year and celebrate how they had conquered their “I Can’ts.” Amanda said, “The students really enjoyed this, and I assured them each thing they couldn’t do or felt unsure about would be mastered during the school year.  It was an awesome day.” In January Amanda sent a note saying, “My students often ask when we are going to resurrect our ‘I Can’ts!’ . . . I often hear students saying they just conquered their ‘I can’t’ and we high five.” 

The poor, who make up some 45 percent of Bangladesh’s 164 million population, are the main beneficiaries of the country’s education efforts. In addition, girls have overtaken boys in rates of enrolment, attendance and completion of primary education. With over 94 percent net enrolment, Bangladesh is one of only a handful of the world’s least developed countries that are close to achieving the U.N. millennium development goals of 100 percent enrolment rate in primary schools by 2015.

For example, schools by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) – whose 1.2 million students account for 76 percent of all students in NGO-operated primary schools – are unique in that local community members decide and implement all academic programmes in consultation with parents and stakeholders. "We enrol drop out (and) non-enrolled children – mostly girls – from poor families, ensure high attendance, child friendly pedagogy and high completion of five-year academic studies in our primary schools," Safiqul Islam, director of BRAC’s education programme, told IPS.

Children and education systems are often on the front line of violent conflict. Of the world’s 72 million children who don’t attend school, about one-third live in only 20 conflict-affected countries.

The report will also explore the role of inappropriate education in fostering conflict and explore ways that education can be a force for peace, social cohesion and human dignity.

Save the Children, which in 2006 launched its campaign Rewrite the Future to get children in conflict-affected countries into school, released a report this month called The Future is Now, which points out that “civilians now make up more than 90% of casualties in the world’s conflicts and about half of those are children.”

KHAIRPUR, Nov 8, 2011 (IPS) - Sixteen-year-old Noor Bano believes nothing short of a revolution will convince the men in Malangabad – her remote village in the Khairpur district of the Sindh province, some 460 kilometres from the southern port city of Karachi – to treat women as equals.Only then, she says, will women and girls be free from forced marriages and be safe from domestic violence. Her words, unusual for such a young girl hailing from the hinterlands of rural Pakistan, take most people by surprise.

Responding to the lack of computer training in Mukteshwar’s schools, Veena Sethi, a retired Delhi University professor, set up two used personal computers in the basement of her home with the aim of bringing the basics of computing to school children.

UDAAN, however, moved on. A partnership with Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University made it possible for the NGO to introduce the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme in selected schools in Mukteshwar in May 2010. OLPC’s stated mission is to provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to some two billion children in developing countries with little or no access to education.

"The XO machine is ideal for children in remote places where the classroom may be no more than the shade of a tree," explains Satish Jha, who heads OLPC in India. The XO laptop’s wireless connectivity and free, open-source "Sugar" operating system allows children to reshape, reinvent, and reapply both software and content. "The laptops grow with the children," Jha said.

This document presents a comprehensive methodology for school safety considering school-specific hazards, such as earthquake, flood, flash flood, cyclone, landslide, and tsunami. It also focuses on fire and road hazards and considers climate change related issues. This manual is specific to Bangladesh and aims to guide teachers and students to develop a disaster management plan that includes mitigation, preparedness and response planning.

The free primary education, which is also compulsory, saw many children, particularly from poor families; enjoy an opportunity to be in school. Based on reports by the Ministry of Education, the number of boys and girls enrolled in primary school has risen from five million to a staggering eight million.

According to the latest Kenya Demographic Health Survey (KDHS), 40 percent of adolescent girls without any education are either pregnant or have already become mothers. In addition, for those girls with only a primary school education, 26 percent are mothers compared to an eight percent of those who have a secondary school education or higher.

"This shows that the impact of secondary and even college education can delay child- bearing and therefore give girls an opportunity to pursue their dreams," expounds Nelly Mwangi, a teacher in Nairobi.

The 2010 Gender Links Gender and Media Progress Study found that despite the great strides women have made in breaking political glass ceilings in southern Africa, they are still widely stereotyped in the media. Research found that men dominate in every news category, with women's voices being heard the most on stories related to gender equality, children and media and entertainment.

The country cannot develop if women, who constitute slightly more than half of the population, continue to be treated as second-class citizens and servants of men.

"It was a really difficult and dangerous walk," especially when the girls had to make the trek home at night, the 18-year-old Sena, who is from Tumpa in the west-central highlands region of Ancash, told IPS. Although she managed to complete her secondary school studies, many of the other girls in her class dropped out, due to the numerous barriers standing in the way of education for girls in many of Peru's impoverished rural regions.