EWB — Education Without Boundaries

Where Does EWB Operate?

Kenya

EWB provides sports, educational, vocational training, and community empowerment opportunities to at-risk youth in a slumtown of Mombasa, Kenya.

Sports
Working with its local partner organization, the Mombasa Olympic Youth Organization, EWB has transformed a previous garbage dump into a comprehensive sports facility, which includes two basketball courts and a soccer pitch.

The sports program provide hundreds of youth the opportunity to engage in supervised basketball and soccer leagues that compete against other teams throughout the country. Each participant receives her own uniforms and is coached by local volunteers who ensure the youth's attendance in school and community development projects.

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Education
EWB sends several at-risk girls to primary and secondary school and ensures that they do not engage in risky behavior such as manual labor or prostitution. We particularly focus on those girls who have lost their fathers or both their parents. We supplant the incomes lost by their attendance in school and find foster parents for those girls who have no remaining family in Mombasa.

Education Without Boundaries is also initiating a teacher-training program at the local primary school and the construction of a secondary school for at-risk youth in Mombasa, Kenya.

EWB will soon be distributing hundreds of uniforms, school supplies, and teacher resources to rural primary schools that lack even the most basic supplies.

Click here to read Lydia's profile, one of our girls in the program.

Vocational Training
EWB sponsors the vocational training of young mothers who were forced to drop out of school because of their pregnancies. These youth are sent to hairstyling schools and are aided in their employment search upon successful completion of their programs.

One of these young mothers is Halima Nyaki: Click here to read Halima's profile.

Community Empowerment
Every participant in EWB programs is expected to participate in community clean up days on a regular basis. These programs increase youth's awareness of their responsibility to the safety and sanitation of their community. It is through these programs that the youth have a sense of ownership over their facilities.

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Vietnam

In 2005, Education Without Boundaries started its first educational program in the poor fishing village of Tam Thanh in Central Vietnam. EWB sponsors 105 boys and girls between the ages of seven and fourteen. The project came about after Paige Fern, Executive Director of EWB, visited Tam Thanh and witnessed the great poverty of the village.

It costs just forty-two dollars a year to send a child to school in Tam Thanh. This amount includes school tuition, complete uniforms, textbooks, stationery, and health insurance.

Despite the low cost, most families from Tam Thanh earn less than one dollar a day. Thus, the money they earn from fishing is barely enough to feed the family and certainly not sufficient to cover the costs of sending their children to school. As a result, the children never learn to read or write, nor do they learn the simplest mathematical skills. Without these basic mathematical and literacy skills they are condemned to the same poverty as their parents.

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Argentina

EWB provides complementary after-school education to at-risk students in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There is a notable lack of after-school programs for the children of La Cárcova. Although some ‘cartonero' organizations provide after-school programs, they are completely strained and children are rejected and sent back to their homes when there is not enough teachers to assist them.

Working with its international partner, Educar, Integrar, y Crecer, EWB draw from a network of volunteers to set up an after school program in which young Argentines who attend private schools in Buenos Aires can tutor children in La Cárcova. The eldest children in the cohort commit to in turn tutor younger children. This after-school program is accompanied by donations for school supplies for children who participate.

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Sierra Leone

Project Sierra Leone is a fundraising project of Education Without Boundaries. The funds raised through Project Sierra Leone help Youth Action International construct one of Sierra Leone's first all women's rehabilitation centers for young women who were sexually abused during the country's decade long civil war. This women's empowerment center provides vocational training and micro-credit loans to its students.