Prime Implementer
Implementing Partners
Sir Arthur Lewis Community College
Tuskegee University
Project Timeline
May 2021 – September 2023
Project Goals
The goal of the Saint Lucia ConnectEd Activity is to build resilience and improve the quality of teaching and learning in Saint Lucia by equipping Saint Lucian youth and educators as digital literacy leaders in their communities.
Brief Background
In response to the challenges facing Saint Lucia’s youth around increased unemployment, a shortage of opportunities for personal and professional growth, and a greater divide of digital haves and have nots – exacerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic – World Education, in partnership with Saint Lucia’s Ministry of Education, Innovation, and Gender Relations, designed the Saint Lucia ConnectEd Activity to build resilience and improve the quality of teaching and learning in Saint Lucia by equipping youth and educators as digital literacy leaders in their communities.
Working with a foundational coalition that includes Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, Tuskegee University, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, Saint Lucia National Youth Council, and the Saint Lucia Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture, ConnectEd provides Saint Lucian youth with opportunities to develop the critical digital skills they need to become engaged participants in school, community, work, and life.
ConnectEd will support USAID’s Youth in Development Policy, USAID’s Education Policy, and the USAID Digital Strategy by:
- Building youth resilience;
- Building skills for youth to lead productive lives, gain employment and positively contribute to society and;
- Empowering youth to drive change in their communities.
Overview of Activities
Saint Lucia ConnectEd amplifies the strengths of youth by providing opportunities in digital education from which to learn and practice leadership and life skills from self-determined pathways. Educators play a central role in guiding and supporting youth to access these opportunities through the strengthening of their teaching practices to integrate digital skills and PYD approaches into all instruction. The main components of the Saint Lucia ConnectEd Activity are:
1. Youth-Led and Youth-Centered Approach. The Saint Lucia ConnectEd Activity is grounded in positive youth development (PYD) philosophy. Youth and youth-focused stakeholders are leaders in planning and implementing Saint Lucia ConnectEd activities, giving youth opportunities to build their workforce skills while building local ownership into the program.
2. Enhancing Teaching and Learning. A core focus of the Saint Lucia ConnectEd Activity is to promote creativity and collaboration among students and educators. To achieve this, the project provides opportunities for crowdsourced production of teacher- and student-authored open educational resources (OERs) to support identified curriculum needs, which will be widely accessible via an OER Library for teachers to use, reuse, adapt and share with others.
3. Increasing Youth Opportunities. To encourage youth development of digital and human skills for employability and life, Saint Lucia ConnectEd will focus on the 5th “C” of PYD, “contribution”, by developing a community service, volunteerism, and internship pilot. The program provides experiential learning experiences for students to apply digital skills developed in the classroom to real-world situations in the workplace.
ConnectEd also includes a youth-led research component, in which Saint Lucian youth, led by research faculty from Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, will investigate research questions that are relevant to Saint Lucia ConnectEd project outcomes and approaches.
4. Program Sustainability. Partners and stakeholders collaborate to find local solutions and best practices to continue the initiative beyond the life of the project.
Expected Results
- Increase in educators’ comfort and confidence in effectively integrating technology within classroom instruction
- Increase in student’s social and cognitive competence, self-efficacy, and connection with work, peers, and community
- 100+ Saint Lucian educators will integrate PYD approaches and digital skills in classroom instruction
- 700+ Open Educational Resources created for adaptation and use across the country
Project Materials
Contact
For more information, please contact Ben Vorspan, Technical Advisor, at ben_vorspan@worled.org