Social Enterprise Program
The Enhancing the Learning Environment Program
Educators have the potential to significantly influence community development and serve as catalysts who release the potential of both their own students but also of others in the community. Schools can become centers of learning and excellence in the community. The first step in allowing educational institutions to fulfill this potential is the introduction of more cooperative and participatory teaching methods and facilitation of learning among the teachers themselves. As teachers become more comfortable in these approaches, cooperative discipline is also introduced. Later modules will address the administration of the school and interaction with the wider community.
In China, the first level Enhancing the Learning Environment (ELE) Program has been used with both rural and urban teachers from Sichuan, Shaanxi, Guangzhou provinces. Over 220 teachers have taken part in the course, and an additional 250 have taken part in short courses that may eventually become modules within the ELE program. While many of the ELE trainings have been sponsored by provincial educational institutions and have therefore drawn on teachers from many localities within the province, the Foundation hopes to identify and begin working with several schools for long-term collaboration to by late 2003.
Outside of China, the Badi Foundation has collaborated with a number of non-governmental organizations working in education which seek to use the ELE material. Most striking among these have been the results achieved by the Ruaha school in Tanzania.