Education Projects
Education is a fundamental human right and the basis for creating social change.
CADRA's education projects promote education in underserved communities, engage women and girls, provide access to learning, and harness education as an empowerment tool for entire communities.
Addressing Educational Need in Africa
Education is a human right. It fosters not only intellectual enrichment and personal opportunity, but economic development, cultural dialogue, and greater peace and security.
How high is the need for education in Africa?
Today 80 million African boys and girls are not in school, and fewer than 2 percent who begin school go on to a college education. Schools in many African countries lack books, teachers' guides, or chairs. Access to computers and the Internet is rare or nonexistent for many African students.
At a time when poverty, civil wars and the AIDS epidemic are also threatening the future of Africa it is particularly distressing that many Africans lack the educational opportunities which could help alleviate some of these problems.
Education as the Key to Africa's Future
Educating the next generation of Africa is vital not only to Africa but also to the world. Quite simply, like poverty and disease, illiteracy and ignorance affect all people around the world.
Education remains Africa's most powerful development engine. CADRA sees education and opportunity as vital to Africa's future. CADRA plans to both educate the next generation of Africans, and to link them with the peoples and resources of the Canadian community.
CADRA proposes to:
- help improve education about Africa in Canada and the world. The ultimate result should be a new and more accurate perception of Africa's role in the world, so as to create new behaviours toward Africa and Africans
- promote expanded educational opportunities for students in Africa.
- provide wider, easier Internet access for Africans, and help link more Africans with each other and other countries through the Internet and associated technologies
Computers for Africa Project
CADRA intends to set up free computer labs in African schools and community centres, and sees this as the fastest way to increase computer and Internet access on a massive scale. CADRA seeks to work with companies and organizations in Canada willing to donate retired computers.
Affordable Internet Access
In both rural and urban areas, it is crucial that the next generation of Africans grow up computer-savvy. African students will simply not be able to receive a world-class education or hope to thrive in a global society without computer education and Internet access.
Recognizing not just the importance but the sheer necessity of Internet access, CADRA holds as one of its biggest goals the expansion of free Internet access for more Africans, and a major effort to link African computer users with the world beyond Africa. Because landline Internet connectivity has proved problematic in many African countries, broadening wireless Internet access is crucial.
