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One of the most exciting things that comes with being part of the Dignitas team is the opportunity to be part of a passionate community of change makers. In just one year with Dignitas, I’ve met a number of people innovating change in the education space, all pursuing one thing, improved learning outcomes for Kenyan children. This has sparked many deeply valuable conversations about the challenges and possibilities of change, the transformative power of quality education, and the overwhelming gaps in current education provision.
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These conversations have helped to shape much of our progress at Dignitas in the past year. The process of sharing with others, and questioning together, has proven to be extremely powerful.
One of those change makers is Kathlyn Pattillo, co-founder of Metis, creator of EdWell and author of an insightful recent article about education innovations in Bright Magazine; “Looking for Innovation in Education? Go to Kenya.”
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You can imagine our pride when Dignitas got a mention in this article;
“Evidence shows that over 60 percent of children in Nairobi’s informal settlements attend these types of preschools and primary schools, which typically have basic infrastructure such as tin roofs, books shared between students, and little to no access to WiFi. Entrepreneurs built pioneering models to support the communities who founded these schools (often churches or religious groups), by training leaders and teachers — including Dignitas in 2008.”
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As we come to the end of the year, our management team have been reflecting on the successes of 2018, in preparation for the team strategic planning exercise for 2019. At the beginning of the year, we adopted our ‘GIVE’ strategy, which was to see us:
- GROW to seek impact at scale
- INFLUENCE through a body of evidence that demonstrates how school leaders can help children learn
- VALUE driven programming that is affordable, sustainable and impactful
- ENGAGE stakeholders
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To make GIVE successful, we noted Collaboration and Innovation as two strategic enablers. You may have already seen our blog post on how we are leveraging collaboration, and it’s fantastic to have our innovative program design recognized in this article from Bright. Work to refine our program design for scale in 2018 has featured learning from an external evaluation of our work, and ideas to leverage technology to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our work, combined with the valuable conversations mentioned above, and all intended to create an even more innovative solution for Kenyan children in 2019 and beyond.
As Kathlyn states in her article; “The next chapter in the city’s history will be exciting to watch. It has implications not only for Nairobi’s children, but for education systems across the world.” Dignitas is excited to be a part of this movement! Please do check out the article on Bright, and share your thoughts with us!
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Contributor: Deborah Kimathi – Executive Director
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