Teach A Man To Fish
"Education That Pays For Itself"
Mission
The mission of Teach A Man To Fish is to broaden access for the poor to a high quality education combining vocational training and entrepreneurship by supporting schools to increase their financial self-sufficiency.
Profile
Teach A Man To Fish's Financially Sustainable Schools for Entrepreneurs aim to provide young people with the skills and knowledge needed for economic success in an institution which is financially sustainable through enterprise rather than relying on fees.
It is a hands-on approach: Vocational schools have long appreciated the benefits of ‘learning-by-doing’ – no one ever learnt to drive a tractor from reading a book! Skills are often best learnt on-the-job, and improve by practice.
Generating income: Where refining skills is aimed at delivering a product or service of marketable quality – from honey or maize to running a hotel – the natural next step is to actually make and sell this product or service. Schools rarely have difficulties finding a use for income generated in this way!
Scaling up: Although it requires a substantial effort to create a demonstration business environment for teaching purposes, it is often proportionately not much harder to produce and deliver the same product or service on a much larger scale. In developing countries where commercial enterprises often lack the very skills being taught, scaling up can justifiably result in greater productivity than the market norm.
Financial Sustainability: When each activity across a school’s curriculum is taught in this manner – being effectively run as a profitable business unit – financial self-sufficiency becomes a realistic prospect.
Value as a Model
Financial Sustainability through enterprise is really just a means to an end - to providing a quality vocational education that opens up prospects for graduates to earn a decent living, and create jobs for others.
There is another valuable benefit of maintaining financial sustainability as a goal – institutional fitness.
Financially Sustainable Schools for Entrepreneurs are denied the complacency of institutions which can rely on regular funding irrespective of performance. Like regular businesses they must adapt, innovate, and constantly renew themselves just to stand still.
The discipline this requires serves as an inspiration to students, and ensures of necessity that the education they receive is focused on skills from which they can earn a livelihood.
We have now shown with our first fully Financially Sustainable School in Paraguay that Education That Pays For Itself is more than a theory - it is a great way to build a strong institution that creates economically successful graduates from the children of low income families.
Now the challenge is to create more such institutions!
Results
Our key indicators of success are:
Financial sustainability – Income generated by the school businesses (both as an absolute figure and as a percentage of expenditure)
Technical skills and academic achievement of students - Proven understanding of both the theoretical and practical principles behind running a successful business, measured using standardized tests and continuous assessment
Economic benefits to students – Income level of graduates measured relative to the baseline study control group