COMMUNITY ACTIONS
ADVANCING LITERACY & EDUCATION
ACROSS THE GLOBE
The Applied Scholastics network of educators, tutoring centers and schools reach out to improve literacy and education not only in their own areas but beyond. From seminars and workshops to comprehensive permanent programs, teams of educators take Study Technology to underserved populations.
One such project started in Haiti when an Applied Scholastics educator from the Clearwater Academy in Florida volunteered in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. She gave a lecture on Study Technology to over 400 parents and students, and as a result the director of an orphanage and school in Haiti came to Clearwater for training in Study Technology. Clearwater Academy raised the funds to transform the school from a tarp, straw and sticks area to a brick building with a solid roof, and a new school was born, with all students learning Study Technology.
IN SOUTH AFRICA, LECTURES, COURSES AND WORKSHOPS IN STUDY TECHNOLOGY HAVE BEEN DELIVERED TO MORE THAN 20,000 TEACHERS.
In another outreach undertaking, Applied Scholastics educators from the United Kingdom delivered Study Technology seminars in the Ukraine in 2008. To meet the demand generated, tutoring centers were started and today permanent centers give some 300 Study Technology lectures each year to students and teachers in schools across the country. The lectures have been adopted as part of the curriculum for the state schools in the Babushkin District, and Applied Scholastics partners on educational projects with the Ministry of Family and Youth Affairs in one of the largest cities in the Ukraine.
In yet another part of the world, Applied Scholastics educators have brought Study Technology to Bangladesh, where half the population cannot read or write. The educators formed a Bangladesh Study Group and soon implemented Study Technology in three schools. After they conducted seminars of more than 100 students and faculty members at Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka, the mayor of Dhaka proclaimed Study Technology as the solution to the nation’s illiteracy problem and formally requested its implementation in every school.
Starting in 1975, Scientologists in South Africa, under the banner of Education Alive, delivered lectures, courses and workshops in Study Technology. They have now trained more than 20,000 teachers who have in turn brought Study Technology to millions of children throughout South Africa.
Study Technology has also been exported to Zimbabwe—where 18,000 teachers have been trained—and to Ghana, The Gambia and Sierra Leone. Education Alive now has offices throughout South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Mali, Ethiopia and Botswana.
In the Philippines, secondary school dropout rates ran as high as 30 percent, with a 75 percent illiteracy rate in elementary schools. In response, Applied Scholastics International in Spanish Lake gave a crash course in Study Technology to 5,000 Filipino teachers, who then introduced the technology in three of the country’s schools.
The results were unprecedented. The first school went from last place to number eight nationwide; the second established a national record for rising student test scores; and the third advanced from remedial status to one of the country’s top-rated schools.
In Kenya, an Applied Scholastics “rescue team” delivered the Learning How to Learn course to 14 instructors in a school for orphans in the city of Kisii. Almost immediately, student test scores boosted the school from the lowest rankings to among the highest of all 270 schools in the region. As a result, Kenya education officials requested a national Study Tech curriculum.
Applied Scholastics trains teachers and students at all levels and works with community leaders, governments and other institutions to bring about a revitalization in the field of education.
