Good Apples spotlights people and organizations improving education in the developing world.
1. How long have you been working in education? What made you start?
I started The Ladybug Project Inc. in the summer of 2010 while I was in the middle of an eight-month stint working as a conservation biologist in the African countries of Equatorial Guinea and Madagascar. I’d basically spent ten weeks bushwhacking through the unmapped rainforests of Equatorial Guinea, and realized that no matter how long I worked with local populations to get them to protect threatened primate species, my conservation efforts would never work until the basic human rights of primary education and sanitary healthcare were guaranteed. And so, I started The Ladybug Project Inc. to help underserved communities develop better education and healthcare facilities. Nowadays we focus our efforts on scalable, cost-effective, and innovative education and healthcare social entrepreneurship.
2. Where are you working now? What are you doing to make education in the developing world better?
I am now working as the Executive Director of The Ladybug Project Inc. out of our Philadelphia development office. I periodically return to our African project sites to increase our logistical capabilities, and these trips are becoming increasingly necessary as we expand. Notably, we are working on a fantastic education program in Madagascar called the Rural Teacher Network. This will be the only program working with rural schools in northern Madagascar, and we plan to use cell phones in a cutting edge and innovative way to increase the capacity of rural teachers. We will also be collecting the first baseline data on these schools; right now we have no idea whether students are even learning, or whether the teaching is even effective! We hope that the data, which will be widely distributed, will help other NGOs and the government focus their efforts in a culturally-sensitive way to increase student learning.
3. What does your typical day look like?
To say that I work an average 9:00 to 5:00 job would be a vast understatement; being the Executive Director of a rapidly growing start-up is an adventure every day, and the time commitment far exceeds 40 hours a week. On any given day I could be networking with donors, writing grants, doing outreach in a Philadelphia public school, calling my project manager in West Africa, or mentoring one of the dozen interns we have. Every day is different and exciting!
4. What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced working in development?
At first it can be difficult to prove yourself to other nonprofits, grant-giving organizations, and supporters. My biggest advice is to put your head down and keep charging forward; the longer you plug away at work, the more you learn, and the more you can prove yourself. Sooner or later, people will start to hear your message and will realize that your life-changing and amazing work is worthy of their time and attention.
5. What’s the biggest challenge the education programs you’ve worked with have faced?
A constant problem is the almost complete lack of data about our project sites, which makes it hard to accurately assess needs and progress. Sometimes the data has never actually been collected, but other times it was just never published and is sitting on a shelf somewhere collecting dust. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of NGOs unknowingly reinvent the wheel on a regular basis – wasting time and resources. The Ladybug Project is striving to change this culture – especially with our education sites in Madagascar. All of the data we collect will be published, distributed, and easily accessible in multilingual reports. We hope that putting freely accessible information onto the internet and into the hands of capable organizations, we can better focus education development.
6. What’s been your favorite success story?
While I was in Madagascar, I had the opportunity to teach at an urban high school in Diego Suarez. This school is a mammoth center of education: over 1,500 students in 14 classrooms. It hasn’t been renovated since independence (trust me, that’s a long time ago!), is falling apart around the students, and can be a real wake-up call about the sort of hurdles that students in developing countries face. On my last day of teaching there, the headmaster told me that an increase in poverty had caused neighborhood gangs to start stealing desks for firewood. Deeply moved, I immediately tapped into my newly created Ladybug supporter list and within three weeks we’d raised enough money to donate sixty desks and new school locks for the students. The day the desks were delivered, a ladybug volunteer happened to snap some pictures of student graffiti written in French on the wall. When translated, it read: “Poverty is overcome by education.”
It has become one of the single defining memories to propel me forward in my work, even when it becomes difficult or I have to overcome hurdles.
7. What’s your advice to those just beginning a career working in education in the developing world?
Be persistent and passionate. The world needs people who have found a calling and who are willing to overcome adversity in order to realize their dreams. Working overseas, especially in developing countries, can be incredibly difficult; if you give up too soon, you’ll never realize the fantastic and indescribable payoffs that an international career in development affords hard workers. Be prepared to hear the word, “no” frequently, but don’t let that stop you from doing worthwhile work.
8. Write your own question, and answer it!
What is the most unexpected question you’ve ever been asked while overseas?
“What is the color of the sun in your country?” – as asked by an eight-year-old boy in a rural village in Madagascar.
If you know any Good Apples working to make education better in the developing world, tell us! contact@openequalfree.org
Creative Commons Love: Nina Matthews on flickr.com
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