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Entrepreneurship Helps Education in Developing Countries

April 2006

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—Street children in Mexico get small loans to launch innovative businesses. Orphaned children who beg in India are lured to lessons with song, drama, and dance in schools set up on train platforms.

The entrepreneurial spirit is vital to education in developing countries, and innovative programs are yielding dividends for the future of children and youth, said participants in Stanford's fifth annual international development conference, hosted April 15 by the Graduate School of Business International Development Club and the Stanford Association for International Development.

The program included a keynote address by Cream Wright, UNICEF's chief of education, and two panels of experts from diverse backgrounds, including the World Bank, the United Nations, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. At a career fair held during lunch, students explored job, volunteer, and internship opportunities, and interacted with local nongovernmental organizations.

This year's program, "Delivering Education in Developing Countries: Challenges and Priorities," focused on education because of its critical importance to all aspects of development, said program co-chair Peter DeYoung, the president of the Business School International Development Club.

Ensuring that children everywhere complete a full course of primary school education and eliminating gender disparity in both primary and secondary education are two of the 2015 U.N. Millennium Development Goals, Wright said.

"We are a children's agency concerned with children's rights and plights. Children have a right to be educated," he said, but an estimated 115 million children were out of school in 2002.

Education is particularly difficult in countries prone to civil conflict, economic decline, political unrest, rights violations, and natural disasters, he said. Other challenges involve geographic and gender disparities.

Fewer girls than boys are educated at both primary and secondary schools in developing nations, and rural children are less likely to be educated than are urban children. Orphaned children and those whose mothers were not educated also fare worse.

Asked which is more important—increasing the quantity of students or enhancing the quality of education—Wright said the question creates a false dichotomy.

"What good is access to school if the quality of the education is so bad that they don't learn?" he asked.

Though schools in developing countries don't always have running water or buildings that keep bad weather at bay, they often become the center for supplying most all of the needs of children. Beyond education, children need environments for play, nourishment, health care, safety, and protection, Wright said.

Support from outside of a country must be aligned and harmonized with the needs and goals of the country itself rather than driven by the donor. "Development is not something you do to a country; it's something a country achieves," he said.

Most developing countries devalue girls and women, Wright said. Achieving gender parity in education is impossible in the foreseeable future because it requires radical change in societies' attitudes and beliefs. Developing nations may be out of sync with U.S. attitudes toward women, but by incorporating an entrepreneurial spirit into their attitudes toward the poor and homeless, they may seem relatively progressive, he said.

Maya Ajmera, the founder and president of the grant-making organization Global Fund for Children, said schools geared only to enabling students to be gainfully employed aren't thinking big enough. Children and youth can be more than beneficiaries of programs; they can be agents of change. Boys between 14 and 22 often drop out of school when they believe it isn't relevant to their limited futures, but they have a lot of entrepreneurial energy and can become entrepreneurs and employers by launching micro-enterprises funded by micro-credit.

"We can help them build real businesses with real products and real revenue," Ajmera said. "Street children in Mexico are in business making and distributing goat cheese. They sell it to all the embassies in the country."

Budd Mackenzie, the founder of Trust in Education, advocated investing directly in programs at the bottom rung of the ladder. His educational fund does that for women and children in Lalander, a village in Afghanistan.

"The trickle-down theory does not work," Mackenzie said. "NGOs can mean 'not going out.' The money often goes to those at the top who are planning for large-scale programs. I'm a real advocate for the 'just do it!' approach. Let's get to the villages."

His fund invested in pencils, paper, and books for children who did not have them. "For 120 kids, at 50 cents a kid, we invested $60 and created a school. It takes so little money to have a major impact."

He was also hopeful about changes in attitudes about women. Where he works "the village voted in a woman shura [town council member], which was revolutionary. And that can be replicated in other villages. Progress is doable."

A contrasting approach to MacKenzie's was presented by Chris Bradford, a member of the Stanford MBA Class of '05, who founded the African Leadership Academy based in South Africa. He is developing a secondary school to draw and educate Africa's top students, train them as leaders and entrepreneurs, and prepare them for entry into top universities.

"Bill Gates was 19 when he started Microsoft. We need to inspire youth to create businesses and become entrepreneurs," Bradford said. Creating a curriculum that supports entrepreneurial activities is one of the goals of the academy.
"People talk about 'the problem of youth,'" said Bradford. "I see the potential of youth. I believe inspired young people can change the world."

— Karen O'Leary

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