Poverty and the
Right to Learn
Opening Words by Paul Belanger, President of ICAE
Adult Education and Poverty Reduction: a
Global Priority
By Peggy Antrobus, DAWN,
Adult Education / Lifelong Learning and
Poverty Alleviation
By Kazi Rafiqul Alam Executive Director Dhaka
Inputs by the participants
Adult education, assets, and the reduction of
poverty
Jeanine Anderson (
Gender and Ethnicity/Race: Siamese Twins in
the Fight Against Poverty: A Pedagogical
Challenge
By
Hildezia Medeiros. Ministry for Social Development
and Hunger Relief, Brazil
Inputs by the participants
Women’s Education, Empowerment and Poverty
…… Making the Connections
By Nirantar, India.
Is Africa South of SAHARA. Capable to reverse
the binomial : Illiteracy and Poverty?
By Lamine Kane
Inputs by the participants
A contribution from the Brazilian experience
By Maria
Clara Di Pierro, Açao Educativa, Brazil
Poverty and the right to learn
By Alicia
Villanueva, Movimiento Manuela Ramos, Peru
Inputs by the participants
Investment
on Adult Education and Poverty Reduction: Challenges for Black Women’s
Education in Latin America
By
Eliane Cavalleiro, member
of REPEM Steering Committee, Brazil
Closing
remarks
By Paul Belanger, President of ICAE
Opening Words by Paul Belanger, President of ICAE
I welcome all of you from every corner of this small world for this virtual
seminar.
The gap between poor and rich nations, and social groups are increasing.
Poverty is not an abstract concept, neither is inequality. There are hundred of
millions of women and men who, for weeks, months and even years, have not had
minimal food. This affects their children and their elders. This also means
very concretely that Fatima, Luda or Ali who, though
ill from under-nourishment, have to struggle for the family; and such reality
is repeating itself million times. Similarly, this week, an exhausted Sudanese
family arrived in an overcrowded refugee camp on the border of Chad, and this
situation also repeats itself too often on all continents. This late-modern
tragedy refers also to any young person without shelter and surviving through
begging on the street of his or her town, on every corner of every cities
around the world. This tragedy refers as well to the millions of silent old
women suffering alone in anonymity in insalubrious flats or shelters, surviving
through a ridiculously low pension already eroded through increasing cost of
living.
These are the concrete realities we need to have in mind throughout this
virtual seminar. These unspoken tragedies are taking place in front of
increasing accumulation of wealth, scandalous spending of unlimited resources
for war, narcissist elite flashing extravagantly wealth and power to the
uninformed admiration of the so-called public opinion.
This is the context of our seminar. And when we want to speak of the right and
responsibility to learn, we mean all people. With a concern for those living
under inhuman conditions, so they can increase their capacity for individual
and collective action, we want to address all citizens in order to democratize
the formal democracy of today and ensure that it becomes what it fundamentally
means. Real democracy implies the possibility, through pacific means, to
introduce rule of rights and law, to build societies of solidarity and shared
creativity. In this quest, we will not forget also the need of upper and middle
class citizens for better information and discovery of their contradictory
social conditions. Neither will we forget the various forms and expression
of social, economic and cultural discrimination.
A seminar on poverty and the right to learn, is of course a
seminar on various ways and initiatives to facilitate empowerment of people
living under different conditions, but it is also a seminar on active
citizenship and development of initiatives to construct societies
on the basis of solidarity and people’s creativity. It is a seminar on ways to
produce, bottom-up check and balance mechanisms in a global world run too much
run by search of unshared profit.
The right to learn is the universal right to live and act in an environment
that is turned back on its feet, free from false truth, multicolored and open
to active and diversified forms of participation, as well as enabling us to
build together another possible world.
By
Peggy Antrobus, DAWN,
The causes of poverty are many, and
related to the socio-economic, political and cultural realities of the
populations that experience poverty.
Some of these vary by country and location: among other things these are related to the
history, the available physical and financial resources, technologies, cultural
values and social norms of particular countries and communities. Others factors are common to most
countries. Included in these common
factors are gender relations, race and ethnicity, and the structure of
capitalism. We could say that all of
these factors – the particular as well as the common – embody asymmetric power
relations between groups of people: everywhere, those with the power to command
resources determine their distribution, leaving some groups and sectors poorer than
others.
Trickle-down theories of
economic development – that poverty can be reduced and ultimately be eliminated
by economic growth the benefits of which would trickle down to the poor,
thereby raising incomes - have been proved false. Many other assumptions about poverty
reduction are also false. One of these
is that poverty can be reduced or eliminated by a single strategy such as
literacy and formal education, skills training or micro-credit. But while formal education can help reduce
poverty by helping people to earn an income, education by itself is not a
sufficient condition for elimination of poverty: there are a number of
well-educated people who cannot find employment and therefore earn an
income. Moreover, the income earned by
some is not sufficient to meet their basic needs for food, shelter and
security.
In short, poverty is the result of complex
social, political and economic forces and ultimately embedded in power
relations across all these forces. If
the unequal distribution of resources is a reflection of the unequal
distribution of power, within and between social groups (including men and
women, different racial and ethnic groups, urban and rural communities etc.),
households, communities and countries, then an important approach to poverty
reduction must be one that empowers people to change relationships of power
that prevent them from realizing their full human potential.
Empowerment is the
ability of people to make definitions about their lives and to act on
these. An essential part of this is
people’s understanding of their world, the conditions that shaped their
reality, and what is required of them in order to change their situation. Non-formal or popular (adult) education has a
central role to play in empowerment.
For women, who represent
the majority of the poor in many countries, this kind of conscientisation
must include and understanding of the ways in which the asymmetry of gender
relations contributes to female poverty, and therefore to the poverty of those
households that are dependent on the incomes earned by women.
Another, aspect of adult
education that relates to projects aimed at poverty reduction/elimination is
its role in enabling marginalized groups, especially women to articulate their
priorities. Participatory action
research is an important strategy for doing this.
Because of gender, men and women have
different experiences of poverty (just as those who live in rural areas, with
access to land have a different experience of poverty from that of urban
dwellers, with no access to land on which to build a house or grow food). One of the limitations of poverty reduction
strategies is their focus on income – e.g. one of the targets for the goal of
poverty reduction in the MDGs is to increase the
number of people living on more than $1.00 a day. This ignores the importance of access to
food, housing and services (water and sanitation, health and education) for the
poor. These are priorities for poor
women, moreso than cash. Many, perhaps most, poor women understand
that the low waged jobs and income generating project that are likely to be
provided within poverty reduction project will not be sufficient to guarantee
them access to these essential goods and services.
The link between adult
education and poverty is complex but critical: on the one hand, adult education
(especially non-formal and popular education) builds the capacity of the poor
to understand and change their circumstances, at the same time it can and
should be used by practitioners (in community development, agriculture and
rural development etc) to enable men and women to participate directly in the
identification and design of project for their benefit. Adult education includes popular education as
well as participatory action research.
These aspects of adult education are essential for the empowerment of
the poor.
By Kazi Rafiqul
Alam
Executive Director
Dhaka
1. Human beings for doing anything good to the self and the society must
survive first keep the body and soul together. For survival the people should
be able to meet the minimum of basic needs food, shelter, clothes and we may go
on adding education, health facilities and so on. The concept of poverty originates
here. Poverty has been variously defined generally it is taken to be lack of
resources to have the minimum standard of living and the concept of poverty
differs according to the general economic, social and environmental conditions.
When we talk of poverty in poor economies it is the point of starvation pure
and simple (a standard is being gradually referred an income of less than a
Dollar a day). Poverty in the affluent economies may mean no high-cost fur coat
for the season or rare gadgets at home it may also mean comparative
disadvantage among the affluent. When we talk of reduction of poverty in the
underdeveloped countries, it is mostly in the absolute sense and that is of
absolute importance.
2. Poverty in its absolute sense can be reduced and alleviated. It is
achievable within a short span of time, so short that the poor people concerned
can simultaneously play the role and enjoy the drama.
3. There are some who are of the opinion that poverty cannot be fully explained
in terms of not having enough money, resources or access to material goods
only; it also covers other aspects of life relating to basic human values,
culture and spirit. Poverty in this sense has its ultimate reference to the
full flowering of the human potential in all its many sided manifestations -
physical, intellectual, social cultural, moral, aesthetic and spiritual. To
them, poverty alleviation is a process; it cannot be achieved over night and
once for all. With the changes in the context, human beings need additional
knowledge, skills or capacity to face new phenomenon. To them, poverty
alleviation demands continuous updating of the people’s knowledge, level of
awareness through access to accurate information about the strategic needs for
a better quality life & enabling them to transfer the information into
practice and making decisions to find exit from the poverty situation &
become self-reliant. Sustainable poverty alleviation can be achieved through
addressing the individual needs as well as the needs of the community as a
whole. According to them without comprehensive community development the
individual’s empowerment will not yield much, particularly for socio-political
and cultural change.
4. There is nothing in the foregoing paragraph to disagree. What it indicates
is the impact education or literacy formal or non-formal, may have in
improvement of the quality of life. When we talk of poverty in relative sense
it includes not only lack of materials resources for keeping the body and soul
together but also lack of many ingredients, which go for empowerment and
improvement of quality of life education being first. Because availability of
money or material resources cannot always reduce poverty in that sense or, in
any case, cannot improve the quality of life or empower the people to take full
control of their life.
5. Literacy or Education (used here interchangeably) can be achieved through
both formal and non-formal channels. Literacy and Non-formal Education programmes are alternate or supplementary means to meet the
basic learning needs of the people. The basic learning needs as defined in the
World Declaration (1990) cover knowledge, skills, attitudes and values
necessary for the people to survive, to improve the quality of their lives and
to continue learning. The scope of literacy programmes
for the illiterate poor people cover instilling knowledge, skills and attitudes
in reading, writing and numeracy based on their needs & problems and the scope
of non-formal education should cover all key areas of literacy plus
preparing the children and the neo-literates to continue education of his / her
own choice through different modes of education. The intervention areas of
literacy and non-formal education generally cover: early childhood care and
education, access of all children to primary education, literacy to all
illiterates and continuing & lifelong education.
6. The continuing & life-long education referred to above covers
multi-dimensional needs of the human beings and may be considered to be a
package of educational support services provided or acquired through different
media the ultimate objective of which is to create increased access to
information, so that all people in the society can utilize the information for
improvement of their quality of life. Some examples of this are creating scope
for occupational skills development, development of management skills,
leadership etc. through distance learning, face to face training or
self-learning, attachment / internship etc.
7. The level of literacy or education about which we are talking here is the
level which is considered essential minimum (again it is relative) for
continuous updating of knowledge, information, skills, capacity to face new
phenomenon, transfer of information, to take informed decision by utilizing the
acquired competence in life situation and the like. This is important for
putting the available resources to optimum use to make both ends meet and
improve the quality of life. The potential of literacy and non-formal education
for poverty alleviation becomes evident if the contributions are seen in the
areas like developing self-esteem, economic self-reliance, increased
participation in social activities, health, nutrition & sanitation and
conservation of environment. To ensure effective contribution literacy and for
that matter continuing & lifelong education, there is the need for
qualitative improvement of the delivery mechanism. Experience gained through
small-scale interventions and pilot projects in the different countries of the Asia-Pacific
Region shows that literacy and NFE had a positive impact on poverty reduction.
Many of these programmes however, have not yet taken
on national scale for this or that reason.
8. For developing plans for literacy and basic education programme as an effective
intervention for poverty alleviation, one key issue is identification of the
poverty groups and designing programmes keeping in
mind their poverty characteristics and learning needs. Secondly, the
intervention programme should be multi-faceted covering all avenues of life of
the poor. Since poverty is concentrated in the regions and poverty alleviation programmes demands a regional face, it is safe to develop
region-based literacy and basic education programmes
tuned to poverty situation. In course of developing programmes,
locally appropriate intervention strategies need be designed to ensure active
participation of the people for whom the programme is being planned. A
successful delivery of the programme demands participation of the people in the
decision making process at every stage (planning, implementation and
management). The indicative steps for planning literacy and basic education programmes towards poverty alleviation include
identification of poverty groups, the poverty characteristics and learning
needs, planning appropriate literacy and NFE programmes
on the basis of selected programme areas and strategies.
9. Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM)’s Experience: In order
to tackle the twin problems of illiteracy and poverty within a single programme,
Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM) implements basic level
education programme for the adults coupled with group management training,
human resource development training and skill development training. This is a
programme with duration of 24 months. Within this period the poor adults
(mostly women) become literate, group them and develop as savings group.
Simultaneously group management training and human resource development
training is provided. DAM then provides skills development training and
prepares them for undertaking income generating activities. The neo-literates
meet every day in the Ganakendra (Peoples’ Centre)
for continuing education. They also meet once a week to discuss group
activities and community problems. In the Ganakendra,
they read books on sanitation, environment, health, family planning, income
generation and other issues and discuss in groups for clear understanding and
practice. DAM’s development programmes
begins with education, proceeds with skills training, flourishes with income generation
activities and ultimately results in environmentally sustainable programme with
improvement in the life situation.
Shaheen Attiqur Rahman. Lahore
BUNYAD is committed for AE.
With nearly 50 million illiterates in Pakistan we have a long road ahead
of us. And, unless Adults, their parents understand the worth of the written
word, no break through is possible.
Iliana Pereyra Sarti
REPEM, LAC
Regarding the
major challenge of analyzing, discussing, synthesizing and generating a virtual
learning space on Poverty and Education, we believe it is essential to make
some reflections on the complexity of the concept of poverty when we
also refer to the poverty suffered by women
There are
questionings on the significance of income in the definition of poverty.
Certainly, the level of income of a person or family can vary from month to
month, even from week to week, while poverty is a durable condition – let’s
bear in mind that unstable work is a characteristic of a major part of the poor
Latin American population -, however, in addition, and always referring to
economic terms, income is insufficient if the quantitative and qualitative
aspects – patrimony- are not also taken into consideration.
Currently, for men
as well as for women, the training level, the mastering of a trade, the social
relations – as ways of social insertion – are fundamental parts of a patrimony
of goods and qualities of unquestionable economic importance. Proof of this is
how this patrimony – or its absence- decisively determines productive capacity,
participation in the economic system, and the corresponding quota of power with
which this is carried out.
More “social”
definitions of poverty comprehend other aspects, such as access to health care,
education, and social services, among others.
Other
characteristics that are frequently mentioned as linked to the situation of
poverty are attitudes, feelings and beliefs that work as psychological and
social barriers, such as: personal loss of value, lack of knowledge on the
rights, and therefore lack of exercise of these rights, scarce or null
participation; all of which nurture and perpetuate poverty.
Countless studies
have demonstrated that, in relation to this issue, there are disadvantages that
affect women in particular. Indeed, their responsibilities regarding
reproductive tasks, not only at biological level (pregnancy, childbirth and
breast-feeding), but also at social level –child raising, education, feeding,
and the care of children and the elderly- hinder critically poor women’s access
to the labour market and their full insertion in it,
with obvious consequences in their possibilities to access income generation.
Moreover, in case
this happens, the long working hours affect women’s possibilities to use their
time, as well as their life quality.
In the case of
poor women, a kind of a vicious circle can be noticed. On the one hand, gender
relations situate them in a secondary and subordinate place, and on the other
hand, poverty sharpens their feelings of loss of value, whether because of a
dependent life, confined to their homes, whether because of their dedication to
unqualified, badly paid jobs. Perhaps because of both things.
Further aspects
sum up to the afore-mentioned, such as the lack of knowledge on and exercise of
their rights, such as for example the rights related to care-giving and upkeep
of their children; domestic violence; and the usufruct of the services; this
generates an accumulation. Some
researchers point out an identical impact on the lack of participation in
spheres where it is possible to have access to information, employment and
training possibilities.
Summarizing, even
if with analytical purposes, it may be necessary to speak about the components of
poverty; it is clear that poverty becomes itself a global phenomenon in which
multiple aspects, which can be discerned, are intertwined in a tangle of
relations that constitute an indissoluble whole.
Perhaps we should
ask ourselves:
Which are the personal
and collective educational processes that will be capable of deactivate this
tangle of causal relations?
Are they merely
educational processes?
H.S. Bhola
Professor Emeritus (Indiana University)
I would like to share the following with the world adult education
community interested in global poverty:
1. We cannot carry much water, very far, in a
sieve. "Poverty reduction" would not work unless accompanied
with committed efforts to stall and stop systematic and sustained efforts of
"poverty induction" - poverty being structurally, culturally,
communally induced and inflicted on the lives of the powerless sections of
societies.
1.1 While poverty reduction work is typically visible, local
and regional, poverty induction is more abstract and therefore invisible. Yet
it is real and has to be fought at all the levels from the global down to the
local: fighting neo-liberal economics of structural adjustments and users fees
for education and health; national policies of regressive taxation, and
resistance to land reform and workers' wages; and local tyrannies and
exploitations in communities and within families.
1.1.1 This means that adult educators today have to be
educators-and-activists who work not only with adult groups of learners and in
community organization but also work in the political arenas in district
councils, national legislatures, and the old and new mechanisms of global
governance: lobbying for Globalization with a Human Face, Endogenous
Development definitions and theories; Markets with social responsibility; the
necessity of the state role in social welfare; land reform, progressive
taxation systems, and ... yes! establishment of institutional spaces for
learning throughout life, that is, institutions of adult education to enable
learning throughout life.
2. No "Self" is truly self-made! Self
is socialized by the other in a web of social interactions. Without the
organized institution of the family to socialize its young, individual
identities get fractured.
2.1 What is true about the making of self-hood is also true
of self-learning. There are serious limits to learning through
self-discovery. "Self-directed, lifelong learning" is
inspirational but practically impossible. Maybe in a future Utopia,
adults will become
self-directed learners, but in the developing countries, for decades to come,
adult education will be needed for adult learning to have a chance of
actualization. The need is of "Adult education now, to make adult
learning possible later!"
2.2 Adult educators-cum-activists must pay lot of attention
to creating institutional mechanisms for adult education that may make
adult learning possible - - state and non-state, for profit and
non-profit, local, regional, national and international, face-to-face
and at a distance.
2.2.1 I have noted with regret and a sad sense of irony that in too many
places the new phraseology of "adult learning" has been used by
bureaucrats to wash their hands of the state responsibility to provide
education to adults for them to participate in processes of democratization and
modernization. Adults are being asked to do their own learning - - know
what to learn and how to acquire that learning!
Sincerely,
H.S. Bhola
Jeanine Anderson (Peru)
There is a notable return of interest, in today’s
poverty studies, to the question of assets.
This has occurred for various reasons.
As always tends to occur, some of the reasons have to do with the
failure of other approaches to reduce poverty. Certainly, employment-based
strategies, or social rights strategies, have strict limits, not necessarily
because of intrinsic shortcomings but because of the context in which poverty
reduction has to occur in the contemporary world. The storm of neoliberalism
has still not passed and, even if it had, government deficits, global economic
restructuring, recessions, political turbulence, and ineffective public
administration would still be problems.
Asset-based approaches to poverty reduction are easy to make compatible
with market-oriented development philosophies.
They are also compatible with “agency” and “empowerment” as values.
Some further factors help to explain why assets have
come to the foreground in our thinking about poverty and ways to overcome it:
Assets are portable and flexible, and thus seem to be
attuned to wildly changing worlds of work, technology, communications, society,
and political action. Portfolios of
assets can be constantly reshaped to meet new challenges. People can learn new things, make new friends
(acquiring “social capital”), master new technologies, add new political
strategies for new situations and opponents.
The life histories of poor people demonstrate that they do, in fact,
constantly worry about gaining new assets of many types; and they spend large
quantities of resources to do it.
Assets usually imply long-term investment and
long-term engagement. They direct our attention to processes over time:
accumulation, saving, preserving, avoiding accidents and loss. This is resonant with new research on poverty
that focuses on longitudinal effects.
Poverty reduction strategies in the past often failed because of their
short-term bias.
Assets allude to incorporation and inclusion. Most societies operate on a logic (and legal
framework) of accumulating assets, insuring and protecting assets, and
transmitting assets to descendents and to causes which the asset owners
consider valuable. Poor people
themselves phrase the problem of poverty in these terms: poverty means not
having assets, being unable to get them, and being excluded or discriminated
against on that basis. Assets make
people stakeholders and force other stakeholders to pay attention to them.
Although we usually think of assets as “belonging” to
a person or, at most, a household or family, many assets actually involve
groups. Having them or being able to use
them may depend on group identities such as membership in a tribe, caste, or
nation. Such assets include “social
assets” and “cultural assets.” It may
not always be clear how these kinds of group assets connect with economic
prosperity, even to poor people themselves.
In the past, discussions about poverty and wealth have
focused on physical assets: buildings, equipment, money. The challenge now is to understand the full
range of assets that non-poor people have and, therefore, the range of assets
that poor people might need in order to leave poverty. Many assets that give immense advantages to
the rich and powerful are hidden and invisible, even secret. Often these have to do with knowledge,
information, analytical capacity, expertise and advice. These are among the assets that are easiest
to hide.
We are just beginning to understand the diverse and
complicated routes that people use to acquire assets in the realm of education,
information, analysis and understanding.
It is clear that, even for children, most learning takes place outside
formal schools; so much more is that true for adults. Schooling seems to be a facilitator, in some
way. It seems to teach habits and skills
that help people to assimilate and process new information, or that help them
to interpret it and make it available for use.
Formal instruction may teach self-confidence, since it turns learning
into something that can be measured and evaluated, thus enabling the learners
themselves to be convinced that they know what they know. It may be that knowing you have an asset is
equally important to having the asset in order for that asset to make a
difference.
Adult education for the reduction of poverty,
therefore, has to contain an element of formal education. Nevertheless, most of it will undoubtedly
come through informal channels. Who
should be responsible for it?
Professional educators can never be sufficient to cover the entire range
of settings where we would want adult learning to occur. They have to make room for, and cooperate
with, many others:
- Journalists,
news reporters
- Media
/ entertainment
- Political
leaders
- Social
movement innovators
- Institutions
and their leadership
- People
in their everyday lives: support groups, daily conversations, discussions
and arguments, marches and demonstrations, and other spontaneous formats
All of these learning sources appear in the discourse
of urban poor people in Peru. I am
struck by how three learning situations were absolutely vital in the life
histories of rural campesinos who migrated to the
cities in the great waves of urbanization of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s. One was labor unions, another was political
parties, and the third was neighborhood organizations. Later, development projects came in, with a
mandate to bring more women into the discussion. All of these stimulated an active exchange
among the migrants, who were trying to understand how they might best position
themselves in an entirely new context with a new set of opportunities and
limitations.
Unfortunately, many or most of the situations where
adults could learn and reflect are controlled by groups that have a product to
sell. The “learners” are being preached
to, recruited, addressed by “experts” who tell them what is correct. The “teaching” is biased, one-sided; it is
advertising and rhetoric. This danger
could be reduced if, collectively, we could expand the range of formats for
teaching and learning and constantly strive to make them more dialogic. From early childhood to the end of life,
formats for education have to encourage and enable back and forth
exchanges.
Adults are people who have learned how to
negotiate. To one degree or another,
they have learned to consider the other’s arguments and points of view. Learning and education, however, are too
often associated with absolute truth.
This tends to remove educational assets from the realm of activities
that people carry out in the real world, with other people, reconciling the
interests of one and the other.
Education, knowledge, and intellectual labor are on one side of a
dividing line; practical problem solving is on the other. The formats that we put forward for adult
education ought to break down that divide.
A further problem is the way men and women living in
poverty are actively prevented from learning things that could be useful for
getting out of poverty. This is not only
because wealthy and powerful groups have an interest in keeping the poor in
their place, although that definitely plays a part. But it also is a consequence of not
developing and promoting adult education as a clear priority. People pick up useful information but cannot
integrate it with other information; they learn skills that they cannot apply
in their work or family life. In this
sense, some educational assets, which cost a great deal to acquire, are wasted
and irrelevant. Here too, governments
and institutions could do much more to orient poor women and men to learning
experiences that could be truly useful to them.
Assets – even educational assets – can be lost. As some kinds of assets become more common
and diffused throughout a society, they lose value; computer skills might be an
example, at least in urban poverty sectors and among poor youth. Through manipulating images, artificial gluts
and scarcities can be created. Some
assets become obsolete and must be replaced or renewed. The search for ways to increase the
educational assets of the poor, therefore, is never ending, as long as poverty
exists. It is not a simple matter of
organizing literacy classes and pushing the graduates out into the world.
A final question concerning assets has to do with
their convertibility. In promoting the
expansion of educational assets as one way of reducing poverty, we are assuming
that several conversions are possible:
- Educational
assets (can be converted) into economic advantage and material
wealth. With such assets, people
will be able to work more productively, make good decisions about their
economic strategies, evaluate risks, promote their interests and avoid
crises.
- Educational
assets (can be converted) into political assets and power. With such assets, people can increase
their capacity to influence political decisions and choose political
leaders that will work effectively for the poor.
- Educational
assets (can be converted) into recognition and prestige
- Educational
assets (can be converted) into happiness and fulfillment: a good life, as
that is understood in many different cultural traditions.
This last conversion may be the most difficult of
all. Nonetheless, understanding and
“wisdom” has a high value in most societies.
Many poor people suffer greatly from the sense that their lives are
insignificant, but also from the sense that they cannot understand the
injustices, the ill-will of the powerful, and the arbitrariness they
experience. So, ideally, a program for
adult education would take into account the connection between educational
assets and all these other elements in the portfolios of the poor.
By Hildezia Medeiros
Ministry for Social Development and Hunger Relief,
Brazil
We will have to repent in this generation not merely
for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling
silence of the good people.
The discussion about Education for Inclusion Throughout
Life and Poverty Reduction is beginning to assume a preponderant role in the
agenda of certain international institutions, governments, and educators
concerned with the issue.
I would like to bring to the focus of the debate two variables that, in
a recurrent way, are present in the analysis of most of the population groups
affected by poverty, in most of the countries. These variables are:
discrimination suffered by persons based on their gender; and discrimination
suffered by a considerable segment of the world population based on the
ethnicity/race to which they belong.
In this way, to educate for justice in gender relations and to educate
for justice in racial relations are two significant factors for building a
process of poverty reduction.
The discussion on sexism and on racism is undoubtedly embedded in the
delicate field of values; therefore, the complexity experienced when addressing
these issues. In the meantime, we can assure that the struggle against poverty will
be innocuous if we do not go deeper into those afore-mentioned fields.
It is not necessary to go
out of Latin America and the Caribbean in order to have clear evidences of this
problematic issue. There are thorough studies that show the perverse logic of
racism, mainly in relation to African descendents and indigenous people in our
countries. When we go deeper into our researches, we discover deep links among
sexism, racism and poverty. Therefore, how to educate for inclusion and poverty
reduction without facing the discussion on racial justice and gender justice?
There are some proceedings that I consider important in order to
effectively build pedagogy for social inclusion and poverty reduction.
A first step of this strategy is, without any doubt, try to unveil, in
our societies, the perception of how the so-called “ideologies of superiority”
strengthen and consolidate social exclusion and poverty. When such perverse
logics are not confronted, they become sources of legitimating other forms of social
exclusion and discrimination.
To speak about education for inclusion throughout life and poverty
reduction demands to unfold ourselves, in our pedagogical and social practice,
as a whole.
To practice education for inclusion throughout life and for poverty
reduction is to sharpen, more and more, in our countries, the tools for
analysis in the exploration of economy, culture and language, the existing
legislation, society’s current values, the media, and the social and political
arena.
In the strategy for poverty
reduction there is a need to assume a clear position in favor of justice in
racial relations and justice in gender relations. Regarding the actions to be
developed we could, for instance, take as parameters the different working
levels and the final declarations of the UN Conferences of the late ‘90s, such
as the Durban Conference in 2001, in addition to related literature of recent
years elaborated in different parts of the world, focusing on existing
reflections and experiences on these issues, as well as on the deep links
existing between these two spaces of power.
Our commitment with the fight for social inclusion and for poverty
reduction demands a daily learning in the confrontation against racism and
sexism. This is a personal and collective learning.
By Marta Benavides
Siglo XXIII - El Salvador
I am so glad for this seminar. It provides the opportunity for sharing
and learning, and best of all for discernment on the topic. I think it is
important to have clarity, and for me this means that our educational efforts
must be to poverty elimination/eradication, and for the practice of
sustainability. this has been the concern of most of the ngos
discussion. The UN process starts with this in mind and as it goes on,
governments start to use alleviation and reduction, until it becomes the
accepted wording.
Also , we must relate this to the external debt and how it is being addressed
in this context, and the privatization process of education going on under the
WTO, how the IMF, the WB and its regional banks are addressing it, as the new
financial architecture is being created. It is also important to say
impoverished peoples or nations, rather than poor, as the colonization experienced
by the nations is very much a factor on the present conditions or poverty. This
right to learn is about developing ways for the effective practice of
governance, which is more than empowerment, for it is learning to use
effectively the power we are, and which we are born with,
As presented by Paul Belanger in the 4th paragraph : this is a "seminar to
produce bottom up check and balance mechanisms in a global world run to much by
search of unshared profit".
By Jeanine Anderson (Peru)
I was struck by the idea of a "learning region," proposed by
Shirley Walters and think it could be combined with H.S. Bhola's
concern for institutions and how they actually carry forward an adult
education/learning strategy. Learning region, based on my experience in Peru,
is a concept poor people develop in their heads. We saw it in some research
that the Catholic University did for the Peruvian Ministry of Education in a
rural province to the south of Lima. There, the region was quite large and
included several mountain valleys, towns, a couple of large cities, and some
facilities established by private organizations (an agricultural training
school run by an NGO but also a number of commercial pre-schools, summer
schools, technical institutes, computer schools, and the like). People would
sift among all these possibilities, for themselves and for their children. They
took calculated steps such as labor migrations, sending children off to stay
with relatives in the city for a summer, correspondence courses, dividing their
time between the farm and a nearby town in order to use an educational program.
They scoured the news and advertising fliers to find out about their options.
They had a pretty clear idea of what their investment would have to be to get
the services they sought, and what that would be worth (at least in job terms)
when they or their children finished.
This spontaneous definition of a "learning region" could be taken on
board in actual educational planning to make several things happen. One would
be to make it all less costly to the poor. Another would be to make the
benefits more certain, the reduce the risks of a bad investment of time and
money. Another would be to increase the range of types of learning and types of
certification available. If institutions -- including the private sector --
could somehow be brought into a project such as this, we might see a
breakthrough.
By Regina Tiens Bande
S - Burkina Faso
Poverty alleviation,
Poor people are generally defined as those people who live with less than
dollar a day. According to me this definition doesn't translate exactly what
poverty is. Poverty is not only material or economic as donors and governments
want to impose us.
For instance, a biologist can define it as the absence of some cellulars or calories or proteins in one's body while an
environmentalist will see it as the ill destruction of our sphere. So and so
on.
At this stage there is a great need to redefine the item, poverty, socially,
economically, culturally, mentally, etc.
So much poverty alleviation strategies do not really insert gender
mainstreaming in themselves. Women suffer a lot in our feudal societies and
these strategies need to be specified from a gender perspective.
In this fight against poverty education is the key point. Both sexes need to
have more information on the improvement of their livelihoods and be
accompanied by governments and NGOS.
People must be taught how to fish and not be given always fish as taught by the
Chinese dicton. They must not always wait for funings from abroad and from their governments. They need
to develop initiative and empower themselves.
Governments and NGOS must develop concrete and practical programmes
and facilities in rural and urban areas. Poverty is the main reason of rural
exodus. If in rural areas youths are maintained by attractive money making
activities they will not envy
cities where they will face difficult situations.
In many African countries, governments afford some micro loans to women to
launch trade or other activities. Unfortunately as families are very poor this
money is embuzzled for the families' needs. And the
initial aims of fighting against unemployment and
poverty are achieved and poverty goes increasingly.
It's so urgent to rethink poverty alleviating strategies and programmes.
Education on poverty reduction is compulsory and it must not be only the task
of governments and NGOS. Other key actors of development must bring their
stones for the building for a successful result. Ignorance and illiteracy must
be kicked out.
Information -Education-Communication ( IEC) for a world with less poverty at
the mid run and without poverty at the long run with specified tools and
languages for each groups of persons.
Together, developing alliances and brotherhoods let's us kick away poverty.
By
Nirantar, India.
The ideas that we would like to share here
stem from our work as part of Nirantar, an NGO
working in the area of gender and education, based in New Delhi. Nirantar has been
working with grass roots organizations in India as a resource group for the
past 10 years. A large part of our work
has involved helping initiate and strengthen educational interventions for
rural women. More recently Nirantar has also
undertaken research studies aimed at examining policies and programmes
related to education. One such study has
been undertaken to understand the phenomenon of micro-credit through the lens
of education. Micro credit in India, as in many other developing countries, is
being projected as the magical solution to address both women’s empowerment and
poverty. The ideas presented in this
note draw upon our understanding of the micro credit phenomenon towards
highlighting the fundamental linkages between adult education, poverty and
women’s empowerment.
These inter-linkages are
important because we view education as the broad spectrum of learning processes
inclusive of access to information, literacy and processes of critical
reflection which enable us locate our lived realities in the larger social, economic
and political contexts. Processes which
enable women to identify problems, undertake social analysis and to evolve
alternate courses of action towards building an equitable and just society are
necessary in any effort to address poverty or women’s subordination. The
nature, or the absence of, educational processes therefore become important
indicators as to whether particular approaches are effective in their efforts
to address poverty and other forms of social inequity.
Understanding the inter-linkages
between women’s empowerment and adult education assumes special importance in
the context of India. The past two decades have shown that women form the vast
majority of the learners in the adult literacy programmes
sponsored by the government. Women
learners now find that the State is offering the mere creation of micro credit
forums, as the primary continuing education opportunity strategy. The formation
of micro credit based Self Help Groups (the most popular form of micro credit
in the country today) is ‘quick and cheap’.
This assumes importance in a context in which the State has shown
remarkable resistance to investing even 6% of the GDP to education - a long
standing commitment.
With any `solution’ to
poverty, such as micro credit, which focuses on the speedy achievement of
tangible outcomes that too on a large scale, there are two main areas of
concern. Firstly to what extent would
such strategies promote educational processes?
Secondly are these strategies effective in addressing poverty in a
substantive and sustainable manner.
Reflecting on the first
concern, we find that in the context of micro credit, educational inputs are
limited to `capacity building’ in skills which are considered important from
the point of view of management and efficiency.
The shift in language from `education’ to `capacity building’ is
indicative of the increasing narrow and instrumentalist view of education which
is gaining ground. This marginalization
of empowering learning processes is perhaps not surprising in the context of
quick fix approaches to poverty.
- Planning and nurturing
empowering educational processes requires time and resources that these poverty
`solutions’ have no space for.
- These approaches are
focused entirely on tangible targets and outcomes. Adult learning, with its
focus on process, gets short changed in the face of the discourse of tangible
outcomes.
The second concern relates
to whether quick fix solutions such as micro credit can effectively address
poverty. While micro credit provides access to small amounts of money required
for minor domestic credit requirements especially in times of crisis, it fails
to enable women to move out of poverty.
The fault lies at the level of the assumption that most micro credit
based poverty interventions make that credit alone can make a substantive
difference in the economic status of the poor. If the sponsoring organizations
(in addition to larger players such as the donor agencies and international
financial institutions) work with this perspective, it is not surprising that
they do not facilitate, or do not wish to facilitate, a deeper engagement with
causes of poverty and ways of addressing it. Generalizing from the micro credit
scenario it is clear that -
- For any attempt at addressing
poverty in an effective way, educational processes need to enable people to
undertake an analysis of the reasons for poverty. Only then can structures and systems causing
poverty, such as unequal distribution of resources, be addressed.
- In keeping with their analysis of
poverty, most programmes promote enterprises as part
of the `poverty alleviation’ strategy.
In the case of micro-credit, enterprise is seen as the next logical
step. The responsibility is put on the poor
to take the risk of individual enterprise to improve their situation. There is
lack of faith that collective enterprises are possible. There is also a failure
to focus on access and control over resources underlying the livelihood
activities that communities are already engaged with. This means that no
efforts are made to expose communities to these alternatives to deal with their
situation.
- Many poverty `alleviation’
strategies adopt a group approach, as is the case with micro credit forums.
However, in the absence of processes of reflection which enable marginalized
people to move from the realities of their individual lives to a social
analysis, these groups merely perform functional roles. For these to emerge as
forums for mutual support and collective action for change sponsoring
organizations need to enable processes of reflection and action. In the case of micro credit forums we find
that the role of the `collective’ is merely to act as a pressure group to
enable repayment of credit.
Occasionally groups do take up issues such as domestic violence but `in
spite of’ and not `because of’ support agency’s interventions
- Particularly in a
patriarchal, globalizing, pro-capital market context, helping people gain an
understanding of the larger, rapidly changing context becomes critical. In a context in which there is rapidly
diminishing control that people are able to exert on the terms of their
engagement with the market, educational processes assume great importance is
helping people negotiate their interests from a more empowered position.
- Any people oriented,
sustainable poverty related intervention would seek to help members of the
community to equip themselves with the understanding and skills required to
move towards greater decentralization and autonomy. In the context of micro credit there is
evidence to show that the lack of literacy opportunities implies concentration
of power in the hands of the more literate within groups as well as high levels
of dependency on sponsoring organizations.
- In the absence of inputs to enable analysis of women’s
subordination, patriarchal beliefs and structures, so fundamentally linked to
women’s poverty, go unchallenged. There
is an inability to identify and address problems related to gender and
poverty - such as women’s increasing burden of work and
pressure of repayment of credit. There
is also an inability to distinguish between ACCESS and ENTITLEMENT. The absence
of a rights perspective means that women
do not recognize access to resources such as credit as their right. Financial
gains such as assets are not seen as factors enabling women’s autonomy and an
inability to defend their right in the face of conflict.
Quick fix
solutions to poverty such as micro credit are being offered to poor women the
world over. This is like Band-Aid being applied on a deep wound. Such
interventions have severe limitations in addressing women’s empowerment and
poverty alleviation. In the absence of educational processes they can prove to
be anti poor and anti women. Processes
of critical reflection and action are essential to ensure that the fundamental
factors underlying poverty and other forms of gender injustice are understood
and addressed by women towards the goals of justice, equity and autonomy. If
poverty related initiatives fail to incorporate the agenda of education and
learning and result in failure, a larger damage done is that the myth of the
poor being responsible for their poverty and the inability to get out their
poverty is further perpetuated.
By Lamine Kane
One of
the post war theories in Education, the Economic man approach view Education as
an investment rather than a mere consumption.
The
theory argues that, the more people are educated in a country, the more their
economic development advances. The tenants of this theory claim that a highly
trained human infrastructure increases the Gross Nation Product (GNP).
In this
context, literacy teaching (the first step towards Adult Education) is viewed
as a change agent that can modify the social and economic structure, that
increases economic diversification, that helps industrialization and increases
productivity in rural development(1).
Despite
moves to better people’s living conditions and educational facilities, the
situation in Sub Saharan Africa is really critical.
It is
characterized by the magnitude of its high illiteracy rates and rampant poverty
that affect nearly half of its population.
This
paper aims at analyzing the linkages existing between
Education and economic development in Africa. It will interrogate the
educational, socio economic and political fields in order to know the reasons
why African aspirations to Education For All and socio economic well being are
not yet met in the continent after more than 40 years of independence. It will
finally attempt to find out countries (if any) of good practices both in
Education and Development.
According
to the World Bank, people in Sub Saharan Africa are fast becoming the poorest
in the world.
In 1980
says the bank(2), one out of every ten
poor people lived in Sub Saharan Africa. In 2000, the figure rose to one out of
every three. Future projections predict that one out of every two poor people
would live in Sub Saharan Africa.
This
means that nearly half of the population in Africa live in absolute poverty.
This situation is worsened by other relatively new factors such as: political
conflicts and ethnic wars, external debt burden and the devastating effect of
HIV/AID pandemic, etc. …
In the
field of education, illiteracy continues to be a matter of great concern for
the region. The figures at my disposal(3)
estimate that 44% of the adult population (15 years and over) i.e. 179 million
persons are illiterate. The same source admits that females constitute the
majority of this illiterate population and that illiteracy rates are high in
rural areas in comparison to urban areas.
From
these examples, we can then perceive the dialectical relationship existing
between education and economic development; between extreme poverty and high
illiteracy rates.
African
education systems are mostly undetermined by outside factors that always hinder
all internal efforts to reach universal education in the region.
The
first and biggest challenge the leadership encountered right after independence,
was the take over of the colonial education system.
It is
important to recall at this stage that education during colonial area was
assigned the role of familiarizing, integrating, assimilating African students
to the European economic, social and moral order.
In this
context, the culture of the people in the colonies was dismissed as being of a
little value.
This is
why, one of the first decisions made during the first MINEDAF conference in
1961, in Addis Abeba was to set up a long term plan
of Action that aimed among other objectives the take over of the colonial
education system and the eradication of illiteracy in the continent by 1968.
Easy to
say but very difficult to implement !
The
take over of the colonial education system meant bringing in reforms in order
for example, to endogenize the education system or africanize it. In so doing, African culture history and
civilization were to be taught in the curriculum. African national languages
were to be considered as medium of instruction just like English or French.
This
was not an easy task in those days.
This
was a formidable task that implied a serious technical know-how, a determined
political will and courage, along with a powerful economic wealth in order for
example to construct and equip schools, recruit and train professional
teachers, etc. …
This
idea of reforming the African education system reached its peak when various
countries of the region decided to reformulate their educational policies. In
francophone African countries this reformulation started with the meeting of
all parties conference on education and Training commonly known as “Les États Généraux de l’Education et de la Formation”.
In anglophone countries as in the case of Uganda, the process
of reformulation has gone through two distinct phases: the report of an
educational policy evaluation commission and a White Paper Committee which
finally reformulated the educational policy.
In the
meantime, the objective of eradicating illiteracy by 1968 was never reached:
despite African countries commitment to functional literacy since the Teheran
Conference in 1965; despite their reaffirmed commitment after the MINEDAF VI
Conference in Harare in 1982 which requested UNESCO to “study the possibility
of implementing a regional programme for eradicating illiteracy in cooperation
with member states”.
The
June 1984 UNESCO regional programme for the eradication of illiteracy in 26 african countries made some breakthrough in that it created
with the collaboration and cooperation of member states National Structures
with the view of designing Action Plans that would enable every country to set
up objectives.
But in
the lessons learnt from this experiment, we know now that right from the
beginning of the experiment many countries involved finally abandoned the
slogan ‘eradication of illiteracy by 2000’(4).
This was the case of Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Congo, Togo.
Hence
some countries became less ambitious in their quantitative objectives: Burkina
Faso now aimed to reach only 30% literacy rate by 1996 while Mali expected 68%
literacy rate by 2010.
And as
Dr. Joseph Kizerbo framed it in those days: “It would
seem that governments now consider basic education for all by the year 2000
merely as a mobilizing utopia”.
The
reasons that explain that situation are straightforward:
i.
Most of the countries realized that there’s an
unexpected amount of work and difficulties involved in the conception and
implementation of literacy programmes they couldn’t imagine.
ii.
The lack of population control because of rapid and
uncontrolled birth rate caused serious setbacks in enrolment rates.
iii.
Limitations due to the adoption of a selective
functional literacy approach which stresses on economic social and cultural
development.
iv.
Finally, the language issue revealed to be in some
cases as a serious concern:
à Most of the
countries choosed national languages as literacy
medium
à Some others choosed foreign languages such as French and English as in
the case of Cameroon, Congo, Chad arguing that their native languages lack of a
critical mass to be taught.
à Finally a group
of countries were bothered by the multiplicity of languages such as in Benin
(20), Burkina Faso (19), etc. …
The
most serious slowdown to the expansion of both african
education and economic systems came with the imposed Structural Adjustment
Policies (SAP) during the eighties.
Western
economists from Bretton Woods institutions believed
that the sole remedy to the african chronic economic
crisis which has now resulted to huge budget deficits, was to put their
economies under adjustment.
As a
consequence, public expenses had to be reduced and african
states were to reduce their intervention: they were to launch the restructuring
of the agricultural sector, privatize state
enterprises, eliminate protectionist measures, encourage private investment,
devaluate their local currencies …
The
consequences of such measures in the education sector were dramatic:
- Children
from poor background particularly girls cannot any more access Education,
- Most of
the time, quantity was emphasized at the expense of quality: recruitment of
voluntary teachers with no qualification, introduction of double stream classes
and multiple course classes with a teacher - student ratio nearing in some
countries 1/100.
Furthermore,
the liberalizing policy has been experimented by the World Bank in the field of
Adult Education. The experiment was conducted in Senegal and it is now exported
in most of Francophone African countries.
The
basic idea rests on the “faire-faire” principle. This means that the government
is not anymore involved directly in the implementation of literacy.
It has
subcontracted its shares to experienced actors such as : NGOs, Associations,
Women’s Groups, Organized Communities…
In this
context, the government’s role is solely to define policies, coordinate and
evaluate the sector’s performance.
Added
to that, the government has invited bilateral and multilateral cooperation to
finance the sector through National Literacy Projects (NLP). Literacy actors or
providers apply for funds to the NLPs to which they
are accountable for their work.
Here
too, great emphasis was put on quantity at the expense of quality.
Participation is never fully achieved: no matter who attended, drop out rates
are always very high.
Facilitators
and trainers are not fully well trained, literacy primers lack of functionality
in the sense that they are not learner centred.
Very
little research and evaluation has been conducted so far.
Is
there any reason for hope? Can we expect better prospects for the continent?
The
present signs are that unlike the majority, some countries are really doing
well.
The example of Botswana is there to prove that
it is not necessary for a developing country to undergo SAP in order to
succeed.
True
that Botswana is a rich country with abundant mineral resources and a stable
political situation that lack to most of African countries.
But
beside this case, it is also possible to quote Tunisia, Mauritius and South
Africa… which are all being considered as emerging countries that are obviously
doing well both in Education and in their Economies.
According
to reliable sources, Botswana has doubled the proportion of children in primary
school in 10 years time and it is nearly achieving universal primary Education.
Mauritius
with its ‘economic miracle’ and its low birth rate (the lowest in the
continent) has made unprecedented progress in its Education system.
In the
meantime, Benin has increased its primary enrolment rate and Mali its primary
completion rate by more than 20%. Mauritania has increased the ratio of girls
to boys at school from 67% to 82% between 1990 and 1996.
Uganda
reduced HIV/AID infection rates for eight consecutive years in the nineties. It
is now expected that Zambia will soon become the second African country to slow
the scourge of the disease.
It is
believed that with an increased international assistance (not tied – aid but
aid without conditionality) and a complete removal of trade barriers and
agricultural subsidies for rich country farmers, Africa South of Sahara may
well reverse in a short time, the terrible binomial: Illiteracy and Poverty.
Lin Helme
- SHARE Adult Education & Skills Training Centre,
Western Cape, South Africa
This is a wonderful opportunity to exchange
ideas and comments with regard to the challenging sector in which we work.
We in South Africa have a wonderful new democracy and constitution but without
the political will and societal paradigm shifts - a social revolution -
together with more substantial resources we will battle on forever against the
iniquity of poverty and lack of basic educational and training opportunities.
Professor Bhola is so correct when he
states that we have to be educators and activists, working in the political
arenas as well as at the grassroots level.
Viva adult learning and development.
By Mandakini Pant, PRIA (*), New Delhi, India
Poor women often lack access to the critical resources of credit, land and
inheritance. They are denied opportunities, choices, and access to information,
education, and skills. Without any sense of power whatsoever, their
participation in decision-making is minimal, both at home and in the community.
They are found extending their working hours inordinately at home and outside,
to earn enough to meet the subsistence requirements of their households.
Yet, their labour goes unrewarded
and unrecognized, in most cases. Given the plight of women, it becomes
important to redefine poverty.
Capabilities are crucial for an adequate standard of living and enjoyment of
economic, political and social rights. Access to resources & opportunities,
the ability to define and articulate needs and priorities, and to act upon them
together makes up capabilities. Sustained or chronic deprivation of the
resources, capabilities and choices make poor women vulnerable, powerless and
dependent. A social understanding of poverty would take into account these
deficits that sometimes matter to women more than money. Poverty reduction,
therefore, implies increasing capacities and choices and decreasing the
vulnerability of the women. A strong organization of their own, strong
capabilities built through education, information, skills and confidence and
enhanced access to resources & opportunities, can provided them the freedom
of choice and action. Poverty reduction and empowerment are two sides of the
same coin.
Of late Self-Help Groups (SHGs), formed to
encourage savings, and credit and income generating activities, are
increasingly recognized as the effective methods of alleviating poverty of
women. But SHGs are ill equipped to deal effectively
with the issues crucial to women’s poverty. The role of education in empowering
women’s collectives (SHGs) assumes significance in
this context. Information dissemination, raising awareness, capacity building,
and translation of skills into practice increases women’s economic options and
promote their sense of worth. Basic literacy skills and trainings on
group formation for thrift and credit, SHG management, finance management, collective
entrepreneurship, livelihood enhancement will assure them sustainable
livelihoods and in turn increase their well being. Poor women are also often in
a socially and politically disadvantageous position. Education and training
will also invest in them the skill and confidence to negotiate socially and
politically.
Adult education should place women’s empowerment and reduction of feminization
of poverty firmly on its mandate. It should integrate the issues relating to
gendered power relations, access and control over resources, and rights &
entitlements. It should educate and train women with necessary information to
make choices that will lead to break the dependency syndrome and eventually to
the reduction of their poverty qualitatively.
(*) PRIA (Society for
participatory Research in Asia) is an international centre
for learning and promotion of participation and democratic governance. It is a
non-profit voluntary organization promoting the initiatives for the empowerment
and development of the poor, marginalized and weaker sections of the society.
It is based on the philosophy of participatory research and has a people
centered approach.)
By Inayatullah, President of PACADE- Pakistan
Association for Adult and Continuing Education in Pakistan
Here is my off-the-cuff observations on the ongoing discussion on adult
education and poverty reduction.
Papers and comments circulated so far, highlight the vital importance of adult
education for building up capacities and capabilities. The question is how
adult education is to relate to identification and the addressing of basic
needs. While income generation skills do help in reducing poverty, this alone
is not sufficient to empower adults and communities.
The matter also needs to be viewed in the contest of the stages and level of
the societies and the economies and the kind of education one is talking about.
In the least developed poor countries and stagnant economies a certain set of
approaches and strategies have to be devised while in developed countries adult
education would relate more to the acquisition of new skills and the ability to
cope with complex socio-economic changes. In developing countries the rate of
literacy is low. A massive effort is needed to make people acquire the basic
skills of reading, writing and basic calculations. Of course the literacy
centers can be used to impart income generation and life skills. It will be
unrealistic, however to expect that adult education by itself will straightaway
result in the reduction of poverty. Many more elements are involved to empower
people.
The most economic way of understanding the linkage of adult education and
poverty is to develop case studies of adult education and the learners’
relevant activities and their evaluation, in different countries.
By Maria Clara Di Pierro, Açao Educativa, Brazil
In
Brazil, family income is the socio-economic indicator that relates the most
with adult population’s schooling level. In 2001, the average literacy rate
among young and adult Brazilians was of 12,4%; this rate was higher, 28,8%, in
poor families with a monthly income below the national minimum wage[1];
in those homes where the income was higher than 10 national minimum wages,
illiteracy decreased up to a residual rate of 1,4%[2].
Therefore, the socio-economic condition is combined with inter-ethnic
relations, and territorial and gender belonging, to produce the intricate
fabric of inequalities regarding the access to education in Brazil.
If
it is true that educational exclusion goes hand in hand with poverty, however,
the increase in terms of schooling does not secure a substantive improvement in
families’ income in the present socio-economic conditions. On the contrary, in
the past two decades, the economic stagnation, the increase of unemployment and
the precarization of the working conditions depressed
Brazilians’ income and deepened social inequality, even with an increase in the
population’s average schooling. Certain studies confirm that the
schooling/income ratio has been deteriorating also in other Latin American
countries[3].
Before this scenario, there is no way to either sustain the discourse that
gives education an economic value under any circumstance, nor harbor the
illusion that schooling by itself can be the motor of economic and social
development.
However,
this is no reason why we should stop fighting for the right to schooling of all
adults. It is note enough to adopt a broader concept of education which
recognizes the formative value of work, of social movements and of other
non-formal learning spaces outside school. What Magda
Becker Soares says about literacy[4] can also be said about school education: as
long as access to schooling remains a privilege of certain social classes or
categories, the knowledge acquired in school assumes the role of a tool for the
exercise of power, for legitimating the economic, social and cultural
domination, discrimination and exclusion. Within this context, there are no
possibilities for a full economic, political, social and cultural participation
without a democratization of the access to school. In this framework, the
significance of schooling surpasses the mere acquisition of information, skills
and knowledge, and becomes a political process through which those groups
excluded from the social, civil and political rights have access to cultural
goods denied to them, and which constitute an indispensable capital in the
struggle for the achievement of these rights, for the participation in the
sphere of power, and for social transformation. It is within this context that
schooling constitutes a tool for the conquest of citizenship and the fight
against poverty.
Meanwhile,
in schools or in social movements there is no way to fight against poverty
without reviewing the issue of development perspectives for Latin American
countries, while questioning the hegemonic economic model that deepened the
concentration of wealth among the nations of the world and in the interior of
national societies. The recent conceptual advances around the ideas of human
and sustainable development do not get to the core of the problem of economic
dynamism, necessary to the opening of horizons for inclusion and social
justice. This is a “generating issue” , from which adult education, whether
formal or popular, cannot escape if willing to face the ethic imperative of
overcoming poverty in our continent.
Maria Clara Di Pierro[5]
Poverty
and the right to learn
By Alicia Villanueva, Movimiento Manuela Ramos, Peru
I found the papers and inputs submitted by the
participants very interesting; they encouraged me to continue reflecting upon
the issue of poverty and the right to learn. I would like to share with you
some of my reflections and experience, taking into consideration the concepts
that appear in the first documents.
Starting from the concept that education is an
universal human right, and that it is an important element to contribute in
poverty eradication, I share Peggy Antrobus’
affirmation: poverty cannot be eradicated through only one strategy. Thus,
education per se is not a magic pill, neither are micro-credits nor productive
projects if implemented in an isolated manner.
I agree with the concept that poverty is a complex
phenomenon, archaic and modern, absolute and relative; it is a phenomenon that
must be addressed from different angles – social, economic, cultural and
political -, simultaneously and globally.
I also find very useful the concept mentioned by
Shirley Walters about “learning region”, which could be more amply developed.
Therefore, it is not so simple to think in solving the
problem of poverty without structural changes and political actions on the part
of governments, even more when we face world’s reality, where poverty is more marked
with each passing day, and the gaps between the rich and the poor grow bigger
every day. We must find solutions, even if palliative, and urgently. We must
experiment and show strategies that can be multiplied and give us hope that
another world is possible.
I would like to say that from our practical experience
in the NGO Manuela Ramos in Peru, for the past 26 years we have considered
education as a basic tool to improve people’s life quality, providing that this
education helps them to empower themselves and increase their levels of
self-esteem, in order that they know their rights and exercise their
citizenship to the fullest, in peace and harmoniously, while achieving changes
in their environment regarding the relations of power. To this end, it is
important to be clear about what kind of education we are speaking about, and
of course, we are speaking about an education for creating critical and
creative minds, as well as proactive spirits, in solidarity.
Referring to the concept of “learning region”, I will
try to share briefly an experience we’ve been developing in Peru, in a district
of the Ayacucho province, located in our mountains,
with a mainly rural and very poor population.
This project, called “Casa del Bienestar”
(House of Welfare), is supported by the Municipality of the Morochucos
district, which ceded us a house to use. Here, a group of 19 women from
different communities provide information and advisory service to the women of
their communities and neighbors in general, regarding legal, health, and income
generation matters. The 19 women have been and are being trained by our
organization.
The training we provide addresses crucial aspects for
women’s empowerment, such as the knowledge on their rights, domestic violence,
sexual and reproductive health, and the access to and management of economic
resources. In this learning process, women are supported in their process of
improving their self-esteem and reaffirming themselves as valuable persons for
the community; they learn to demand the fulfillment of their rights before the
local authorities, such as the police, judges and district attorneys, high
officers of health, education, agriculture, so that they provide an adequate
service and support to the population in general, and to women in particular.
Rural women generally live from the low economic
income provided by their few lands and animals (those who possess them). They
commercialize or barter (exchange of goods without the mediation of money)
their meager production in weekly town markets. In order to improve these
women’s life quality in this aspect, in a first instance, the 19 selected women
worked as promoters of Casa del Bienestar , implementing a savings-credit system in their
groups. Later on, the women joined productive projects, such as the production
of typical garments of the region, organic vegetable gardens, guinea pigs
farms, with the aim of improving both their family feeding and economy.
Currently, women manage the money through small community banks, and implement
productive projects.
From these three fronts, and advocating with the local
authorities, our project contributes to empower women, and through them
important changes are achieved in their communities, always with a gender
focus. The results, up to this date, are very encouraging, because these women
know how to handle conflict at legal level, they know how to dialogue with
local authorities, as well as how to speak with men and women of their
community to foster a change of mentality. They are women that now have
monetary economic income; they have learnt about the advantages of saving and
investing; they are women that greatly contribute to achieve change, and
because of it, community and local authorities listen to them and respect them.
Going back to the concept of “learning region”, from
this experience, I would like to point out that we could not think of
developing the region and alleviating poverty if we did not have the support of
several institutions working in the locality, such as governmental bodies -
medical centers, municipality, police stations, or zonal agencies of public
ministry - , as well as commerce chambers and other private institutions, in
order to seek several approaches to the problem in a coordinated way. There are
many other fronts from which we could continue tackling this process of
learning region, but in our case, it is women themselves who must learn to
walk, and for that they require our support. The work in the region does not
end, we have some other projects in negotiation, such as setting up an
information center in the community, with internet access and video library,
coordinating with other institutions in relation to literacy, and the work with
children, among others.
Soma KP , Nirantar, Women's Resource Centre for Gender and Education, New Delhi, India
Hello friends,
'Nirantar' is a womens organization working in the realm of gender and
education in India, and we are currently engaged in a study that examines the
nature of educational and empowerment opportunities that the SHG (Self Help
Group) offers for women in situations of poverty. I wish to respond to
some of the issues that have been raised in the papers and responses in the
seminar, based on our present study and experiences in the field.
The fact that poverty alleviation measures are being
implemented in a narrow and limited framework, without addressing the roots or
even addressing themselves to the causes of poverty speaks of a superficial
understanding of the problem itself. The basis of human and material poverty
lies in the power relations within a given community and the exclusions that
result from it. As a number of the presentations in the seminar have pointed
out therefore, any initiative to address poverty will need to be inclusive in
its educational framework in that it will need to address itself to the gender,
caste, race, class and other aspects of power and how they interplay to
perpetuate a process of powerlessness and exclusion.
A focus on the ammeliorative
economic activity (IGA) without addressing the more fundamental forms of
denials is the "band-aid" analogy that women have spoken about in the
course of our study. Women do not see the IGA in a fragmented way as a means of
income- they wish to understand how it will fundamentally enable them to ensure
food for the family, ensure access to cultivate that piece of land, ensure
regular water to irrigate their crops and for them to drink. Therefore when a programme initiates an IGA they will participate in it as a
supplementary activity while continuing to struggle to make their mainstay
economy viable and to struggle with the material and non material denials in
their lives.
Basic skills and trainings on group formation for
thrift and credit, SHG management, finance management, entrepreneurship, are
inadequate and often inappropriate means to enable them to address their basis
of poverty; however they become acceptable to women in conditions of poverty
firstly since they are the only options on offer, and secondly they give them
access to resources that can help them mitigate their struggles for survival at
least in the short run. The extent to which these will ensure their
well being in the long run is highly debatable. Even in this situation, micro
credit based poverty strategies tend to eliminate the poorest out of their fold
since they are based on the premise of a minimum ability to save and repay in
the first instance, which the poorest and especially the female heads of
households may not be able to afford. Those responsible for the implementation
of the programmes invariably interpret this
acceptance of the SHG based credit and IGA formulation as the most appropriate
means to alleviate poverty and persue it without
addressing themselves to more creative and educative strategies for poverty
eradication based on structural change and patterns of entitlement and
underlying power relations.
In our experience women have challenged the
limited view of economic development as well as of education through their
struggles in various ways. The literacy movement in the Southern Indian state
of Andhra Pradesh gave rise to the spontaneous
agitation of women against arrack, and numerous instances are cited to show how
women in micro credit based SHGs have risen to protest
against domestic violence. Clearly the women are calling for an inclusive
framework for education and development that addresses the many areas of denial
and exclusion and disempowerment that they experience. The States reponse to these processes however has been far from
encouraging. While women came out in large numbers to participate in the
literacy programme in the country indicating the
significance of literacy in their lives, the state on its part has put a hold
on the literacy initiatives and instead offers an SHG based strategy for
economic ammelioration with negligible engagement
with its educational content or moorings. On the other hand poverty alleviation
programmes also do not recognize literacy as a key
component for poverty alleviation despite the high correlation of incidence of
poverty and illiteracy. Although recent legislation on right to education have
been passed, this is limited to the child in a limited definitional framework
and excludes the right of adults to education.
Women in all the groups that we have interacted with
have emphasised the role of literacy as an integral
need to enable empowerment. However even educational programmes
for adult women (such as mahila Samakhya,
as programme ostensibly for 'Education for Womens Equality) do not adequately integrate the literacy
component, nor do they give consideration to the consequent denial of rights
and opportunities for empowerment that stems from the denial of literacy.
In response to the debate on the minimum levels
of literacy and education that are desirable to enable women to address their
poverty and exclusion, the view that ability to undertake basic tasks of numeracy and literacy to allow women to understand and read
their passbooks and accounts and participate in development is an adequate
level indicates a limited perception of the potential of education and
literacy. Women view the potential of literacy not only in their 'signatur-ate' status -being able to 'sign in' as
participants in programmes- but also in determining
the nature of their participation, the terms of their engagement and ability
and confidence to influence the processes. Women we spoke to in the course of
the above mentioned study as well in our previous initiatives have spoken about
the liberating potential of literacy, in enabling them to gain independence and
enhance their opportunities for gaining knowledge and information. They spoke
of the empowering experience of being counted as lettered even with rudimentary
reading and writing skills, and the sense of self worth. While there were
serious limits to the extent of their learning of literacy skills through the
sporadic and limited literacy inputs that they had received, they felt that
what was more important was the perception of their being literate that made
group leaders more accountable or the buyers of their produce less likely to
cheat them, and their confidence and ability to challenge exploitation.
Some women who had been part of the literacy campaign
in the early 90s spoke of the desire for education and literacy inputs that
allowed them to make the links between their lives and the world outside, to
issues that were of a larger nature and determined the trends in society and
the economy at large, rather than a limited focus. In contrast learning
opportunities in current poverty alleviation and empowerment programmes promoted by the State reflect a view of learning
in a limited programmatic framework related to the management and efficiency of
SHGs, indicating an instrumentalistic,
status quoist approach.
Arguments against an intensive literacy input or a
continuing educational process that addresses the multiple facets of the lives
of the poor are invariably on the grounds that the process is too tedious,
takes too much time and needs to be contextually located. These are in fact the
factors and processes that are likely to result in sustainable structural
change and transformation, and need to be pursued in order to
enable communities to overcome the material and nonmaterial roots of their
poverty.
Participatory Poverty Assessments (PPAs)
as a form of Adult Non-formal Literacy for Poverty Reduction in Uganda
By Samson James Opolot,
Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Basic Research
(CBR) Kampala-Uganda.
I would like to commend the ICAE for organising this
virtual learning process and those that have already contributed insightful
articles that I have found interesting to read.
I concur with many who recognise
that poverty is a complex issue and that politics further complicate it and
ways of trying to understand and resolve it. Thus poverty cannot be wished away
through one-off solutions such as literacy programmes,
even when it
follows that depending on the what, how and to whom
literacy programmes are targeted, plays a critical
role in empowering communities to tackle poverty in sustainable ways.
I will draw on my own experience to substantiate my
position.
I have participated as Technical Advisor to the
national participatory poverty assessment program that has been on since
September 1998. It is an attempt to compliment traditional income/expenditure
measurements of poverty with the growing faith in participatory non-traditional
poverty assessments that look at the problem and solutions thereto through and
with local lenses. The Uganda government has listened with keen
interest to this new approach and accepted its hand-on
learning/solving approach to poverty reduction.
Government has especially been encouraged to ensure
that the participatory poverty assessments deliver tangible local priority
projects to the communities concerned as opposed to a purely local learning
process. Hence in the tradition of participatory
learning approaches, the learning/researches have
concluded with a community action plan (CAP) resulting from a locally prioritised need. In my opinion, this has worked miracles
in my country.
Among others, since inception communities in over half
of the districts in the country have participated in the PPAs.
For once there is a growing respect for government programs because local
populations can relate to the constrcution of their
problems and the debates on how best to resolve their plight. Besides learning
some critical analytical tools for understanding their challenges (from daily
activity calendars through which household members can aggregate their varied
time/energy allocations to the unit's survival to community resource maps that
enable them to compare constraints of accessing services) locals are also proud
in having their projects delivered as part of the learning process.
Examples of the community projects so far delivered
includes grinding mills and safe water sources.
Communities have deliberated forms of management
committees to manage these resources sustainable having gender and professional
strengths integrated in the
management structures. Gradually the legacy of
big promises that never got delivered is by government is slowly being replaced
by enthusiasm for the PPA.
What are the lessons?
Instead of separating learning from poverty reduction
initiatives, I consider it possible to indulge in forms of adult literacy that
directly deliver poverty reduction projects. The PPAs
described above have this promise of at once engaging communities in learning
processes while at the same time delivering some
tangible results towards resolving a locally prioritised
problem. Expanding the scope of partnerships (civil society and private sector)
in popularising these PPAs
promises to expand their application and thereby the scale of micro projects
that communities could expects over the years. The challenge is the will and
resources to harness this process. What is your
experience?
By Eliane Cavalleiro, member of
REPEM
Black women in Brazilian society find themselves in
complex social relations, which articulate racial discrimination on the part of
white women and men, and gender discrimination on the part of black and white
men. Most black women are victimized, living in rather precarious conditions,
inserted in a vicious and perverse circle that imprisons them efficiently in a
place of social hardship, poverty, and physical and emotional suffering (Faria & Nobre, 1997; Rooks,
2000; Rufino, 2000).
Black women’s precarious social and material life
conditions can be measured, taking into consideration several variables, such
as: housing, working conditions, conditions for the access to and permanence in
Brazilian schools. These situations impact on their health conditions and life
expectancy. A fundamental characteristic that should be taken into account is
that living in a situation of social subordination affects those women’s
identity. Therefore, it becomes imperious, when thinking about a process of overcoming
poverty and lifelong education and learning, to pay attention to less evident
and specific issues, which involve the building of their subjectivity,
self-esteem, and racial belonging.
In the understanding of the development of black
women’s subjectivity, relevance can be attributed to the individual and
cultural aspects that contribute to their formation. The place they occupy –
precarious housing, low schooling, symbolic physical violence, high rate of
unemployment or even lower remuneration than that perceived by black and white
men, does not contribute positively to build their subjectivity, as well as
their integral development. Because the racist social structure, and the values
it spreads, generally place black women in a negative and inferior level,
regardless of their age, social class, appearance and schooling.
Such
process, among other things, can cause many black persons to have low
expectations and fear when they attempt to insert themselves or go higher in
several spaces of society, such as: schools, universities, hospitals,
companies, shops, etc. (Souza, 1983; Bento; 1992). The item schooling becomes
the first indicator of poverty[6] regarding black women.
Many researchers emphasize on the fact that the existing inequalities regarding
education among racial groups precipitate the inequalities perceived in their
participation in the occupational structure, as well as their average income. (Carneiro e Santos, 1984). Furthermore,
in Brazil “the return of investment on education has been highly
discriminatory. In the case of men and women, the differences are much more
severe regarding income than regarding occupational positions. However, when
the skin-color variable is included, the differences are marked, in relation to
both the positions held and the remuneration, even when both persons (black and
white) have the same educational level” (Lima, 1995, p.486)
The research
conducted by the Fundaçao SEADE (SEADE, 2000) tears
down the myth that a higher education level would contribute to reduce the
existing discrimination against black persons in Brazilian society. In this
research, when analyzing the labour market indicator,
it is noticed that black women who finish second grade receive 67,1 percent of
the salary obtained by non-black women (white and Asian descendants) with the
same education level. Also unemployment rate, which affects black population
more severely, became more pronounced among black women between 1990 and 1995,
with an increase of 41 percent. The unemployment rate registered among black
women increased, from 17,8 percent in 1995 to 25,1 percent in 2000. Also among
non-black women, during the same period, the unemployment rate increased 35,9
percent going from 13,9 percent to 18,9 percent.
These inequality regarding
opportunities, access to, and permanence in the labor market shows that black
women and their families face a pernicious economic and social reality, which
contributes to maintain their condition of poverty and social subordination,
while deepening even more the differences between black and white people.
“Therefore, if
it is true that the sexual division of work shaped roles for women, which the
Feminist Movement seeks to question and redefine, the racial division of work
establishes differentiated roles and functions within the feminine group, where
the evaluation of costs and benefits expresses the differentiated levels of
speculation and oppression that affect women from different racial groups”. (Carneiro e Santos, 1984, p.44)
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (1979), highlights that, among other forms of
oppression, the elimination of apartheid, of all forms of racism and racial
discrimination, is essential for the full exercise of men and women’s rights.
This convention, ratified by Brazil in 1984, includes in its text devices that
bind signatory States to develop actions, including legislative ones, with the
aim of preventing discrimination on account of both race and gender.
In the II World Conference
Against Racism, which took place in South Africa, the United Nations emphasized
on the fact that the economic growth, promoted by liberal policies, can result
in inequalities and/or in a decadence of the patterns of some groups. When
governments cut their social public expenditure, including for example the
unemployment insurance, this affects mainly those women that belong to certain
social and ethnic groups, particularly single mothers or women who are head of
their families. (UN, 2001).
So,
when discussing and analyzing adult education and poverty reduction, to carry
out actions that fight racism and its derived forms appears as indispensable,
because they constitute powerful weapons that imprison African-descendants
Brazilians, particularly women, in a situation of permanent social
disadvantage. Their racial belonging constitutes a primordial element that
sustain the scenario of illiteracy, low schooling and poverty.
Therefore,
in order to think of a consistent adult education process, specifically in
relation to black women, and to overcome poverty, it is necessarily required to
elaborate and implement education policies that fight racism and sexism, as
well as give value and respect to the ethnic and racial diversity present in
our societies. To this end, it would be crucial to develop three fundamental
dimensions for the issue in question:
a)
Formation of young
community leaderships, having as guidelines the fundamental principles of human
rights; and making these women strategic multipliers of information about the
issue;
b)
Methodology of
transversal, anti-discriminatory, anti-sexist work in the education – formal
and informal- of children, young and adult people; men and women;
c)
Sensitization and
training of institutions and companies, in order that they become partners in
the elimination of racial and gender inequalities;
With this brief paper,
I hope to have contributed to the reflection upon the challenges we must face
in the promotion of an education program that pays attention to the effects of
racism or its derived forms in the process of acquiring knowledge and personal
development.
By Paul
Belanger, President of ICAE
I would like, first, to thank all of you who did
participate in this global seminar. The very event of such direct global
dialogue, where nearly 500 women and men around the world have found ways to
relate and debate, is a first very positive result. A result even more critical
when we observe the terrible lack of resources and support that the advocacy
oriented NGOs receive from multilateral and bilateral organisations.
Many issues have been raised and deepened along the
week. Let me underline five of them.
1.
The complexity of poverty and
intricate fabric of inequalities
Many participants have underlines that poverty refers,
of course, to unequal economic conditions of life, but also to no or limited
access to other social, political, educational and cultural assets. These assets are not only individual but also
collective: the lack of resources in the community, the lack of a health clinic
or school in the village, the lack of water facilities in an urban
neighbourhood, etc. And poverty is not only to be looked at micro level, but
also at macro level. The reality of poverty includes the racial or economic
exclusion of a region, as well as the unending accumulated debt of nations
through unequal terms of economic exchanges. A discourse on eradication of
poverty reduced at micro level could then be hypocritical.
2. Poor
or impoverished people?
We could not speak, some of you have written, about
the eradication of poverty without referring as well to the induction of
poverty. Statistically demonstrated by some participants, explained through
examples by others, the process of impoverishment is increasing. The hegemonic
economic model, that deepened the concentration of wealth among the nations of
the world and in the interior of national societies, has to be questioned and
reformed. The network of adult educators cannot escape this issue. What is at
stake here is not only to deal with the structural dimension of inequality, but
to acknowledge that living in a situation of social
subordination could affect one’s sense of
identity and to recognise the dignity and the rights of impoverished women and
men.
3. The gender and racial discrimination
All along the week, from all regions, participants
referred to the specific mapping of poverty, and in particular to the gender
and racial discrimination. For example, the sexual
division of work shapes roles for women
and conditions the exercise of their right to learn. This acknowledgement is
critical, because, then, it leads to the recognition of specific causes of
inequality and, consequently, to different actions and conditions for creating
the social change and bringing about inclusive communities.
3.
The easy solution but ineffective
“quick-fix solutions”
The micro-credits and other similar solutions could
only work and produce sustainable transformation of peoples’ conditions if the
capacity building, that accompanies the implementation of such mechanisms, is
developed on a longer term perspective, if time and space are allocated for
people to really empower themselves, to acquire and master the expertise
needed, if participants have the occasion to appropriate the new knowledge in
their local context and local actions, if they have possibilities to
disseminate their “new experience” in
their neighbourhood and help change the false truth or the prejudices, if they
have time to analyse the unexpected problems and work on the situation. The
quick fix, because of its inefficacy and its consequential low rate of success,
is bound to produce the self-fulfilling prophecy so much expected by the
protagonists of status quo. Education is investment and, like with all
investments, cheap inputs and shortcuts yield cheap results.
4.
Education alone does not work,
neither any intervention without education
A participant from Brazil explained how increase of
level of education could not alone induce the expected transformation, without
transformation in the dual or segmented labour markets, without changes in the
wild neo liberal economies. Yet, at the same time, no economic policy and no
social strategy will work without the sustainable development of peoples’ capacity
to act, of skills to analyse their milieu, of available information about their
contexts, of expertise to participate actively and creatively, in short without
education. Poverty, one of you said, cannot be eradicated through only one
strategy.
5.
Policy can make a difference
Participants from Africa have demonstrated that with
comparable national resources the situation from one country to another could
differ, because of different national policies and priorities. The example of
Botswana was given as a country that is now nearly reaching universal primary
education. Policy and political changes, and hence political action, can then
make a difference.
CONCLUSION
Many other themes could have been underlined. Our
ICAE’s initiative is another beginning in our effort to help public expression
and development of competent advocacy at the international level. Our General
Secretary, Celita Echer,
will bring these analyses with her, next week in Bostwana,
at the International Conference on Adult Education and Poverty Reduction”.
Before leavnig you, let me
express two additional thoughts. First, if poverty reduction strategies needs
more adult education components and inputs to make them sustainable, adult
education programme need also to bring the issue of poverty and inequity more
at the core of their concern in order to render them more relevant.
Second, the struggle against poverty requires the
commitment of many actors, from all parts of the world. Poverty, in its causes
and as an experienced reality, is a world problem and challenge: West and East,
North and South. In line with CONFINTEA’s commitment
number 10 (“Enhancing international co-operation and solidarity”) and the MDGs Goal 8 (“Develop a global partnership for
development”), we need active global and regional large networks for achieving
the required transformation.
We specially wish to thank all of you who, responding
generously and in solidarity to ICAE’s call sent us
their papers with so relevant and creative reflections, in such a short time.
Thank you for building with us a much-needed international advocacy networks on
the right to learn of citizens.
Paul