The Learner Guide Hub

Yidan Prize funds supports the acceleration of CAMFED’s Learner Guide program

The Learner Guide Hub is a digital hub that facilitates the scale-up and quality assurance of the program as reach expands

CAMFED will use Yidan Prize funds to reach their goal of enabling five million marginalized girls to attend secondary school in sub-Saharan Africa. Using the prize funds, they will establish a digital Learner Guide Hub to further develop the Learner Guide program: a proven program enabling girls to attend school regularly and learn, and ultimately make the successful transition from school to a secure young adulthood.

The Learner Guide program – safeguarding girls’ opportunity to thrive

In sub-Saharan Africa, 92% of girls never complete secondary education. Through its 25 years of on-the-ground experience, CAMFED sees how girls’ ability to learn is compromised by a variety of economic and social barriers. Working with Government partners, CAMFED designed the Learner Guide program to address the interlinked challenges of girls’ systemic exclusion from school.

The Learner Guide program is led by a new generation of education leaders from the CAMFED Association, the pan-African network of young women who have completed school with CAMFED’s support. Learner Guides are a group of young women who once themselves experienced exclusion, who have direct experience of what it takes for a marginalized girl to attend school, learn and succeed.

Learner Guides sign up to a two-year commitment to volunteer in their local secondary schools and are trained to:

• Identify girls who are at risk of school drop-out and work with local authorities to keep them in school.
• Mentor girls to help them navigate the challenges they face.
• Deliver a life skills and well-being curriculum, My Better World, to all children, designed to complement the academic curriculum.

On average, each Learner Guide provides enhanced support to 50 marginalized girls during her term in the role. In return for their commitment, Learner Guides gain access to soft loan capital to start small-scale enterprises and are eligible to receive an internationally-recognized Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC) qualification, as a stepping stone to formal teacher training and employment. The Learner Guide therefore addresses the dual challenge of girls’ success in school, and their transition to a secure livelihood beyond school.

The Learner Guide Hub – expanding the program’s reach

The Learner Guide Hub, to be established through the Yidan Prize funds, will unlock the potential to scale the Learner Guide program and underpin its future sustainability. The Hub is a digital platform that provides access to all training curricula and resource materials, curated for use by the program’s Core Trainers, Learner Guides and Ministry partners; and enhanced to provide an interactive learning journey.

The Hub will facilitate online review and reporting by Learner Guides, substantially improving the efficacy of the support and follow-up to Learner Guides, and the accreditation process for the Learner Guide qualification. The Hub will be accessed in five countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

With the Yidan Prize funding over the three-year period, 20,000 young women will use the Hub for training, peer-to-peer learning and review, effectively equipping them as Learner Guides to support one million adolescent girls in their communities. Beyond 2023, we project that the Hub will be a fully accessible resource for 100,000+ Learner Guides, ultimately benefiting five million girls by the end of 2025. The Hub will also be made available to other partners with a view to scaling the Learner Guide model to other countries and regions, in pursuit of our shared goal to create a better world together, through education.