SPES is now ready to announce
the final findings and recommendations that emerged from our
Applied Research Study on Kids with Special Literacy Needs, launched
in June 2001, by Lady Sarojini Jugnauth at the Kids Cybercafé
we organized on the occasion of our NGO's 34th Anniversary.
http://spesmru.intnet.mu/june2k.htm
In a nutshell, the aim of
the SPES Study was to find out more about the problems, needs
and aspirations of Primary School dropouts, directly from the
participating kids point of view, and to allow them to express
themselves while enjoying learning computer basics and gaining
self-esteem.
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The SPES Team
of specialized Teacher Trainers in New Training Skills and Assessment
Competencies created collectively a special Multimedia Questionnaire
with friendly cartoon characters. The age of the
young participants ranked from 12 - 17 they were all
interviewed on an individual basis. There were 56
Audio questions they had to respond
to by clicking on "Green for
Yes", "Red for No"
and "Yellow
for Not really". |
The recorded replies were
totalled and the percentages calculated for correlations for
the two groups of the same number of of boys and girls. To be
noted that the random sample of participants originated from
the 10 Mauritian Districts and were selected by community-based
Social Workers. The major findings were that all adolescents
with literacy and numeracy problems had various types of intelligence
and thus require appropriate specialized teaching. They were
all unanimous that they neede and wanted to learn Multi-literacy
skills so as to become self-reliant citizens.
Testing
Several Social Workers also tested our SPES user-friendly programme
and were impressed with its reliability and validity and even
suggested that all children with literacy problems should answer
our computer designed questionnaire, as it makes the child reflect
all along.
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Infotech 2001 Expo (4 - 6 October)
organized by the National
Computer Board and MITIA
In keeping with the Infotech
2001 theme: "enter the e-world", SPES had a stand on
Multi-Literacy skills. We had the honour on the Launching Day
of having the visit of our Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of
Finance accompanied by several VIPs and Informatic Experts.
Our colourful stand and our
demonstrations and "hands on" computer facilities for
learning/sharing attracted hundreds of people and many children
enjoyed learning computer basics through our special educational
games and showed an interest in the display of SPES Crafts and
Wizards Soft Toys we use for fun learning/sharing.
Two days later SPES also greatly
encouraged by the visit of our Prime Minister, as in fact we
are propelling Mauritius to become a Cyber Island.
We were delighted with the
flow of young children, their parents, grandparents, teachers
and Young Entrepreneurs who visited our Stand and enjoyed our
"hands on" computer learning/sharing facilities and
our special education games and creative display of our cuddly
soft toys.
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In addition, at the SPES Stand we had
a special corner for Young Entrepreneurs to learn and register
for network participation in the Spain-based First Virtual Congress of Young Entrepreneurs
and SMEs, that commences
in October 2001 and culminates in March 2002 with a Physical
Congress & Expo in Zaragoza.
SPES is honoured to have been designated facilitator for this
interactivity and e-business promotion organized by the Young
Entrepreneur Association of Zaragoza, Spain in collaboration
with the European Union, The Spanish Kingdom, and the Government
of Aragon. |
Overview |
SPES Applied
Research Study was actually in line with and our contribution
to the objectives and pledges of "the Global Movement Say Yes for Children". |

Mauritian kids Collective Design in Appliqué
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Our NGO was pleased to note
that 36 million* worldwide citizens, like us, also agreed and
voted for the following priorities for children's peaceful sustainable
development:
- Educate every child
- Stop harming and exploiting
children
- Leave no child out
Seeing that the SPES e-rediness
is visible, we look forward to collaborative socio-economic actions
to consolidate our SPES Vocational and Multimedia Training Centre
to implement our Model Multi-Literacy Global Village Development
Project for the benefit of all the needy of our e-world.
To conclude, SPES is also
a firm believer that ICT and lifelong skills are key solutions
for the Eradication of Poverty, however it all depends on the
Top Decision-makers for investment on Education for All.
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* (reference NetAid statistics)
Best Wishes to NetAid and its collaborators.
We invite you all to visit the SPES website udpate of November on our SPES special activity under the Global Movement Say Yes or Children (http://spesmru.intnet.mu/octnov01.htm) | |
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