Adult LiteracySTEMEducation for Children with DisabilitiesOut-of-school or Underperforming YouthLibraries/Access to Education Resources
2024-25
Belize
Rotary Club of Port Moody
5050
Project Impact
Description
The Belize Central Prison is the only prison in Belize incarcerating men, women and youth and housing remanded and sentenced offenders, as well as immigration detainees. The Prison is operated under contract by the Kolbe Foundation, which is closely linked to the Rotary Club of Belize. The Foundation receives limited government funding and has limited resources for education and other rehabilitative programs.
Through a Rotary Global Grant, the Belize Central Prison was provided with Offline Internet servers (RACHEL), Chromebook Computer Labs, and training to support the adoption of educational technology. The goal of the project was to enhance basic education and literacy in the nation’s only prison.
This project leverages the use of Open Educational Resources (OER), including educational resources such as curriculum maps, learning management systems, course materials, textbooks, videos, multimedia applications, and other materials designed for use in teaching and learning. These materials are available for use by educators and students without an accompanying need to pay royalties or license fees.
Central to this project is using RACHEL (Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning). RACHEL Servers are provided by www.worldpossible.org. Rotary has successfully deployed RACHEL in many other education projects.
Each RACHEL server can be customized with added content to meet localized learning and curriculum needs. RACHEL can be used by teachers to facilitate class or independent learning, organize lesson plans, and can be used by individual learners simply to access content.
Within the prison population literacy and overall educational attainment is low. The prison has little funding for rehabilitative programming, but does have a demonstrable commitment to rehabilitation and program delivery. There are only two staff teachers for an inmate population of 1200. Improved literacy, education and employment skills improves the likelihood of a successful reintegration and a safer society.
Education technology such as RACHEL, workstations, and other supporting technology, along with teacher and facilitator training, will dramatically increase access to educational resources for most inmates in the prison. Key elements of this initiative include:
1) augmenting educational resources for youth offenders to strengthen literacy and basic education results.
2) provide basic literacy training to adult offenders.
3) Making standardized curriculum available to adult offenders to improve educational outcomes and certifications; and
4) Training inmate facilitators and trainers in the development and use of educational technology to support basic education and literacy.
With this Global Grant, we also provided a RACHEL server and computer lab to St. Martin de Porres Premary School, an inner-city school in Belize City.