Partnering for Quality Education & Learning Outcomes

World Vision Education & Life Skills Forum Nairobi, Kenya | 31 May – 2 June, 2011

 
 

Partnering for quality education & learning outcomes

The World Vision Forum brought together key WV staff and representatives from organizations like UNICEF, Save the Children and GULL among others. The purpose was to clarify the role community-based NGOs can plan in contributing to recognized and measurable learning outcomes and to explore partnering arrangements that might enable World Vision and other NGOs to achieve advances – especially in the most remote ‘hard to reach’ communities - globally. The Forum also considered ways of building the capacity of communities in order to strengthen outcomes.

Community-based NGOs with field staff physically located near the harder to reach populations are well positioned to complement at the local level what the formal educational system is doing to improve learning outcomes among these populations. The challenge for interested stakeholders was to clarify just what role community-based NGOs could play in contributing to quality education and recognized and measurable results. Further, to explore how stakeholders might best partner with one another to minimize redundancies across the collective organizational effort.

(Above) Building capacity and professionalizing the work of volunteer community educators.

 

 

 

GULL, life skills development and action learning

Participating World Vision representatives were invited to respond to the array of partnering opportunities offered at the event. The response to GULL and its methodology for building self-reliance across entire communities was overwhelming.

Representatives from 22 World Vision Partnership offices attended the Forum:

WV Burundi; WV Cambodia; WV Canada; WV East Africa Region; WV Ethiopia; WV Germany; WV Haiti; WV India; WV Kenya; WV Latin America Caribbean Region; WV Malawi; WV New Zealand; WV Papua New Guinea; WV Rwanda; WV Somalia; WV South Sudan; WV Swaziland; WV Tanzania; WV Uganda; WV United States; WV Vietnam; WV West Africa Region.

Guests from the following organizations also participated: ARCA Associates; Compassion International; GULL; International Reading Association; Save the Children; Summer Institute of Linguistics; Tearfund; UNICEF

(Above) World Vision Forum participants

 

 

 

Implementing GULL – a three year plan

In order to improve educational opportunities for an estimated 1 billion children in hard to reach areas, World Vision will establish strategic partnerships – each of which will bring specialist skills and expertise to the partnership. World Vision itself will take the lead on life skills development. In support of this, the formation of GULL has enabled World Vision to internalize the GULL system so that all the communities it serves in almost 100 countries can be introduced to action learning.

The objective is to build the capacity and self- reliance of communities and to enable volunteer community educators and others in fields such as healthcare to professionalize their work and attain recognized qualifications. The plan is that World Vision National Offices in many countries will adopt GULL during the next three years and to facilitate this, the launch process includes regional forum and master trainer sessions. All participating countries will ‘cascade’ action learning via their Area Development Program staff teams. This will be the world’s largest action learning project, focused on the poorest communities on earth.

(Above) At the conclusion of the World Vision Forum, Nairobi, 2 June 2011

 

GULL is a not-for-profit foundation registered in California, USA. GULL is recognized by the Government of Papua New Guinea & endorsed by other Governments, Leaders & Institutions.

 
 
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