PRINCIPLE:
You have the right to go to school and learn. Everyone has the right to education, which is a fundamental right of every human being.
WELCOME ACTIVITY:
DISCOVER:
SHOW THESE IMAGES TO THE CLASS
QUESTIONS:
What do you see?
Why is education so important?
How can education improve our communities?
How can education change your life and those around you?
In what ways can you learn or educate yourself and others?
EMPHASIZE:
You have a right to get an education.
Primary education should be free and required.
Education includes learning in school and outside of school.
Education will prepare you for life.
ACTIVITY:
Story Of William Kamkwamba
Read this story aloud to the group, or ask someone to read it.
Read the true story of William Kamkwamba
THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND
Will Kamkwamba is a young schoolboy who comes from Kasungu, Malawi. His family were farmers who lived in the nearby village of Wimbe. William has a talent for fixing radios for his friends and neighbors. He spends his free time looking through the local junkyard for electronic components that he can use to make or fix things. However, his family struggles against poverty and poor farming conditions. In the dry seasons, there is no way to bring water to the village. Although he is banned from attending school due to his parents’ inability to pay his tuition fees, William persuades his science teacher to let him continue attending his class. He gets secret access to the school’s library, where he learns about electrical engineering and energy production. At the same time that William is learning all that he can, the family’s crops die due to drought. There is no food in the village. People are scared. There are riots and thieving as the people fight desperately against starvation. William’s family is robbed of their already meager grain stores. People soon begin abandoning the village, and William’s sister runs off to marry his former teacher in order to leave her family “one less mouth to feed”. Seeking to save his village from the drought, William devises a plan to build a windmill to power an electric water pump that he had scavenged earlier. William builds a small proof of concept prototype which works successfully, but to build a larger windmill, William requires his father, Trywell, to give permission to dismantle the family bicycle for parts, which is the only bicycle in the village and the family’s last major asset. His father believes the exercise futile and destroys the prototype and forces William to toil in the fields. After William’s dog dies of starvation and hope seems lost, William’s mother, Agnes, intervenes and urges his father to reconsider. William and his father reconcile after William buries his dog. With the help of his friends and the few remaining members of the village, they build a full-size wind turbine which allows the villagers to bring water to the village, saving the people from starvation.
show the picture of the windmill.
MAKE CONNECTION:
What happened in this story?
Have you ever faced a challenge like this before?
How did the people in the story feel about their challenge?
The boy saved his village. How can your education and learning help or change your life, friends, family, and community?
PLAN AND ACT:
What are you going to do to make education more important in your community?
What are you going to learn to help your family, friends, and community?
How can your family, friends, and community help you learn?
REFLECT:
How did you feel at the end of the week about your plan and action? Share your experience.
This content is provided to you freely by Equity Press.
Access it online or download it at https://equitypress.org/localized_human_rights/education.