Education Generation: An interview with Shawn Smith
I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Shawn Smith (who is the force behind Global Agents for Change and Education Generation) for brunch at The Nice Cafe a few days ago. Shawn was kind enough to share with me a few insights into the whole concept behind Global AFC and EdGen. While I completely forgot to bring my Flip camera and film Shawn, I would like to share just a little bit of the insights I gained through our conversation.
Education Generation is a non-profit organization that provides help in the form of grants to students in need in developing countries. In their own words:
We bridge the gap between supporters and students in need using technology. We eliminate the high overhead of child sponsorship, partnering with existing not for profit organizations that understand the communities they work in, and have a track record of success.
This allows you to directly help motivated students, with 100% of your money (after paypal processing fees) supporting their studies. We bring communities of people together with contributions as low as $20, to collectively support individual students. These are real youth with real dreams and unlimited potential. You can unleash this potential and help bring these dreams to reality.
As a researcher and educator, and somebody who is very passionate about enabling disenfranchised people to do amazing stuff, I am really excited with the work of EdGen. I offered Shawn that I would be happy to help co-organize a fundraiser, because I strongly believe that if you are going to fund a student, you should provide a bursary/scholarship, not a loan. I am not a fan of the Kiva model for education. Yes, I think loans are important, but under no circumstance would I consider a loan for education as a best-practices model. While I can see the various sides of the equation, I wouldn’t want students who have carried on debt to have to carry it forward for years to come.
You can follow the amazing work of EdGen on their website and their Twitter account.
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