Education interventions in the developing world and Zandig Foundation role
Education interventions have been a focus globally to improve
outcomes of people living in developing communities. Since these
interventions occur at younger ages, it is conceivable that they
can have sustained long-term effects for the children who receive
them. In general, the interventions can be split into two
categories: (1) Demand side and (2) Supply side. Demand side
interventions affect the ability of the individual to get an
education, i.e., improving accessibility to schools.
Supply side interventions deal with the quality of the schools,
e.g., providing books, computers, tutoring, etc. Although
intuitively supply-side interventions are attractive since they
seek to improve the quality of the education children receive, the
majority of development education research shows that demand side
interventions have a larger and more significant effect on the
children's future outcomes. Supply side interventions have a large
cost and have no guarantee to work. For example, you can buy 15
computers for a school, but if students don't know how to use
them, that is a small benefit given a huge cost. Worse yet if the
students don't show up to the school, it will all be for nothing.
Demand side interventions increase accessibility to schools
through methods such as attendance incentives, scholarships, and
health interventions. In fact, one of the most effective
interventions is deworming students^. For a small 10 cent
deworming tablet, a child's attendance for a year will increase an
average of 25%, leading to higher rates of future education.
Moreover, Demand-side interventions are also easier to execute and
impose fewer “outside interventions” in the community it affects.
They are easier to implement because supply side interventions
require more logistics and cost. For example, if you wanted to buy
books, you would have to decide which books to buy, where to buy
them and if it matches their curriculum. Supply side interventions
can be too imposing,i.e., it might assume people in the community
don't know how to best educate their children.
Vidya Shakti is following demand side intervention model by
employing a scholarship based intervention, specifically to
secondary and higher education. Scholarship based interventions in
Ghana have shown increases in “young people's educational
attainment, knowledge, skills, and preventative health behaviors”
^^. Similar results were shown in a national study of Colombia.
Specifically, for women who received these scholarships, they were
less likely to end up in teenage marriages or pregnancies and more
likely to have a job post-education. Following this model, Vidya
Shakti hopes to provide the same.
^ Deworm the World: https://www.evidenceaction.org/dewormtheworld/
^^ Returns to Secondary Schooling in Ghana: https://www.poverty-action.org/study/returns-secondary-schooling-ghana