EDUCATION PROJECT FOR ETHNIC MINORITIES
Overall objective : Address the problem of early school leavers and school disinterest of ethnic minority children in Da Teh district by disseminating the Montessori educational method
Da Nha is a K’ho, Ma and Tay ethnic minorities village in Quoc Oai commune, in Da Teh district. 1 095 persons belonging to 283 households live in this poor village. 118 households are registered as very poor families, that is to say earning less than 16usd a month. Da Nha population is mainly young : 56 % are under 18 years old, 39 % are 19-60 years old, 4 % are 60 – 90 years old. Da Nha population is driven by a good community spirit and are prone to help and communicate each other. All families are farmers, cultivate cashews and rice on the terrasse.
The district of Dateh is located south west of Lam Dong province with a total population of 49,848 people including 2,311 of local ethnic minorities and 8,431 of Northern ethnic minorities. The majority of people at Dateh district are poor.
The K’ho and Ma are the most disadvantaged group in the district of Dateh: the poorest, less literate, less healthy. The other groups are less illiterate less poor and better integrated.
Major part of Da Teh population are farmers or earn their living by cutting bamboos and woods. Nowadays, deforestation being illegal, so people shifted their activities to rice, cashews, sugar cane plantings and breeding livestock, etc. Ethnic minorities are called montainous people as they mainly live in those specific areas and they are totally dependant from the forest. They still cut and exploit illegally the wood from the forest, meanwhile they struggle to adapt their agriculture on the steep slope of mountains, which obviously involves some technical restrictions. Their lives are centered on the forestry activities so that the other parts of their social life are critically detrimental, such as education of their children.
At househould’s level, the Government launched several development plans such as program 135 and the Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction Program (HEPR) to eradicate ethnic minorities’ poverty. More than 95% of ethnic minority residents in Lam Dong Province were loaned capital from the provincial budget to develop farming and family based economies. So, ethnic minority people grew sugar cane, rice, cashews using this capital. They also got livestock from the local government, but the plan didn’t work well because of problems of implementation (poor quality of the livestock given for ethnic minorities for example). The last straw that raises the alarm about their critical conditions is the over-indebtedness trend that they face : with average yearly gross income of 640 USD, they have to pay 850 USD as average yearly charges, in which compound a contracted loan/credit of 520 USD to reimburse with an average of 3% credit interest rate. That implies that they will take out a new loan to reimburse former loan. Their living conditions have come full vicious circle until we break this trend by instilling selfsufficiency in them…
At children’s level, the government has incentive programs in education for disadvantaged groups: SEQAP. The government provides materials and financial support (about 10 to 20 usd a year) to the ethnic minority family to commit itself to send the children to school and consequently prevent the early school leavers whereas school is compulsory until 15 and the intermediate education. In some montainous regions, many children leave schools earlier to help their parents. Even if the government tries to reduce the employment age in order to keep the children at school, other practices make difficult both interests meet. Although primary education is compulsory and tuition-free, public schools can start charging parents at the secondary education level and ask them to pay uniforms or require directly the students to pay fees for sanitation, traffic guards, gardeners, pens and notebooks. Poor and disadvantaged families can obviously not afford it and this entails school drops. In definitive, those programs of education promotion are still inefficient since there is a big challenge to address the problem of early school leavers and school disinterest of ethnic minority children.
The Da Nha project wants to work on both levels. We provide villagers a way to increase their standards of living and contribute to decrease their dependancy culture on forestry activities but we also want to tackle the education problem of our children’s beneficiaries in order to have an integrated and inclusive approach of development programs. It is then of utmost importance to face this major question of educational difficulties of our children’ beneficiaries.
The causes of early school leavers or the disinterest in education were listed as follows :
Problems at familial/parental level
Problems at children level
Problems at teachers level
Problems at structural level
Problems of vision
Hereinbefore are several causes that make the ethnic minorities schoolchild and students not going to school or leave school earlier or lose interest in school.
The consequences are as follows :
School is compulsory so the teachers have been ordered to catch the schoolchild at home
– The teacher, sometimes with the policemen, visit the parents at home so as to ask them to send the children back to school. They generaly say yes to be polite.
– When the teachers arrive at their home, the children and some parents hide and run away in the forest
– Some EM parents stay in the village to work, meanwhile the children go to Da Teh town to play and skip school
There are some positive discrimination programmes for EM children
– The main programme of Vietnamese government in Da Teh is SEQAP (school quality assurance project) and aims at improving and decreasing inequity in learning outcomes, such as reaching the independant learner stage, reaching the reader and math skills scale or merely increase primary and secondary school enrollment, particularly for the most-disadvantaged socio-economic groups. To do so, the local government hands out bags of rice, money and sometimes buffalos in exchange of the cooperation of the parents in sending their children to school
– During the examination or annotations, the teachers usually mark K’ho Mà schoolchildren with more leniency and lightness to favor their success and catch up the retardedness. They receive adapted topic of examination with easier questions than the others
– After the last examination in high school, the mark of the high schoolchildren usually determine the acceptance of the more or less prestigious university. A high mark will enable the students to go to Da Lat university or Ho Chi Minh City University for example, although a low mark will not give access to a mere university or vocational school. The EM high schoolchildren are exempted from this selection. They are just asked to reach the standard mark in order to have access to any universities.
In Da Teh, some of our interviewees like Teacher Linh proposed good studies opportunities to K’ho Mà students. For example, his daughter work in a vocational school for tourism. He proposed to one of his ethnic minority student to have direct access to this school and be tourist guide, but the student refused claiming that he wanted to stay at home.
The consequences on the long run of school dropout come up on their own development :
– They do not find work and stay inactive in Da Teh. Their parents find small ocasionnal work.
– The EM adolescent are sooner pregnant
– They are not spontanous in their reaction, they witness a backward development, they are not concerned about their social issue, they lose their cultural and ethnical strong points
The suggested solution is multidisciplinary and are fourfold :
– At parents/family level : The specific objectives are to make the parents/family aware of their responsibilities, to enable them to better control their social life and help them at economic plan. To sum up, we will bring a good economic and social environment to help the children to thrive. The economic and social programs of Da Nha eco-social centre and its partner-founder Caritas Da Lat will permit to reach these specific objectives by working with them on sustainable livelihood and on their involvement in their familial planing and children education . It is at huge importance to find a happy medium between cultural traditions and social, sustainable, humanist visions of progress.
– At children level : The specific objective is to develop the autonomy of the ethnic minorities schoolchildren at early age and help their development through cultural emancipation and stimulation of languages, movements and senses. The tool of inclusive development we favor is the Montessori Method in partnership with the Montessori International School of Vietnam. We will directly affect the origin of the issue which is development stage of ethnic minorities children from 0 to 5 years old at the nursery/kindergarten. We point out the need of an education project for the middle-term, at least 2 years so as to have a real evaluation of the results and the impacts in the passage from the kindergarten stage to the primary school stage.
We aim at providing a suitable environment for their development : a classroom in Da Nha kindergarten with 1 Kinh teacher and 1 K’ho Mà teacher that have been trained to Montessori educational method. The kindergarden will be furnished with a small library with interesting pedagogical and playful books, with an multimedia area to watch movies and other instructions support, with a relaxation space and tools with sensory tools of development (cf Montessori Method).
This special class will be followed-up and the performance of the schoolchildren will be evaluated in the kindergarten and in the 1st year of primary school and renew if it is successful or revised if necessary.
– At the teachers level : The specific objective is to train the teachers to an educational method more adjusted to the schoolchildren and especially the EM ones. We would like to disseminate the Montessori teaching method in Da Nha village but also to our partners in the Da Teh district that already take in charge ethnic minority children (1 kindergarten : Binh Minh school, 1 primary school : Viet Anh school).
– At structural level : We will build a 2nd room with furnitures for the grand section of Da Nha kindergarten and provide a better environment to thrive
Website of our partner : http://montessori.edu.vn/
The expected results :
1° The room for the grand section is built with appropriate furnitures for the practice of a more relevant educational method
2° An adequate program for ethnic minorities children is designed with educational stakeholders for Da Nha kindergarten and and Viet Anh primary school
2° 1 ethnic minority teacher and 1 kinh teacher are recruited for the Montessori class
3° All teachers are trained to Montessori educational method and know-how
4° The results of the ethnic minorities children are followed-up from the grand section to the 1st years of primary school
5° The project is evaluated and revised if necessary. Lessons are learnt. Capacities are empowered.
– For the vision : The specific objective is to promote dialogue. Following the example of our exchange program in the social part of our activities, we will bring about discussions and reflections between ethnic minorities group, leaders of development and successful model from other districts.
Photos of the children in the village :
Photos of the school structure (preliminary & primary) updated 11/2017 :
Nowadays
Provide scholarship for children from vulnerable environment
Promote inclusive education with integrated follow-ups of schoolchildren and their results
Raise awareness about educational challenges such as early school leavers, school dropouts, development retardness
Lead special classes about environment, sanitation and organic agriculture
Introduce foreign volunteers in vietnamese preliminary and primary schools for exchanges
Thon 5, Xa Quoc Oai, Huyen Da Teh, Tinh Lam Dong, Vietnam
+84 916 803 677
Da Nha project is a social project without any lucrative purposes. We would like to thank all the stakeholders and all partners that have always been there to support and to help eradicate poverty, protect environment and promote indigenous traditions. Special thanks to NFTIT to their contributions for this cause.