Scholars Access Program
(Content to come soon)
Girls’ Empowerment Program
More than 98 million adolescent girls in the world do not go to school. Many of these girls are in the northern Togo where some families tend to think girls should not go to school. Boys are thought to have the whole privilege and to be the most endowed with intelligence to go to school and to take care of the family later. Some girls grow up thinking this is normal and that they do not possess any skill to stand out or to contribute to their families’ or to their communities’ well-being. Worst of all is that some grew up in this context and are happy to stay at home considering themselves as the ones who should stay at home and do all the house work. Further, there are many of those girls who would love to set foot in school but cannot make it because of the bias the society has on them or because of the financial challenges. Today most of the girls who are at home have gone to school but quickly abandoned because of problems like the burden of the parents on them to get married, poverty, early pregnancies, lack of support, ignorance etc.
This program aims at empowering secondary and high schools girls coming from three regions of Togo: Central, Kara and Savannah region where girls’ education is a true challenge. Our goal is to empower girls for a sustainable development. Our core objectives are to endow these adolescent girls with tools they can use to fight for their autonomy, explore educational opportunities for girls, raise girls’ awareness on their hidden skills, and help them unleash their leadership potential. We believe that if girls are given equal chances as far as education is concerned, they will be able to take healthy and courageous risks, support their families, take care of their children and change the world.
STEM Academy
STEM refers to the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. People who enter into these fields gain employment in information technology (IT), medicine, higher education and many other fields. However, many Togolese children, especially girls, fall behind in their STEM classes. Many students across the country do not have access to equipment that can bring excitement and curiosity into their science classrooms, so they often do not consider STEM fields for possible career opportunities.
EDULCOD Togo’s STEM Academy aims to introduce young learners to a world of skill sets and topics that they may never have thought possible. This academy can allow students to explore new topics in a relaxed, creative, and entertaining environment without the pressures that the school year typically brings. Students will experience hands on learning from trained teachers and experts who will be able to show students science experiments and see real life application of concepts learned in classrooms. Smaller numbers of students give the teacher more time to focus on each student individually and thus achieve better learning for the students.
By participating in the program, Togolese youth can return to their villages or towns with new confidence and gain exposure to new ways of thinking that will serve them better in the classroom and later in life.
Leadership and Entrepreneurship Program
The majority of Togo’s population live in rural areas where a majority of people engage in sustentative farming. This places the youth in these areas at increasing risk to poverty due to decreasing availability of land and the effects of climate change creating difficulties for farmers. It is imperative that youth leadership and entrepreneurship skills are taught to these youth, so that they can take charge of their communities through innovation, create jobs, and increase productivity growth for their families and country.
The Leadership and Entrepreneurship mentoring program aims to provide workshops and skills programs for the youth of Togo in order to provide participants with the technical skills needed to become change makers in their communities. The mentorship program will strengthen participant’s communication skills, group-work abilities, and community engagement skills to give them a toolbox of skills they will take into their adulthood. Career mentorship will be provided to participants and individual action plans will be created so that each youth can achieve their best potential.
This program will train the future leaders of tomorrow by helping learners to become self-sufficient agents of change in their communities. Progress is achievable when our youth have the opportunity to grow and take charge their futures.
English Language Program
Afterschool programs are able to bring a wide range of benefits to youth, families and communities especially in the field of English as a Second Language (ESL). ESL afterschool programs can boost academic performance, reduce risky behaviors, promote physical health, and provide a safe, structured environment for the children of working parents as well as help students thrive in an English-speaking environment. They provide a culturally sensitive atmosphere to help develop ESL students’ literacy skills and offer literacy-related activities that promote the English Language Learning students’ motivation and interest.
Generally, these activities occur in a controlled environment such as the school’s auditorium or playground between 1-2 hours on school days, and sometimes on the weekend depending on the number of students.
Afterschool instructors work in tandem complementing and extending ESL classes’ activities and programs whereby students would improve on the skills learned in class and apply it more frequently for extra practice and be coaches or instructors to others as they use the acquired language.
The most useful ESL afterschool activities will be meaningful and closely tied to real objects or relevant to their personal lives to provide a concrete context for words and ideas. To the extent possible, activities and support should be provided to bridge the students’ primary language, while simultaneously giving students authentic opportunities and encouragement to practice responding in English. The style and medium of communication should be adapted to the needs or the students whenever possible. Spoken directions should also be written e.g. gestures should accompany oral language.
Commonly referred to as IELP, Intensive English Language Programs can help English Language Learners improve their sills whether for educational, business or personal purposes. Programs are typically designed for students to live in the language so that English can be learned more efficiently.
Students can vary by age; however, it is most common for students to be in high schools or at university whose studies take place full-time e.g. 20-25 hours per week. Courses are in Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking, Grammar, Vocabulary and English for Specific Proposes.
The most useful IELP activities will be meaningful and closely tied to real objects or relevant to their personal lives to provide a concrete context for words and ideas. To the extent possible, activities and support should be provided to bridge the students’ primary language, while simultaneously giving students authentic opportunities and encouragement to practice responding in English. The style and medium of communication should be adapted to the needs or the students whenever possible. Spoken directions should also be written e.g. gestures should accompany oral language.
Teaching Excellence Achievement Program
Teaching is not easy. When you stand in front of a classroom crowded with students, there is so much to think about and so much that you are responsible for. A good teacher must be a planner, an organizer, a subject-matter expert, an entertainer, an artist, a counselor, a helper, a record keeper, a mediator, a coach, and more! The workload and pressures of a teaching job can be overwhelming, and if you are like many teachers during a busy school year, it often feels like you are so busy trying to keep your head above water in a rising tide of lesson planning, correction, and administrative duties that there is no time left to think about the quality of your work or to connect with your colleagues.
The Teacher’s role is to analyze learner needs and develop their linguistic and communicative competence, to meet both their present. Teaching should begin first and foremost with the goals and expectations of the students with learning English. To fulfill those scopes, the teacher must understand and structure the classroom centered on those needs.
It is critical that teachers provide students with expectations and ambitions so that they can propel within the classroom and outside of it in real life, especially in their future studies. It not only supports confidence building, but it prepares students to have informed opinions and conversations i.e. Critical Thinking capacities.
The training should be relevant to secondary-school English teachers. Participants should leave the training feeling that the experience was useful for helping them improve their teaching. The training should include some theory, but the focus should be more practical. Plenty of practice with specific reference to the SPINE textbooks and the particular context of Sudanese classrooms is preferable to general discussions about theory. The training should encourage active participation and interaction among participants. Sharing experiences and problem solving with colleagues is more useful to teachers’ professional development than passively listening to lectures. The training should encourage reflection and self-assessment. It’s important for teachers to reflect on their own strengths and weaknesses and decide for themselves what they need to work on to improve.
