DOT China Interns have concluded their 11 day training and will be deployed during the week of December 1, 2008.  During the Orientation and Face to Face sessions, they learned about DOT and their roles as DOT Interns.  As part of their Technical Training, they learned how to use the full range of tools and courseware for Promethean interactive whiteboards. Network Specialist Interns were given special training on Promethean board repairs and network installation.

  August 2008

It is worth pausing at this time to see how far we have come, in a very short time.   DOT, Cisco  and our partners (Sichuan Provincial Dept of Education, DuJianYan Model Middle School,

Aba Teachers College) have moved from cement mixers  in August to a December 1 placement   of 24 young ICT Leaders in two schools. During the rest of the 08-09 academic year, this first group of DOT China Interns will work with almost 400 teachers, and impact about 7500 students. Congratulations to all!

October in Chengdu, China brings the Hairy Crab into Sichuan kitchens and onto the banquet table of discerning gourmands. Their fat little bodies glow bright red. Over the centuries, 9 specialized tools have been developed to extract the sweet meat from every part of the crab. Some restaurants make the arrrival of Hairy Crab season a chance to delve into historic practices as they supply diners with the 9 implements. The sights and sounds of cracking claws, tiny little hammers pounding on shells, and minature excavation devices produce gourmet theatrics.

So...what relevance do Hairy Crabs have to DOT's China Education Initiative?

There is a saying in China : the first to eat crab.  It refers to someone who bravely tries something new, a person who has courage to venture into a new world.

Our DOT China TeachUp! Interns will be the first to eat crab in China They will be using new technology and lintroducing new teaching methodologies in the lucky schools chosen for DOT. As we select our first 20 Interns and 4 Network Specialist Interns, we celebrate their willingness to show the way in China, to be the pioneers in Education Technology of their generation, to be the first to eat crab.

The 2^nd Annual Youth Enterprise conference (Sept 15-16, 2008) www.youthenterpriseconference.org gave 320 practitioners, donors and youth from 45 countries an opportunity to create stronger programming and measurement tools for global youth. The keynote speeches were streamed live to the conference website; many of the presentations will be available on-line after September 22.

It was an eye-opening experience for DOT-USA Interns Angela Baldwin, Jason Blocker and Doyle Reid who will be posting their own thoughts in their blogs. It was a pleasure to share the conference with them. I loved watching their excitement build as they saw ways to incorporate what they were learning with their Internship activities. Ecuadorian hip-hop meets Moss Point, MS!

For me, the biggest take-away was that next year, DOT Interns should actively participate. We have a great story to tell and can contribute meaningful learning to the field of international youth enterprise, employment and livelihoods.

Summary of Workshops and Other Events:

It was hard to choose between the many programs offered at the conference. Dr. Imran Matin, Deputy Executive Director of BRAC spoke about the importance of creating safe spaces for adolescent girls, in which they can read, play, and learn. Molly Tschang (Cisco) and Dara Duguay (Citi) were two panelists who spoke about the role of the private sector. Marcus Goldstein of the World Bank gave a common sense address on the value of impact assessments. Donors from World Bank, Nike Foundation, Cordes Foundation, UN-Habitat, and USAID were equally straightforward in their panel discussion of their organization’s vision with regard to youth.

Most of the roundtables, workshops and breakout sessions I attended were on the topic of Monitoring and Evaluation. Eric Rusten (Director of New Ventures, Academy for Educational Development and Tania Ogasawara, Executive Director of ADE Brasil linked their workshop “Are We Measuring the Right Things?” via webcam with  two young entrepreneurs in  Brazil. We had a real-time (translated) discussion about program impacts with Weidson Melo and Avaneide Silva, demonstrating one powerful use of technology.

Annie Bertrand, the World Youth Initiative Advisor for Mercy Corps had her workshop participants fine-tune the program outputs Mercy Corps is building into its Youth Transformation Framework ™. M&E tool. My table group got into quite a discussion about numeracy as a skill.

Maria Mascarucci and Mary Namukoko explained how they used local enumerators (surveyors) equipped with PDA’s to conduct a survey of 2000 community participants in rural Tanzania and Zambia in a 5 week time period We role-played using the PDA’s, checked out the array of portable solar charging technology and became believers.

Saeed Bancie, the Enterprise Development Officer for Heifer International in Homa Bay, Kenya, gave a well-designed presentation on “Youth Impacted by HIV and AIDS: Moving Into the Market”.  Afterwards we agreed that the orphans who receive animals and horticultural products from HI could benefit from ReachUp! training.

Several people knew about DOT and were very complimentary about its work.  David Hartingh (Director, Trade and Enterprise Development, International Executive Service Corps) discussed his conversations with DOT about the IBM project in Turkey; Mutinta A Munyati, Human Settlements Officer, UN-Habitat in Kenya said ‘I love DOT” and was extremely enthusiastic about Elizabeth Ndanu Muthui , the DOT Kenya Intern who is delivering the ReachUp! Training to youth in UN-Habitat programs. Many others from Barbados, Senegal, Benin, Kenya, Sierra Leone, UK and elsewhere are eager to learn more.

Chengdu, Sichuan Province China has the dubious reputation of being the most overcast place in China.  Between July 27 and Aug 9, 2008 I found no reason to dispute this finding, during the 2 weeks I explored the possibilities for implementing TeachUp! as part of Cisco's 21s response to the May 12 earthquake.

The atmosphere in DuJiangYan Model High School and Aba Teachers College was considerably brighter. DuJiangYan, a Tourist City,  is located about 60 Km west of Chengdu. During the earthquake, about 70% of its buildings were damaged or destroyed. There are hundreds of temporary houses located in vacant sites throughout the city of 700,000. While water and sewer are limited still, life is getting back to some balance. The Model High school , where DOT Interns will be working, was not badly damaged, and is expected to open with 4600 day and boarding students and 220 teachers on schedule Sept 1.  Aba Teachers College was not so lucky.  Its original campus was located in the epicenter of Wenchuan, and did not survive.  The national government moved the school to a brand new campus, also under construction, in Pixian, about halfway between Chengdu and DuJiangYan. Its 6200 students and 200 teachers take up residence in time for the opening Sept 1.  Promethean World was busy installing its 2nd generation interactive whiteboards in both locations. DOT Interns will be working with teachers-in-training at Aba and with class teachers at DuJiangyan Model High School . The administrators, teachers and Education Dept. officials who participated in our discussions are enthusiasticly awaiting DOT Interns.

We originally thought our first batch of Interns could participate in a TeachUp! training in Mississippi in late August. Upon arriving in China, it became quickly apparent that this was not going to happen!  We are now looking at a November training for 20 Interns, in China, subject to Cisco approval of the DOT proposal and budget allocations.

It was interesting to see the response taken by the national government to the earthquake.  It has declared that some cities simply will not be rebuilt in the same location. It assigned cities in other parts of China to send money, equipment, technicians and other help to damaged cities.  Shanghai fulfills this role for DuJiangYan. It constructed temporary classrooms and housing within a matter of weeks in the more urban areas; now that the school year has ended, it is dismantling the temporary classrooms and will rebuild them in rural areas for the 2008-09 school year. Most of the 58,000 troops have been withdrawn. Enormous wounds remain-many farmers were unable to plant their crops in this breadbasket of China; an estimated 10,000 schoolchildren died. But the dedication to making a brighter future was evident in the little slice of Sichuan I visited.

I will be attending the 2nd Global Youth Enterprise Conference presented by Making Cents International in Washington, DC, USA, Sept 15-16, 2008. DOT-USA Interns Doyle Reid (Gulf Coast) and Angela Baldwin (Jefferson Parish, LA) and Jason Blocker (21S/Technical) will also attend.The themes of the conference in Washington, DC are Market-Driven Approaches and Effective Methodologies and Practices for Monitoring, Evaluating and Conducting Impact Assessments. Over 300 attendees from all over the world will discuss and learn about practical programs for youth in Kenya, Paraguay, Morocco, Haiti and elsewhere.

DOT Ethiopia and Kenya recently conducted surveys of over 100 community Participants to understand how the ReachUp! training has impacted their lives.  Wondwossen wanted to motivate Ethiopian participants to use their English  and ICT skills, yet had to work around connectivity  and language problems. 

DOT is  planning  for another survey in November. How can we make the survey process easier for everyone, in Ethiopia's challenging ICT environment?

She  shared DOT Kenya's solutions with  Wondwossen :

• Internet limitations:
• administer the surveys in soft copy but off line.
  
• the surveys are copied on all computers at the center for the participants to fill in
  
•  the interns collect the filled surveys in their flash drives and send to the office via email in a compressed zip file
• Language limitations: the Participants are interviewed (same as in Ethiopia) - Note- an Interviewer can translate or clear up any confusing language for many Participants at the same time if they are taking the survey in soft copy by off line.
  

! This is a great example of how DOT's dedicated Intern Support Managers used the power of knowledge sharing to solve a problem.