We like working with other people.
Aside from teaching kids how to count, read, and write, Ubongo programs encourage healthy living practices and support positive socio-emotional development. But our engaging and customised content is not possible without a little help!
Partnerships are key to tackling the most difficult development problems affecting children in Africa. And in the past, Ubongo has partnered with organisations like the UN and Malaria No More to deliver messages to families across Africa on topics like self-confidence and malaria prevention.
The Ubongo team welcomed other non-profits, tech, and innovation companies to our first open house in June 2017.
So, to foster better connections with other like-minded organisations, we recently welcomed friends who are also working to improve the lives of children in Africa to our Ubongo offices. BRAC, UNICEF, A Well Told Story and several other innovative non-profits joined us to chat about all things education, kids, and development. Our guests got a sneak peek into the Ubongo production process, and Ubongoers explained how we leverage a human-centered design to create content that effectively understands the needs and interests of African children in order to teach them numeracy and literacy.
We also turned the spotlight on our guests and asked them to share some of the problems affecting African families that they believe Ubongo can help tackle on our platform.
Here are 5 challenges that they want to see represented on our programs.
1. Let’s nurture optimism!
As we are aware, kids in Africa face a lot of challenges in their day to day lives. Just as one example, 42% of children in Tanzania suffer from chronic malnutrition that affects their growth and their ability to fight off potentially lethal diseases. Though Ubongo can’t directly address the factors that lead to this malnutrition, we can nurture optimistic children in the face of adverse situations through our cartoons’ storytelling. For instance, we recently partnered with the Goodall Foundation to produce episodes that teach kids character strengths like purpose and growth mindset, as the characters on our shows face challenges but maintain a positive attitude and stay determined.
2. Let’s eliminate child labour!
Poverty is the main cause of child labour in Africa. More than 40% of 5 to14-year-olds are child labourers for survival purposes and these kids are less likely to go to school, continuing the cycle of poverty that leads to child labour. Often, parents encourage their kids to work to supplement household incomes and many of these children are forced into hazardous work. Ubongo has started creating caregiver public service announcements encouraging positive parent engagement with their children. We can use this platform to discourage parents from sending their children to work.
3. Let’s fight gender inequality!
Though primary school enrollment for girls and boys in Tanzania is almost equivalent, nearly 61% of 14 to 19-year-old girls are out of school. Ubongo has recently collaborated with SPRING to create Ubongo Kids episodes that will focus on financial literacy in order to empower adolescent girls.
4. Let’s keep kids in school!
Most schools in Africa have overcrowded classrooms, limited resources and poorly trained teachers. With an average of one teacher to 177 students in an African primary school classroom, it is impossible for kids to receive quality, individualised instruction from their teachers. All these factors contribute to kids not learning, feeling discouraged, failing their courses and eventually dropping out. Ubongo supplements school instruction, and though our programs are not a replacement for a quality classroom education, we can help improve test scores and encourage kids to stay in school.
5. Let’s raise creative children!
Because of limited resources, curriculum in African schools is often restrictive and allows little room for exploration and creative expression. This type of environment actually inhibits learning for children and can discourage them from taking healthy intellectual risks. We must fight this, as Africa’s future for sustainable development relies on creative problem solvers who are dedicated to finding innovative solutions to persistent development problems. Similarly to our episodes made in collaboration with the Goodall Foundation that focus on character strengths, we can use our cartoons to foster creativity in our kids.
Together we can solve many more problems
While our work centres on educating children in Africa, there are many societal issues that impede kids from learning and we want to address them in our programs. So now, we turn the spotlight on you and ask, what other issues affecting families in Africa are most important to you?
Let’s talk about it.
