le_nelson_mandela_face
le_nelson_mandela_face
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating:
+
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/10/08/446237057/can-t-afford-school-girls-in-zambia-learn-to-negotiate-the-harvard-way-15girls?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=202508
Can't Afford School? Girls Learn To Negotiate The Harvard Way: #15Girls
Madalitso Mulando knew what she needed to finish 10th grade: $150.
That's the cost of tuition at Chinika Secondary School, a public high school in Lusaka, Zambia.
Completing 10th grade was part of Mulando's dream to go to medical school and become a doctor.
But the 15-year-old's parents were broke.
"Yeah, I was alone. I was in my bedroom ... and I started, like, crying because Mom and Dad didn't have any money," she remembers. "And I was like, maybe I'll never go to school again because Mom and Dad didn't have any money."
Zambia is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Mulando shares her room with her sister and two nieces — and a stack of dog-eared textbooks.
"I like biology," she says, laughing.
For most Zambian schoolgirls, that's where their education might have ended. Most Zambian families live below the poverty line. Most Zambian schoolkids, especially girls, never make it to 10th grade because their families can't afford it.
One might see this as an unchangeable fact of poverty.
But Kathleen McGinn, a professor of negotiation at Harvard Business School, sees it as a communication deficit. She says Zambian schoolgirls have to advocate for their interests in a way that American high-schoolers rarely need to.
"In the U.S., it's illegal to take your kid out of school," says McGinn. "In Zambia, you have to pay to keep your kid in school."
Some programs have tried to remedy this by offering cash grants and other incentives to schoolgirls, but the well-intentioned money always runs out. So, McGinn and her colleagues Nava Ashraf and Corinne Low wondered: Could Zambian schoolgirls stay in school if they received training in negotiation — a version of the same training given to Harvard MBAs, undergrads and executives? Could techniques honed around an oak boardroom table apply in a slum in southern Africa?
With the help of the Zambian Ministry of Education and the New Haven-based Innovations for Poverty Action, a research nonprofit, they're hoping to find out. They wrote a curriculum to teach Zambian high school students the art of getting to "yes." It's part of a multiyear research study to see if a week of negotiation training can help Zambian schoolgirls stay in school and avoid getting pregnant.
Earlier this year, we visited a high school in Lusaka, where coach Jean Mwape was leading a discussion with 50 teenage girls crowded into a tiny classroom. The students volunteered for this weeklong negotiation course taught by local university grads.
At times, the language sounded like it was ripped from an arbitration manual, which, of course, much of it was.
"Finding out the other person's interests helps you think of solutions to meet both your interests and theirs," Mwape says. "OK?"
The girls were brainstorming ideas on how to ask open-ended questions to figure out what their parents really want — and how to speak more effectively with them.
"How can we become better negotiators?" Mwape asks.
"Practicing!" the students reply.
Madalitso Mulando took this course two years ago when it was first offered. She found it so useful, she's back for a refresher, even though it means walking an hour each way from her house in Kanyama slum, past mangy chickens and mobile phone shops on flooded, muddy roads.
Mulando fetches water from a tap a short walk from her home. Most Zambian schoolgirls have to advocate for their interests in a way that American high schoolers rarely need to, says Kathleen McGinn, a professor of negotiation at Harvard Business School.
She opens a metal gate, slips off her plastic shoes, and she's home.
Her house is tidy and spare. The only decorations on the walls are her parents' graduation photos.
Mulando's parents care deeply about education. Her older brother and sister went to college, but her mom's grocery stand closed two years ago. Her father's hardware store is failing. And, so, one night this January her parents had to tell her they couldn't afford to pay her $150 yearly tuition.
This wasn't the first time this had happened to her. In ninth grade, she missed a whole term while her parents struggled to scrape together tuition. But this time around, Mulando vowed to use her new negotiation skills to do some fundraising with her extended family.
"I learned a lot in negotiation," she says. "If you want to ask something, you need to tell them what you want."
If she were going to cold-call her relatives, she'd have to be crystal clear about her intention to finish school. Because most schoolgirls do drop out, she would have to prove that she wouldn't end up just another statistic: that she was worth investing in. She took some deep breaths, as she'd learned in the training, and asked to use her mom's phone.
"I first called my cousin," Mulando says. "I was like, 'I passed my grade nine, but it's kind of difficult to pay my school fees.' "
Her cousin was impressed enough to send her $55.
Can't Afford School? Girls Learn To Negotiate The Harvard Way: #15Girls
Madalitso Mulando knew what she needed to finish 10th grade: $150.
That's the cost of tuition at Chinika Secondary School, a public high school in Lusaka, Zambia.
Completing 10th grade was part of Mulando's dream to go to medical school and become a doctor.
But the 15-year-old's parents were broke.
"Yeah, I was alone. I was in my bedroom ... and I started, like, crying because Mom and Dad didn't have any money," she remembers. "And I was like, maybe I'll never go to school again because Mom and Dad didn't have any money."
Zambia is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Mulando shares her room with her sister and two nieces — and a stack of dog-eared textbooks.
"I like biology," she says, laughing.
For most Zambian schoolgirls, that's where their education might have ended. Most Zambian families live below the poverty line. Most Zambian schoolkids, especially girls, never make it to 10th grade because their families can't afford it.
One might see this as an unchangeable fact of poverty.
But Kathleen McGinn, a professor of negotiation at Harvard Business School, sees it as a communication deficit. She says Zambian schoolgirls have to advocate for their interests in a way that American high-schoolers rarely need to.
"In the U.S., it's illegal to take your kid out of school," says McGinn. "In Zambia, you have to pay to keep your kid in school."
Some programs have tried to remedy this by offering cash grants and other incentives to schoolgirls, but the well-intentioned money always runs out. So, McGinn and her colleagues Nava Ashraf and Corinne Low wondered: Could Zambian schoolgirls stay in school if they received training in negotiation — a version of the same training given to Harvard MBAs, undergrads and executives? Could techniques honed around an oak boardroom table apply in a slum in southern Africa?
With the help of the Zambian Ministry of Education and the New Haven-based Innovations for Poverty Action, a research nonprofit, they're hoping to find out. They wrote a curriculum to teach Zambian high school students the art of getting to "yes." It's part of a multiyear research study to see if a week of negotiation training can help Zambian schoolgirls stay in school and avoid getting pregnant.
Earlier this year, we visited a high school in Lusaka, where coach Jean Mwape was leading a discussion with 50 teenage girls crowded into a tiny classroom. The students volunteered for this weeklong negotiation course taught by local university grads.
At times, the language sounded like it was ripped from an arbitration manual, which, of course, much of it was.
"Finding out the other person's interests helps you think of solutions to meet both your interests and theirs," Mwape says. "OK?"
The girls were brainstorming ideas on how to ask open-ended questions to figure out what their parents really want — and how to speak more effectively with them.
"How can we become better negotiators?" Mwape asks.
"Practicing!" the students reply.
Madalitso Mulando took this course two years ago when it was first offered. She found it so useful, she's back for a refresher, even though it means walking an hour each way from her house in Kanyama slum, past mangy chickens and mobile phone shops on flooded, muddy roads.
Mulando fetches water from a tap a short walk from her home. Most Zambian schoolgirls have to advocate for their interests in a way that American high schoolers rarely need to, says Kathleen McGinn, a professor of negotiation at Harvard Business School.
She opens a metal gate, slips off her plastic shoes, and she's home.
Her house is tidy and spare. The only decorations on the walls are her parents' graduation photos.
Mulando's parents care deeply about education. Her older brother and sister went to college, but her mom's grocery stand closed two years ago. Her father's hardware store is failing. And, so, one night this January her parents had to tell her they couldn't afford to pay her $150 yearly tuition.
This wasn't the first time this had happened to her. In ninth grade, she missed a whole term while her parents struggled to scrape together tuition. But this time around, Mulando vowed to use her new negotiation skills to do some fundraising with her extended family.
"I learned a lot in negotiation," she says. "If you want to ask something, you need to tell them what you want."
If she were going to cold-call her relatives, she'd have to be crystal clear about her intention to finish school. Because most schoolgirls do drop out, she would have to prove that she wouldn't end up just another statistic: that she was worth investing in. She took some deep breaths, as she'd learned in the training, and asked to use her mom's phone.
"I first called my cousin," Mulando says. "I was like, 'I passed my grade nine, but it's kind of difficult to pay my school fees.' "
Her cousin was impressed enough to send her $55.
Edited by le_nelson_mandela_face ()
le_nelson_mandela_face
le_nelson_mandela_face
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating:
+
Can't Afford School? Girls Learn To Negotiate The Harvard Way: #15Girls
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating:
+
le_nelson_mandela_face posted:"In the U.S., it's illegal to take your kid out of school,"
which is why US schools have 100% graduation rates. the ghetto to stethoscope pipeline.
[account deactivated]
swirlsofhistory
swirlsofhistory
Post rating:
~
My socialism is not incompatible with paying for something you value or being rewarded for something you're good at.
[account deactivated]
FSAD
FSAD
App Developer/Libertarian/Dad
Post rating:
+
"It's about time someone taught the global disadvantaged to just say yes" -That guy who got a Filipina prostitute
Edited by FSAD ()
Superabound
Superabound
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
Post rating:
+
"In the U.S., it's illegal to take your kid out of school," says McGinn. "In Zambia, you have to pay to keep your kid in school."
Hold on just a goddamn minute....you mean they actually have to PAY? For EDUCATION?? With MONEY????? Of all the backwards, godforsaken hellholes....