Catholic Relief Services Publications: Education

Research Report/Vietnam: “Assessment of Educational and Health Needs for Children and Youth with Disabilities Identified as Affected by Agent Orange/Dioxin”

CRS/Vietnam has conducted this initial survey research on the needs for education and health care among children and youth with disabilities who are identified as affected by Agent Orange/dioxin. This report, written by Dr. Pham Huy Tuan Kiet and colleagues at the Hanoi Medical University, finds that children identified as dioxin-affected have the same types of disabilities as other children, but with higher severity and rates of many types of impairments. Approximately 50% of children surveyed attend mainstream schools, while the remainder stays at home, never pursuing an education.

Language: English   Vietnamese  

How-to Kosovo: Student Dropout Prevention and Response by CRS/Kosovo

This guide from CRS/Kosovo addresses the problem of student dropout. Dropout is an almost universal problem for education systems where CRS works. And although the causes are different in each location, there are common strategies that can reduce the problem. This How-to Guide presents steps to develop strategies for both preventing student dropout and getting children who have left back into school. Implementing these strategies will not only increase the number of children in school, but will improve the quality of the schools that they attend.

Language: English  

How-to: Guatemala: Integrated Community Literacy for Development by CRS/Guatemala

This guide from CRS/Guatemala addresses adult education and literacy. It presents a progressive methodology that puts the learner at the center of a process that not only improves literacy, but also raises participants’ self-awareness and develops cultural pride. The Integrated Community Literacy methodology is based in local experience, and is flexible to accommodate the various needs of adult learners. CRS/Guatemala has found that more literate participants in community development initiatives see better outcomes.

Language: English  

How-to Zimbabwe: Child Participation in Education
Initiatives by CRS/Zimbabwe

This guide from CRS/Zimbabwe addresses child participation in many aspects of programming. Child participation is one of the guiding principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and increasing the scope and level of child participation should be an objective for every education or child protection program. This guide presents many useful suggestions for ways to increase child participation, but what is required most of all is a belief in the value of child participation and a commitment to making it happen in a meaningful way.

Language: English  

How-to Vietnam: Inclusive Education for Children with Disabilities by CRS/Vietnam

This guide from CRS/Vietnam addresses Inclusive Education. Children with disabilities are one of the most marginalized groups in terms of access to education today. As such, our CRS mission and the principle of Education for All call on all of us to expand our programming in support of quality education for children with disabilities. This guide presents many useful suggestions for ways to do to this. Some are simple and others require more concerted effort. As this guide shows, whatever we do to make education better for disabled children will also make education better for all children.

Language: English  

Education and the CRS Integral Human Development Framework (IHD)

This paper looks at education and learning1 in the CRS Integral Human Development (IHD) conceptual framework. Its goal is to help CRS country programs and partner organizations use the IHD framework to assess, learn from and improve their programming in education and promotion of integral human development. An IHD analysis gives CRS and our partners a new way to gather, organize and analyze information about communities, their strengths and needs. First, it allows us to look at old problems in a new light. Second, it gives us a more holistic picture of the issues we are addressing. This can help us identify any gaps in our programming or potential linkages between education and other sectors for greater impact. In writing this paper, we imagine two framing questions to help guide country programs and partner organizations in using the IHD conceptual framework. They are:
How well does our project/program reflect the thinking of CRS’ Integral Human Development conceptual framework?

Language: English  

The CRS Parent-School Partnership Program (PSP): Evaluation Case Study

The objective of the case study was to analyze the less concrete and quantifiable changes created by the Parent School Partnership program of Southeast Europe, particularly in perception on the parts of local-level participants that led to this wide array of impacts. Specifically, the larger evaluation asked the case study to examine the following:
“From the perspective of project participants what are the most significant changes PSP project brought to:
a. Individuals – attitudes and behavior
b.Environment – systems and structures”

The case study is divided into four sections: a brief description of the PSP program methodology; an overview of the programming context in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina; presentation of the data; and, finally, concluding observations and analysis.

Language: English  

Food and Education: Background Considerations for Policy and Programming. Janke, C. 2001

This document is intended for policy makers, designers and managers of programs that use food assistance to accomplish education aims. It explores questions of program definition, design, rationale, sustainability, scope, targeting, monitoring and evaluation in an effort to provide general program and policy development guidance for food-assisted education initiatives. In particular, this document explores the role of food assistance in supporting education objectives. It is based on the premise that in the context of education, food assistance is often best utilized as one of a number of education support resources, as opposed to being the one and only element of an education support program. Further, this document recognizes that “food donors” per se (here assumed to be primarily governm

Language: English  

Creating Partnership, Educating Children

Case Studies from Catholic Relief Services presents eight case studies from field programs that address three important issues for overcoming current educational development challenges: how communities can be involved in education, how civil society is strengthened through education, and how to contribute to shaping education policies that support basic education.

Language: English