The opportunity  for American corporate partners to help remake education in Tunisia by partnering with nonprofit Care for 24 is powered by our use of an educational model bearing a stamp of approval from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Care for 24’s commitment to this proven model, the “networked improvement community” (NIC), provides prospective corporate partners with the assurance that their participation will produce positive results.

As the Carnegie Foundation says , Education is a field whose practitioners have “largely failed to learn from experience.”  

Recognizing that breaking this cycle of failure requires much more than just a financial contribution, Care for 24 is seeking U.S. corporate partners to connect through our professional NICs with teachers and civil society activists identified as “change champions” in each of the primary and high schools across Tunisia. The goal is to expose children to the professional world and open their horizons in understanding the link between education and careers. The need for such connections is great because Tunisia’s hopes for progress as it builds its democracy are damaged by an annual school dropout total of 100,000 students, a staggering number given that fewer than 12 million people live in this small North African country.

The special appeal of the NIC for corporations lies in the model’s basis in the data-driven discipline of improvement science, whose principles include 1) specifying the problem, 2) carefully examining variation in performance, 3) understanding the system producing current outcomes and issues, and 4) measuring for accountability and scale.

NICs additionally offer the opportunity for teachers and companies to effectively partner together in a bottom-up way that maximizes the knowledge and experience of those who are closest to the students and the facts on the ground, the teachers themselves.

Care for 24’s role is to be the hub for such networks and to provide assurance and support for these NICs to thrive and expand.

What Teachers See on the Ground

In Tunisia, teachers understand firsthand the nature of the problem. Sadly, under the status quo including the country’s struggling economy, students see no value in education. While children need to be able to connect education to a better future, that connection to date is becoming harder to see.

A favorite example of Care for 24 founder Olfa Hamdi involves her native Tunisian region of Gafsa. Gafsa’s dominant industry is mining, and the children of Gafsa know this well. Tragically, however, most children in the region do not understand the importance of an education to both accessing job opportunities in the mining industry and advancing their career within the industry for those fortunate enough to gain employment.

Thus, any NIC determined to bring improvement to the Gafsa community would need to include in its network people who can demonstrate to children the value of education for jobs in local industries. For example, in Gafsa, a Care for 24 corporate partner could show the children of the region that the mining industry’s employment opportunities go beyond the type of work that their grandfathers and fathers and uncles and older brothers may have told them about. 

On the contrary, as Hamdi explains, a Care for 24 corporate partner could introduce Gafsa’s children to some of the less known jobs of today for these kids, like “the human-resources specialist, the supply-chain specialist, the quality-control specialist, the safety supervisor and more.”

Breaking the Cycle

Throughout Tunisia, including those areas where the mining industry has no presence, teachers have told Care for 24 that the inability of children to perceive the value of education contributes to the high dropout rate. Unfortunately, as Hamdi notes, the high dropout rate turns into a dropout “cycle” because people without adequate education are unable to attain professional careers. Instead, they settle into—and settle for— low paying and low skill jobs that reinforce children’s perception that completing their education is simply not worth their while.     

To help change this perception and break the dropout cycle, Care for 24 is looking for American corporate partners that appreciate the value of a child’s life, as well as the value of giving children a chance to rise above their circumstances, a cherished goal of this nonprofit. 

In addition, Care for 24 also seeks U.S. corporate partners that appreciate the value of being able to hire from a pool of educated, ambitious, aware, and highly mobile workers. Companies with a special interest in expanding and reinforcing STEM education in disadvantaged communities are the best candidates for our NICs. 

Care for 24’s contacts with the various schools and other organizations working on education throughout Tunisia provide opportunities to accomplish both goals, and all it takes is a simple email to info@carefor24.org to make it happen.