In Sub-Saharan Africa, only one in four children have access to secondary education.
While many governments have introduced programmes of universal primary education this does not extend to education beyond the age of 11 years old. As a result, 22 million children of secondary school age have no access to school in Sub-Saharan Africa alone.
PEAS have built and run 30 low-cost secondary schools in Uganda and Zambia educating around 14,000 children in hard-to-reach communities that otherwise would not have been able to attend school. Every PEAS school opens debt free through the help of international donations and within two years of launching become self funding ensuring these schools can continue to provide quality education for many years to come.
PEAS schools are also proven to yield better results. A recent review shows that students attending PEAS school have better scores when it comes to Value Add: that being the improvement made between entering to graduating high school. PEAS enrol students with lower attainment that other schools but graduation exam results are in-line with, or above, national average scores.
The importance of secondary school is clear. Expected lifetime wealth increases by over 150%, rates of HIV are cut by two-thirds among girls, child marriages are also reduced by two-thirds and young mothers are 70% more likely to survive beyond childbirth.
Restless Development is driven forward by young people and young professionals around the world. More than 1,000 young men and women, with an average age of 21 years, lead the direct delivery of our programmes in communities across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
They are led by young people not just at a community level. Our professional full-time staff model is an extension of our youth-led mission: the average age of our 200 staff around the world is 25 years, the average age of our senior management is only 33 years.
They have more than 15,000 alumni, former volunteers and staff members, more than 70% of whom continue to pursue careers in development, contributing at local, national and global levels.
Young professionals proving at all levels that young people can take up a lead role and deliverable results in countries around the world. Young people are most affected by the most persistent problems in the world, yet are frequently overlooked as part of the solution. Our mission is to place young people at the forefront of change and development. Our strength comes from being led by young people and young professionals, from the boardroom right through to the field. They have been working hard since 1985 and over the past 29 years, our programmes have reached over 7 million young people. Restless Development works full-time in India, Nepal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. They also have international offices in London and Delhi. Restless Development is now leading efforts with UN agencies, bi-lateral agencies, civil society and governments in Africa and South Asia in how to effectively and meaningfully engage young people in development.