“We engage parents in learning processes and change school cultures

”

-Co-founder, Educate a Child in Africa.

ECA, Educate a Child in Africa, Inc. is the brain child of two Co-Founders. Gideon A. Asaah is a co-founder and chief operating officer. He is a Social Entrepreneur with over ten years of experience working with young people in Cameroon. He’s an Ashoka Fellow and a passionate advocate for Education in Africa.
  Divine Gordon Asaah is the second co-founder and Executive Director. He is an American citizen of Cameroonian origin based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Philadelphia, New York. He is a Researcher at Havard School of Education. The Chief Operating Officer Gideon A. Asaah was interviewed in his Limbe office by EDEV’s Francis Ekongang Nzante. His revelations provide interesting reading.

Excerpts:

What pushed Assah Gideon into his present humanitarian activities?

I was inspired by my parents. My dad is an administrator but before being an administrator he was a teacher. My mother has been a primary school teacher for over 30 years and I saw the tireless efforts she put in. It was a kind of education that kids were not given the opportunity get hands on learning. This pushed me to create an association called educate a child in Africa. I did this in collaboration with my elder brother Divine Gordon Assah who’d lived in the US for over ten years and had worked with one of the biggest theatre houses in the world decided to create this organization. In 2010 when our association was created, he resigned from his job just like I had done. He then went to the Havard School of Education after which he threw his weight behind our activities.

What road have you so far covered with Educate a child in Africa?

ECA Mission is a non-profit organization that supports student
achievement and school improvement through Play and Learn games and activities, Family Engagement and Community Engagement. We equally believe that everyone benefits when community members are involved in their children’s education. For our play and learn activities we create games for children as well as spaces in schools and communities where kids learn almost 90% of what they study in school but in the form of play. In these spaces kids learn and coordinate activities and even go as far as creating games. Basically we have been working in the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon but our focus more recently has actually been the Southwest Region because of the shaky situation in Cameroon recently. Because of the absence of school due to strike actions we have been creating spaces in communities.

Can you outline the modus operandi of ECA in a much more specific manner?

There is Play and Learn | Leadership. Educate a Child in Africa, Inc.'s Play and Learn | Leadership club activities inspires the passion for consequential formal education; teach children basic lessons on diverse subjects while building their confidence, team building and leadership skills. Children love to have fun. So we incorporate playfulness in education. We make education enjoyable for children by weaving lessons into lively activities. We create original games that help pupils in Science, hTechnology, Engineering and Math.

 ECA's Play and Learn | Leadership club activities fosters lifelong learning opportunities for all children. Family Engagement: Most parents have disengaged themselves from their children's education. We change the culture of public institutions by training teachers on how to intentionally and systematically forge sustainable mutually beneficial partnerships with parents. When schools develop strong partnerships with parents, families and communities, the pupils achieve at a higher level and are better equipped for lifelong success.

Know Your Children: It is a fun-game show between children and their parents/guardians. The goal of this initiative is to assuage the different frictions that exist within families and communities and identify the most essential needs of children. Children ask their parents pertinent questions about them. This lively activity falls in line with Article 18 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which states that 'both parents share responsibility for bringing up their child and should always consider what is best for the child'

Gideon A. Asaah

So what is the way forward?

We want to be all over the continent. When we started we did a couple of things in Nigeria but we thought that it wasn’t time for us to scale so we decided to come back and focus on the areas where we started. So in 2017 we will be putting in place a strategy to scale to other African countries.

Any message to some stakeholders?

My message is directed to policy makers, educational authorities and those in decision making positions. I call on the Cameroonian Government to be involved in initiatives like this. This is the case in some West African countries and in Uganda, a country that I visited recently.

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