Entry: Meg Young, World Cocoa Foundation

World Cocoa Foundation’s ECHOES program (Empowering Cocoa Households with Opportunities and Education Solutions) works to provide the tools and learning environments youth and young adults need to thrive in cocoa farming communities. One innovative component of this program has been to equip our beneficiaries with community learning centers enabled with information and communications technology. These centers provide teachers access to technology and resources that help them create and distribute education materials while improving their own knowledge base.

The spotlight story below presented by our ECHOES implementing partner Winrock International highlights the efforts of Mr. Tapé Jules Ségniblé, who used the center to create and distribute study guides to augment the limited classroom time he had with his students. We look forward to hearing many other stories similar to his, in which other determined teachers, students, and community members turn these centers into local hubs of education and development.

Evelyne, a student of Mr.Ségniblé's, practices her math with her new learning materials

Spotlight on Zoukougbeu: Teachers Use Community Learning Centers to Improve Student Math Skills
December 2009

The conflict in Côte d’Ivoire has impacted the country’s education system, including funding for schools and regular payment of salaries - issues which often lead to teacher union strikes. As a result, the academic calendar in schools outside of Abidjan has been shortened. Most schools, where ECHOES is implemented are effectively open in mid-December or January, and close around June, giving students approximately six months of schooling each year, instead of the traditional nine and a half. Consequently, teachers often find it difficult to complete their curricula in time for national exams, and instead offer night classes, photocopy texts, or help students to form study groups to learn the rest of the information on their own. Some students are able to cope with learning like this, but many others find it difficult to understand topics never taught in class but tested on national graduation exams.

Mr. Tapé Jules Ségniblé, Winrock Project Shadow Teacher and Math teacher, found his own solution to this challenge and capitalized on the recently completed Community Learning Center at Zoukougbeu High School. Summarizing his own teaching documents and revising his lesson plans, Mr. Ségniblé created a learning document for his 3eme (final year) junior secondary school students. This document responds to their specific needs. It conforms to the official program for 2009-2010 and explains things in such a way for them to improve on their own. It can’t replace a teacher, but it is a complementary learning material. For those who want to learn more, it offers advice on how to approach a math problem so that the students are armed and ready for their national exams. It familiarizes the students with all the subjects, and teaches them to self-evaluate their performance and perfect their math skills. First, it brings to the attention of the student, the key concept to learn, invites the student to practice its application, references the student’s text book, and shows detailed steps on how to complete the exercise.


Mr. Ségniblé revising his learning document in the Zoukougbeu Learning Center

“I have wanted to make a document like this for about five years, but never could find the technical support to get it out to all my students. Our students here can’t afford text books on their own, so I wasn’t able to afford my idea before. Since we got the Learning Center, I thought I could take advantage of the equipment to produce the document. For my [teaching] colleagues, this center really serves as an information bank to inspire us to help our students achieve on tests and exams.”-- Mr. Tapé Jules Ségniblé, Winrock Project Shadow Teacher and Zoukougbeu Math teacher

A student who has used the learning support discussed how it has affected her performance:

“My name is Evelyne Patricia Yoro and I’m in class 3emeB2. I got the document from Mr. Ségniblé because it’s really detailed and helps those of us who aren’t so good at understand[ing] better the exercise. The document really is presented well, with lots of illustrations and figures. It helps me learn the methodology first for approaching a problem and then the different ways of solving it.”

For Mr. Ségniblé and other teachers using the Community Learning Center at Zoukougbeu, this opportunity has been the chance for them to test their computer literacy. In learning to use the computer, they are also learning how to become better teachers and inspire their students.