Questions to be answered:
How much to pay the lay-teachers?
How to get money to them? Perhaps have them send in witnessed request along with simple “field documentation” such as cell phone photos of them in the process of teaching. Of course someone could “cheat” and only pretend to be teaching a group of girls while having their picture taken. But many would not cheat because the world over most parents want a better life for their children, girls included, and would encourage education. Business and social organizations within region or country wide reach could be enrolled to receive and dispense funds to the lay-teachers. Other ideas for how to organize this will emerge. Crowd funding in a natural for this project. Cell phones are everywhere and a way could be devised to use them in making the payments.
Use textbooks, don’t use textbooks?
Translations, like Google translations, can be had a no cost. But machine translations are not totally accurate—especially when it comes to conveying the meaning of pronouns and direct and indirect objects and modifiers. One idea is to use a combination of stick figure drawings along with VERY short sentences. The sentences would consist of only verbs and nouns. For example: “do work”, “eat food” “save money”, “build shelters”, “read books”, “count money” and so on. Stick figures shown representing the action accompanied with the translatable phrases are a possibility. Sentences of only one noun and one verb usually translate accurately in most languages using the free machine translations.
Teach the Teachers.
Another approach is to prepare brief and concise lessons in all K through 8 grade levels in each of the 12 or so subjects and get native speakers representing the 50 +/- most common languages to donate their translation services for their language. These lessons, free, can be placed on the internet for anyone to download and take to even the most remote villages. Perhaps only the teacher will have the printed page, or, in some cases, copy machines may be available to make copies for the girls. In either case, girls will be learning!
Sample Salary Figures:
$2.25 USD per day, is 45 % of $5, the day labor rate in Haiti. This is for grandma who has taken the “how to teach” course. It is extra income for her family, equivalent to having a day laborer give half his salary to the family. Twenty (20) days a month = $45 USD, so for a 10 month school year that lay-teacher costs $450. She can teach 2 different sessions a day—an additional 12 girls get taught, making 24 girls being taught for a year for a total teacher cost of $450.
Ten teachers would cost $4,500 and would teach 240 girls for a year. One hundred teachers would cost $45,000 for the year and would teach 2,400 girls!!! WHAT A BARGAIN !!! That amount would not be difficult to raise by crowd funding. The cause is so worthy and practical.
WhereTo Get the Course Material?
With only slight editing to update materials or to remove religious promotion, all the subjects K though 8 can be gotten free off the internet. Copyright limitations have expired on a lot of the material. Additionally, we have the home school movement to thank for much of this free sharing of valuable teaching material. A few hours of research on the web by this writer turned up an abundance of free material in all subjects and for all grade levels.
Greg Mortenson on educating girls:
In his book, Three Cups of Tea…, Greg Mortenson said, “Educate a boy, and you educate an individual. Educate a girl, and you educate a community.” He is also widely credited as saying: “Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities, but the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pass on what they’ve learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls.”
About the Name:
I had been pondering the right name for the school for many days. One night while still pondering I had a visitor. Suddenly I looked up from my desk, there was a frog hanging, belly toward me, on my window! This is a very unusual thing—it happened one time a year or two ago and I have lived in the house for 19 years. It thrilled me! I went to look in the Native American totem book and found frog: “Frog speaks of new life and harmony through its rain song.” [p 190, beginning of last paragraph in the description] and “…Frog can sing the song that calls the rain to earth.” [p 189, 3rd paragraph] As I stood at the bookshelf (opposite side of room from window) the frog jumped from glass to side frame of the window. This afforded me a “topside” shot with my cell phone camera—by gently opening the sliding patio glass door, upon which she had been, stepping scarcely through the door, and snapping her picture. Some 20 to 25 minutes later she was still there. Cleansing, healing and water attributes are brought by frog. A school that brings healing and cleansing in the service of harmony for the human family might well earn the name, “Rain Song School.” Of course, one or many different names may be chosen to best fit the needs of the community.
Overview prepared by Dr. Jerry Dean Epps (PH. D), Marietta, Georgia 30062, USA.