Whole Child Model: Education, Health & Engagement

Over the last school year (2014-15), School-to-School International worked with 10 partner schools in Guinea to implement the Whole Child Model, a broad-based set of holistic interventions to help children learn better that focuses on education, health and community engagement. During this time, STS expanded its work in Guinea to include additional interventions to encourage children’s success in school. This very important work was conducted in a difficult environment that included the Ebola outbreak, beginning in 2014. This was one of the largest and most complex Ebola outbreaks in history and saw a flood of emergency aid organizations spilling into Guinea in an attempt to control the virus, tending to ignore non-Ebola related development issues in Guinea. STS stood out in this crowd of organizations as one of the only still working in multiple contexts outside of Ebola.

Since our last report in June 2015, the school year in Guinea has come to an end. Over this summer break, our work has focused on analyzing the results of our interventions on student learning outcomes. STS recognizes the importance of rigorously evaluating the effectiveness of the changes we are introducing to partner schools in Guinea. Thus, we conduct student assessments at baseline, midline and endline during the school year in both treatment schools (those in which we work) and control schools (those that have not received STS interventions) to measure changes in student reading, math, and health knowledge. This information helps us more scientifically and systematically identify what we are doing that really makes a difference as well as those interventions that need to be adjusted to produce the greatest positive impact on children in rural Guinea.

The new school year in Guinea is anticipated to start on October 5, 2015. STS has already begun planning what our package of interventions will look like during this new school year, likely focusing on reading and math, health, and girls’ education and empowerment programs. STS is currently running an exciting fundraising campaign focused on the girls’ education and empowerment element of the coming year’s work. Your donation will help provide a scholarship to a young girl in rural Guinea who may have otherwise been forced to leave school due to her family’s resource constraints.

Links:

• STS's website