MCI Releases New Paper on Israel’s Early Childhood Education Project in Ghana

The Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, is delighted to announce the release of “Where There’s a Will, there’s a Way: Four Years Later: Up-scaling Early Childhood Education in Ghana,” a paper written by our partners at The Mount Carmel Training Center (MCTC) in Haifa, Israel. The paper chronicles the origins, progress and the many successes of MCTC’s ambitious  ongoing work, all of which has been staunchly supported by the Government of Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation (MASHAV), to bring quality child-focused early childhood education to Ghana.

Four years ago, sensitive to the Government of Ghana’s commitment to make early childhood education available to all young Ghanaian children, MCI approached the Government of Israel’s MASHAV and the Mount Carmel Training Center, proven experts in early childhood development and in building capacity worldwide in this critically important field, and asked if they would be willing to come to Kumasi, MCI’s first Millennium City in Ghana, to consult with the Ghana Education Service and city authorities, observe contemporary practice in existing kindergartens and see what might be done to realize the government’s ambitious goal. Both MCTC and MASHAV, the international assistance office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, evinced their enthusiasm for the undertaking.

“Where there’s a Will, There’s a Way” documents the process from there: through the design of the program and curriculum, in close partnership with local education authorities; the training, both in Kumasi and in Israel, of trainers and then, in Ghana, of more than 100 educators; the establishment and operation of 17 new kindergartens which now implement this program and curriculum, all of them attached to Kumasi public schools, as per the Government’s plan; and, this year, the replication of the program in Accra and the training in Ghana’s northern region of early childhood educators.

This is a story of extensive cross-cultural collaboration, tenacity, local growth and empowerment and, ultimately, the enabling of a cohort of lifelong learners among Ghana’s youngest citizens. It is a heartening story, and a cautionary one, with regard to all it can teach us about international development efforts: that building capacity, attempting new ways of doing things and creating successful programs that can become truly sustainable takes time, patience, trust and deeply consultative engagement.

Now available on the MCI website, “Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way: Four Years Later: Up-scaling Early Childhood Education in Ghana,” was written by Mss. Janette Hirschmann and Aviva Ben-Hefer, both early childhood development specialists and Project Directors of the Early Childhood Education Project in Ghana. In addition to our gratitude to the authors, Dr. Mazal Renford and the Mount Carmel Training Center, MCI would like to extend special thanks to Ambassadors Haim Divon, Daniel Carmon and Sharon Bar-Li, and Ms. Kite Beth-Eden and Ilan Fluss, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Ms. Gladys Amaning, former Director of the Kumasi Metropolitan Education Directorate, her successor, Ms. Elizabeth Naana Abudu, and their wonderful staff and educators; and Ms. Abenaa Akuamoa-Boateng, MCI Regional Coordinator for West and Central Africa and Kumasi Project Manager, without whose vision, passion and persistence this project would not have come to fruition.

For more information regarding this wonderful paper and the groundbreaking work undertaken by the Mount Carmel Training Center in Ghana, study or other Accra-related work carried out by MCI, please contact the Mount Carmel Training Center, MCI Regional Coordinator Abenaa Akuamoa-Boateng or MCI Education and Gender Specialist Joanna Brucker.