Writing for (y)EU – Full edit from Web Com on Vimeo.

We (actually, our boss, Steve) could not resist to upload this video. We made it for a Christmas Party and we intend to edit it in shorter versions to promote our team’s blog. But, come on, we (aka the boss) find it so great ;-)

Last year, we created the new map section, which we feature again one year later — the archive of maps has quietly become an intensively used resource for many people, and our thanks goes to anyone who used and recommended it — we appreciate it:

from the milky way galaxy to the world upside down, from urban sprawl to Europe by night, from the crusades thousands of years ago to the origins of today’s refugees, from ancient wars to recent conflicts, from Europe in 1190 to Europe in 1815, from major technological accidents to Europe’s climate in 2071, from cultural regions of Europe to the distribution of blond hair on our continent, …

(edit: ahem, author continues to type furiously…)

All in all, we give you more than 150 maps of Europe in 10 categories:

Generic maps of Europe
Europe and the world
Ancient maps of Europe
Old maps of Europe
Language, culture and ethnicity in Europe
Religion in Europe
Emigration, migration and refugees in Europe
Europe and the environment
Funny and weird maps of Europe
Conflicts and wars in Europe

We are looking forward to finding more maps and adding them as we go along, hopefully with all your support as always. But that is the future, and holiday season is now. Take some time off, and enjoy the festivities!

From everybody here at Nonformality,
thanks for sharing your time with us. Love,

This year’s thematic focus was on public relations.

In preparation of the training, I conducted a small experiment, collected quite a few different things – quotes, videos, photos, showcases – and reviewed my list of essential books on pr. All of this will be available here before the end of the year, starting today with the books.

Five books on public relations and, closely related, social marketing – from the perspective of non-governmental associations as much as the public sector:

Public Relations for Dummies
Eric Yaverbaum with Robert Bly and Ilise Benun

A great and in-depth introduction to public relations. 350 pages and six chapters that stand on their own, are easy to read and easy to understand: I: PR: what it is, how it works. II: Brainstorming and thinking creatively. III: Putting the wheels in motion. IV: Choosing the right medium for your message. V: Creating buzz. VI: The part of tens.

Extremely useful.

Buy on amazon.com | Buy on amazon.uk | Buy on amazon.de

Creativity in Public Relations
Andy Green for CIPR

An inspiring book about the brilliantly simple, yet inspired creative edge in public relations. 240 pages and 18 chapters, spanning from theory to ethics and culture without ever losing the practical dimension: 1. A definition of creativity, 2. Creativity: some myths debunked, 3. How you think in boxes, 4. The creative process, 5. Creative techniques, 6. Green light thinking, 7. Creativity consultation tool, 8. Evaluation of ideas, 9. Creativity is not just for photocalls, 10. Obstacles to creativity, 11. You are never more than 12 feet from an opportunity, 12. The creative diamond, 13. The creative individual, 14. Creating a creative culture, 15. Ethics of creativity, 16. Future of creativity, 17. Award ceremony, and 18. Interested in finding out more?

Excellent.

Buy on amazon.com | Buy on amazon.uk | Buy on amazon.de

Marketing for the Public Sector
Philip Kotler & Nancy Lee

A groundbreaking book transferring the principles of public relations and social marketing to the world of governmental agencies and the public sector. 330 pages, 3 parts and 13 chapters detail a roadmap for improved performance in the pursuit of the common good. I: Introduction (2 chapters, 30 pages). II: Applying marketing tools to the public sector (8 chapters, 200 pages). III. Managing the marketing process (3 chapters, 50 pages).

If you work for a governmental agency and have to decide for one book only from this list of five, buy this one.

Buy on amazon.com | Buy on amazon.uk | Buy on amazon.de

Strategic Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations
Alan R. Andreasen & Philip Kotler

The standard publication on public relations and marketing for nongovernmental organisations. The 7th edition features 500 pages, 5 sections and 19 chapters help to improve the impact of any organisation’s work. I: Developing a target audience orientation (2 chapters, 60 pages). II: Strategic planning and organisation (5 chapters, 125 pages). III: Designing the marketing mix (7 chapters,160 pages). IV: Developing resources (3 chapters, 90 pages). V: Organising and controlling marketing strategies (2 chapters, 40 pages).

If you work for a nongovernmental association and have to decide for one book only from this list of five, buy this one.

Buy on amazon.com | Buy on amazon.uk | Buy on amazon.de

Social Marketing. Influencing Behaviours for Good.
Philip Kotler & Nancy Lee

The pioneering book on social marketing, for nongovernmental organisations and governmental agencies alike. 444 pages, 5 parts and 17 chapters illustrate with many examples from practice, how social marketing works and can be implemented. I: Understanding social marketing (3 chapters, 66 pages). II: Analysing the social marketing environment (2 chapters, 40 pages). III: Establishing target audiences, objectives, and goals (3 chapters, 70 pages). IV: Developing social marketing strategies (6 chapters, 160 pages). V: Managing social marketing programmes (3 chapters, 60 pages).

Very valuable and insightful.

Buy on amazon.com | Buy on amazon.uk | Buy on amazon.de

In our new map section, you find everything we could find (we are sure there is so much more out there!):

from the milky way galaxy to the world upside down, from urban sprawl to Europe by night, from the crusades thousands of years ago to the origins of today’s refugees, from ancient wars to recent conflicts, from Europe in 1190 to Europe in 1815, from major technological accidents to Europe’s climate in 2071, from cultural regions of Europe to the distribution of blond hair on our continent, …

(edit: ahem, author continues to type furiously…)

All in all, we give you more than 150 maps of Europe in 10 categories:

Generic maps of Europe
Europe and the world
Ancient maps of Europe
Old maps of Europe
Language, culture and ethnicity in Europe
Religion in Europe
Emigration, migration and refugees in Europe
Europe and the environment
Funny and weird maps of Europe
Conflicts and wars in Europe

We are looking forward to finding more maps and adding them as we go along, hopefully with all your support as always.

From everybody here at Nonformality,
thanks for sharing your time with us. Love,

In our new map section, you find everything we could find (we are sure there is so much more out there!):

from the milky way galaxy to the world upside down, from urban sprawl to Europe by night, from the crusades thousands of years ago to the origins of today’s refugees, from ancient wars to recent conflicts, from Europe in 1190 to Europe in 1815, from major technological accidents to Europe’s climate in 2071, from cultural regions of Europe to the distribution of blond hair on our continent, …

(edit: ahem, author continues to type furiously…)

All in all, we give you more than 150 maps of Europe in 10 categories:

Generic maps of Europe
Europe and the world
Ancient maps of Europe
Old maps of Europe
Language, culture and ethnicity in Europe
Religion in Europe
Emigration, migration and refugees in Europe
Europe and the environment
Funny and weird maps of Europe
Conflicts and wars in Europe

We are looking forward to finding more maps and adding them as we go along, hopefully with all your support as always. But that is the future, and holiday season is now. Take some time off, and enjoy the festivities!

From everybody here at Nonformality,
thanks for sharing your time with us. Love,

Apply for THE European event of young media makers!

Visions for European journalism: 270 young media makers meet, debate and create European media at the first European Youth Media Days in the European Parliament in Brussels, 27-30 June 2007.

How will European media look like in 2020? The European Youth Media Days, hosted by the European Parliament and the European Youth Press, will provide visions on European journalism in the next decades. The new generation of European journalists will come together from the 27th to the 30th of June in Brussels – 270 young media makers from all 27 EU-countries. Their programme: three days of discussions, meetings and practical workshops inside the European Parliament covering a broad variety of current European topics.

[Disclosure: I am head of the training team for the project.]

But a developed view of multiculturalism can complement democratic citizenship and nation-building, says Professor Tariq Modood in his article «Multiculturalism, citizenship and national identity» at Open Democracy.

The EU is celebrating its birthday, but it’s not quite sure of its identity. Might be true, but is this bad?

Anyhow: Dive into the EU. One way or the other!

Young people at the youth summit say: This is the Europe we want! And soon gather again at the European Youth Week to request “Nothing about us without us: give us more democracy!”

300 young journalists take hold of the European Parliament: Release youth media!

Philosopher and social scientist Jürgen Habermas proposes for citizens to vote on a democratisation referendum in 2009. “The governments have to recognise their own powerlessness and dare to use democracy.”

The Guardian finds it’s harder to look forward.

The Pope thinks the EU is on the path to oblivion. There are others who think the Pope is really Oblivion.

Europe and Islam: What are we talking about? Discover the Muslim World! In depth.

Unfortunately, not completely unrelated: Alana Lentin questions and explores racism and human rights and their relation: “Towards a new humanism?” and “Multiculturalism or anti-racism?”

No offence, but why are all white men so aggressive?

Europe needs to re-engage with imagination: But who and how?

At 50, the European Union – America’s pampered godchild – is overweight and badly dressed.

“Like it or not, if we have a united Europe we survive. If not, we are dead.”, argues Romani Prodi. His successor, Jose Manuel Barroso, contends that “Europe needs a vision to inspire its citizens in the next 50 years”.

Europe has a much longer history, of course. And an older institution.

A sequence of 21 cartographic snapshots showing the history of Europe as a whole. More early maps. And an excellent overview of different maps. Plus a cool interactive European map.

Poland is the new Spain.

50 reasons to love the European Union. Number 50: “Lists like this drive the Eurosceptics mad.” Good!

Quotes on, about and related to Europe. “Morality in Europe today is herd-morality”, said Friedrich Nietzsche. More here or here.

Very different things can happen in two different places within the same 10 minutes.

The European Parliament has a better website than you would think. Admittedly they are Muggles though, so it is fair enough that this website is much more magical.

For that, the European Parliament looks great.

Have an idea or two about the future of Europe? Make them heard at the first pan-European citizens’ consultations. Debate Europe!

Inside Europe: The European Radio Weekly. One of the best podcast about, on and in Europe.

Eurotopics. Excellent daily press review following the most important political, cultural and social debates.

Europhobia is the blog of Nosemonkey. I’m not joking. It’s good!

There is so much to see in Europe…

Interesting? Exciting – enjoy!

Dr. Peter Scott from the Centre for New Media, Knowledge Media Institute at the Open University, UK predicts that “the future will show that formal and informal models of learning will start to combine powerfully into a joint strand which is some way between both; something like ‘non-formal’ learning.”

Something like, eh?!

But world leaders do not deserve the credit, says Ehsan Masood of openDemocracy.

It is an annual ritual, and no less important for that. The publication of the United Nations’s scorecard on efforts to tackle poverty in developing countries is designed to remind world leaders that their ambitious promises to halve global poverty through the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by 2015 are unlikely to be met – this despite significant increases in development aid.

In contrast to previous years, however, there was no fanfare surrounding the 2006 report. It was announced on 3 July in a small paragraph from the UN’s statistics division. Two weeks since that announcement, the report has yet to make it onto the UN’s official MDG website – a sure sign, if one were needed, that the organisation’s flagship scheme to end world poverty is in trouble.

The 2005 report was signed by Kofi Annan. This year’s signatory is a senior official though one less well-known than the UN’s secretary-general: José Antonio Ocampo – a case perhaps of the senior doctor delegating the task of conveying news of terminal illness to his more junior colleague? Ocampo says that the “challenges the goals represent are staggering”, though he is able to find “clear signs of hope”.

Later, Ocampo admits that there are vast disparities in progress and that the poorest are being left behind. His report ends with a phrase much favoured by international policymakers to signify that a cause is all but lost: “Much more can and must be done.”

I don’t envy Ocampo. He wants to give his readers a dose of reality, but at the same time remind them that a world without extreme poverty is possible as well as desirable – though not necessarily in the time-frame they have set themselves.

The parent factor

Among José Antonio Ocampo’s readers will be the very leaders of rich and poor nations who met in September 2000 at the United Nations in New York and agreed to do what it takes to reach the eight Millennium Development Goals in reducing poverty before a target date of 2015. These goals are:

• eliminate extreme poverty and hunger, by lifting the living standards of the very poorest
• achieve universal primary education
• promote gender equality and empower women, especially in education
• reduce child mortality among under-fives by two-thirds
• improve maternal health, including reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters
• combat HIV/Aids, malaria, and other diseases
• improve environmental sustainability, including the guaranteed access to safe drinking water
• develop a global partnership for development.

All the data in the 2006 edition of the Millennium Development Goals report suggest that none of the goals are likely to be met. Only one will come close: this is the target to achieve universal primary education. Thanks more to circumstance than design, by 2015, nearly nine out of every ten children are on course to have a primary-school place.

But on every other indicator, progress is either patchy or non-existent. The numbers of people who go to bed hungry in the developing world, for example, is rising, and stands at some 824 million people. Nearly half a million children die from measles annually. The list of failures is long and depressing.

So why is the single goal of universal primary education potentially within reach? The answer has little to do with the promises made at the 2000 millennium summit, and everything to do with the hard work and innovative thinking on the part of a host of actors (governments, civil society and parents), who decided long ago that getting children into schools has to be a major priority for the developing world.

This is the conclusion of research published by the World Bank that examines the world of primary education in developing countries. The bank knows a thing or two about schools and schooling; it is the largest non-governmental donor in this field, having granted or lent some $36 billion for education for developing countries over the past four decades. At present, its lending portfolio in education amounts to $8.4 billion in some eighty-eight countries.

As might be expected, the components of success in primary-school education amount to a mixed bag, and depend very much on what countries and regions need, and how much they can afford to pay. In the poorest regions, for example, a priority is often to create schools from scratch. Equally important is the provision of incentives for parents who have never been to school to let their children go, and to reassure them that schooling will not automatically lead to their children rejecting traditions and traditional values.

There are additional dynamics at work in relatively higher-income countries, where primary-education enrolment may already be high. Here, a priority might be to improve the curriculum, improve standards of attainment as well as school attendance, and to experiment with new models of school management and governance.

Taken together, what the World Bank researchers’ data shows is that there is no magic bullet: more a collection of variable interventions. What some of these tend to have in common, however, is that they are schemes that have a good record of success in the developed world, or among elite, fee-paying schools in developing countries.

Some successes have come through spending vast sums of money on school buildings, equipment and teacher training. Mexico, for example, has invested heavily in its primary and secondary education – some $625 million over the past fifteen years. Its policies have specifically targeted some of the country’s most deprived states, as well as regions with large numbers of indigenous peoples. In addition to infrastructure spending and introducing performance-related teachers pay, a key plank in Mexico’s policies has been to focus on the role of parents.

Worldwide it is children from the poorest families who do not go to school. Where they do, they tend to underperform significantly, compared with the national average in their countries. Often, this is because parents have little or no involvement in a child’s school life. This can be because parents themselves never went to school and lack the confidence to interact with teachers; or it might be because of a lack of trust between parents and school authorities – something that is also a factor in the underperformance of children from minority communities in the developed world.

In Mexico, the government decided to improve parents’ participation through a nationwide scheme (known as AGEs), which trains parents to take part in school management. Empowering parents – encouraging, training, and even paying them small sums of money – to play a formal role in school activities, has had a significant effect in improving education in rural Mexico, according to World Bank researcher Paul Gertler and his colleagues. Drop-out rates have fallen and standards are on the rise.

AGEs is relatively cheap – it costs $6 per student per year, or $27 million for all of Mexico’s 4.5 million children of primary-school age. And it shows what you can do with a small amount of money allocated wisely. A similar example comes from Ecuador, a poorer country compared with Mexico with average incomes at $1,500 per year. Ecuador’s policymakers have for many years been aware of the fact that while primary-school enrolment is high at 90%, this drops to 45% when pupils make the transition to secondary school.

There are several reasons for this, including the higher costs of secondary schooling, as well as the need for parents to place children in work so they can begin contributing to the household budget. One solution to enable more children to stay on in post-11 education was to pay mothers a $15 monthly child voucher to help with the increased costs of secondary schooling. And the system appears to be working. Both, the numbers of children in work, as well as school drop-out rates have been falling since the scheme was introduced, according to Norbert Schady and Maria Caridad Araujo of the World Bank’s research staff.

People, not aid

But development aid isn’t the whole story. It is possible to boost primary-school enrolment with very little involvement from donors or the government, as a case study from Pakistan has shown. One in four of Pakistan’s rural households include a parent (usually a male) who works far from home, and who regularly sends money in the form of remittances. World Bank researcher Ghazala Mansuri decided to explore what happens to the schooling of children from these households in all four of Pakistan’s provinces. Does it improve because of a family’s more favourable finances? Or does it decline, in part because children are needed to do the work of the absent parent.

Mansuri found that not only were the children from migrant households more likely to attend school (especially girls), but she found that they were more likely to study to a higher level compared with their counterparts from settled households in rural areas. Girls in particular completed more than two extra years of schooling compared with those from non-migrant households.

What can we learn from these examples? There is the obvious: that primary schooling has to be free to all regardless of ability to pay. There are two further lessons: that parental involvement in management and governance, as well as small financial incentives, can make a big difference to a child’s school attendance; and that (as the Pakistan example shows) if parents were able to earn a living wage, they wouldn’t need recourse to external support.

Equally important is the issue of time, and of deadlines, such as the 2015 target to reach the Millennium Development Goals. None of these improvements happened overnight, and their genesis predates the MDG project – in most cases by at least a decade. The fact that we stand at the threshold of universal primary education will happen despite the MDG initiative, and not because of it.

This article originally appeared on openDemocracy.net
under a Creative Commons license.

To view the original article, please click here.

“Education is a gateway to employment and in almost all OECD countries educational attainment levels continue to rise, with many countries showing impressive gains in university qualifications in particular, according to data in the 2006 edition of the OECD’s annual publication “Education at a Glance”.

[For your convenience: Direct Links to 2006 - Main Site and Tables of Indicators]

But while more than one third of students across OECD countries – and around 50% in some countries — now obtain university degrees – a persistently large share of young people do not complete secondary school, today’s baseline for successful entry into the labour market.

On average across OECD countries, only 56% of adults without upper secondary qualifications are in employment. Of those who are, 26% earn one-half or less than one-half of the national median earnings. While many countries have seen steeply rising benefits from university education, including some of those where university education has expanded most, people who have not completed upper secondary school, and particularly women, continue to face serious labour-market penalties.

To address this, OECD analysts say, countries will need to scale back inherently class-biased and often regressive ways of funding educational opportunities, the effects of which often show up in educational attainment measurements. On average across OECD countries, for example, students from the most socio-economically disadvantaged quartile of the population are 3.5 times more likely than their peers to be in the bottom quartile of mathematics performers, and in no country is this less than twice as likely to be the case.

A compendium of national education statistics on indicators ranging from class sizes to teacher salaries, Education at a Glance provides governments and education specialists with internationally comparable data as a basis for policy debate and decisions. Among other things, this year’s edition shows that:

• On average in OECD countries, 84% of people who have achieved a tertiary education qualification are in employment. By contrast, only 56% of people without even an upper secondary qualification have jobs.
• Public funding of education remains a social priority, even in OECD countries with relatively little public involvement in other areas: between 1995 and 2003, education took a growing share of total public expenditure in most countries, with Denmark, Greece, New Zealand, the Slovak Republic and Sweden showing particularly significant shifts in public funding in favour of education.
• At the tertiary level, however, the proportion of public expenditure as a share of total spending has fallen from an average of 81.2% in OECD countries in 1995 to an average 76.2% in 2003, with only the Czech Republic, Ireland, Norway and Spain showing an increase. The proportion of tertiary education funded privately varies from more than 50% in Australia, Japan, Korea and the United States as well as the partner country Chile to less than 5% in Denmark, Finland, Greece, Norway and Turkey. Most of private funding comes from households, notably through tuition fees which are charged in three-quarters of OECD countries, though at widely varying levels.
• Rapidly growing numbers of students are enrolling in tertiary education outside their home country. In 2004, they comprised 2.7 million students worldwide, an 8% increase on the previous year and more than twice as many as in 1995. More than half of these students are enrolled in four OECD countries – the United States (22%), the United Kingdom (11%), Germany (10%), and France (9%).
• Annual salaries of teachers with at least 15 years experience at lower secondary level range from around USD 10,000 in Poland to USD48 000 or more in Germany, Korea and Switzerland and more than USD 80,000 in Luxembourg.
• Gender differences in educational qualification rates are shifting in favour of women. For 55-to-64-year-olds, average duration of formal study favours women in only three countries, but for 25-to-34-year-olds, the average number of years of study completed is higher among women in 20 out of 30 OECD countries, and of the remaining 10 countries only Switzerland and Turkey register differences of more than six months in favour of men.

Education at a Glance 2006 can be purchased in paper or electronic form through the OECD’s Online Bookshop.

Further information on Education at a Glance 2006 can be found directly at the OECD’s website here http://www.oecd.org/edu/eag2006, as can country chapters on Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

Source: Low educational attainments continue to penalise people in many OECD countries, Copyright OECD 2006.

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