Peace Corps

• Subject(s): Language Arts & Literature, Environment & Health, Cross-Cultural Understanding
• Grade Level(s): 6–8, 9–12

Overview

As a Peace Corps Volunteer assigned to the village of Wanzuzu, students playing the Peace Corps Challenge game are faced with many challenges they must solve using realistic solutions. In this challenge players are faced with a village that has many important members of the community with the attitude that educating girls is not a priority. The mayor himself states "I don't see this as a problem". A solution to this challenge must be found by interviewing several community members, weighing their input, and finding a solution that benefits everyone.

Background Information

Factoids from the game:

In every region of the world, there are primary school-aged girls who do not attend school. As of 2005, the percentages ranged from 17 percent to 69 percent of eligible girls who were not receiving an education. Source UNESCO

Getting girls into school and ensuring that they stay and learn has what UNICEF calls a "multiplier effect." Educated girls are likely to marry later and have fewer children, who in turn will be more likely to survive and be better nourished and educated. Educated girls are more productive at home and better paid in the workplace, and more able to participate in social, economic and political decision-making. Source UNICEF

One of the Millennium Development Goals is to ensure gender parity in universal primary education by the year 2015. Between 1990 and 2004, an increase of 9 percent more girls worldwide were completing primary school. Source World Bank

Procedures

Explore the Educating Village Girls WebQuest

Play the Educating Village Girls Challenge (Flash)

Additional Resources:

Coverdell World Wise Schools:

• Lesson plan: Healthy Girls, Healthy Villages (Grades 6-12)
  This lesson explores the importance of educating girls in developing countries, as well as some of the factors that traditionally limit girls' access to education.
• Slideshow: Healthy Girls, Healthy Villages
• Lesson plan: The Flow of Women's Work (Grades 6-8)
  Students compare the division of labor in water-related work in rural Lesotho with their own households.
• Podcast: Reasons for Joy Listen | Read

Outside Sources:

• UNICEF: Voices of Youth: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
• Millennium Development Goal #3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

Framework and Standards

Enduring Understandings

• People often have obstacles to overcome in order to succeed.
• Each of us plays an important and needed role in the success of our society.
• Gender roles are often based on cultural beliefs that may be difficult to change.

Essential Questions

• How can long time cultural views be changed?
• What are the factors within a society or culture that may influence the way gender roles are defined?

Standards

Social Studies:

Thematic Strand I: Culture

• How culture influences the ways in which human groups solve problems of daily living
• How people from different cultures develop different ways of interpreting experience
• Language, behaviors and beliefs can both contribute and pose barriers to cross-cultural understanding

Thematic Strand IV: Individual Development and Identity

• Concepts such as: development, change, learning, groups, and perception and how these concepts influence individual development and identity
• Perceptions are interpretations and can be influenced by bias and stereotypes

Thematic Strand V: Individuals, Groups, and Institutions

• Concepts such as: norms, role, cooperation, and gender
• That ways in which young people are socialized include similarities and differences across cultures

Thematic Strand IX: Global Connections

• The causes and consequences of various types of global connections
• The actions of people, communities, and nations have both short and long term effects

Thematic Strand X: Civic Ideals and Practices

• Concepts and ideals such as: individual dignity, liberty, equality, individual rights
• Perspectives of various stakeholders in proposing possible solutions to issues