CONAFE is a part of the Mexican Ministry of Education (SEP), and for the last 51 years has delivered educational services in the poorest, most disadvantaged, and remote areas of the country where SEP cannot establish a public kindergarten, elementary, or high school. CONAFE serves around 600,000 children in more than 37,000 of the most remote and marginalized communities across Mexico. It provides its services with the help of about 62,000 “Community Education Leaders” (CELs), a group of volunteers composed of higher education students and young women from the communities.

Our project equipped CELs with mobile broadband and a Google Workspace for Education account. Both are used in implementing the ABCD tutoring model (a revolutionary set of teaching and learning techniques where one student learns from another student), teacher training and development, educational productivity, collaboration, and communication, and for relevant support to the Community Education.

Main results towards breaking the poverty trap:

+51,000 teachers and +500,000 students benefited
83% of benefited teachers are young women
15% of benefited students are indigenous or nomadic
+30% more mobile data coverage thanks to Shared Network
10X more monthly data for each user
+30 distance-training events for Community Education

https://redpotencia.net/connectivity-for-teachers

• Mexico

• Youth
• Women
• Indigenous and nomadic peoples
• The unemployed
• The poor
• Migrants
• Refugees and internally displaced people
• Remote and rural communities

CONAFE’s ABCD tutoring model, operations, and the provided connectivity are replicable and has been replicated in the past.
The ABCD tutoring model is a revolutionary set of teaching and learning techniques where one student can teach another interested student about a topic they both like. On a level plain field, with mutual trust, respect, and genuine interest, anybody and everybody becomes a tutor or is tutored by a fellow human being and learns about something. This model has been replicated across educational levels and systems throughout Mexico and in other countries like Peru and Thailand.
CONAFE’s operations are somewhat similar to that of the NGO “Teach for America” and its international chapters. Traditionally, CONAFE searches for college students and young women in communities that would like to volunteer as Community Education Leaders (CELs) and work for education in the community for a period between 1 to 3 years. The similarity of both institutions operations suggests replicability.
MC4TPRA involved equipping CELs with 40GB of monthly 4G-LTE broadband data and a Google Workspace for Education (GWfE) account that equips CELs with cloud productivity, collaboration, and communication software. The data plans cost about $ 15 USD a month per user. These mobile data services run on Mexico’s new Shared Network (SN) that exploits the 700MHz spectrum and interconnects with the other main Operators allowing CELs to be connected in +30% more communities than before. Although not all countries have a SN, most have an MVNO ecosystem. The GWfE accounts is available in most countries. Expending $15usd a month to support teachers in remote areas with connectivity to each teacher turns out to be a very profitable investment: e.g. teachers become a link to the Internet and end up helping citizens in the community access other government services like scholarships for continuing education. Thus, many components useds in this project are (or can be) available in other countries facilitating project replication

The MC4TPRA project is sustainable for various reasons. First, CONAFE is a stable institution inside the Mexican Ministry of Education that has been providing educational services for more than half a century. It helps deliver educational services in the poorest, most disadvantaged, and remote areas of the country where SEP cannot establish a public kindergarten, elementary school, or high school. CONAFE’s operation involves volunteers, citizens, and parents from the 37,000 poor and remote communities where it operates. Such involvement creates a cooperative environment with many parties having an interest in maintaining the continuation and stability of its educational services.

Although some progress has been made in the past 50 years toward serving citizens with the most basic needs, in Mexico, the official measurement of poverty, indicates that there were 55.7 million persons living in poverty in 2020, or 43.9% of the total population. These persons not only have a low income, but they also suffer from none, poor, or limited access to basic services, food, housing, health, and education. All of these limitations generate poor social cohesion and a poverty trap where citizens are marginalized and ignored due also to their inability to exercise their rights and the impossibility to escape their difficult environment.

For half a century CONAFE has worked in breaking this poverty trap by taking educational services to those places where the Ministry of Education (SEP) cannot normally provide them.CONAFE is constantly active in expanding, broadening, and enlarging the educational services it offers as it demonstrated recently by achieving Federal authorization to amplify its mandate and constitutive statutes. CONAFE can now offer mid and higher-education services and has opted to expand the retribution to its volunteers so that they can continue higher education remotely from their communities. This avoids emigration and contributes to breaking the poverty trap.

According to the WSIS declaration of principles, the Information Society should respect peace and uphold the fundamental values of freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, shared responsibility, and respect for nature. The MC4TPRA project has equipped CELs with mobile broadband and a Google Workspace for Education account. Both are used in implementing the ABCD tutoring model, teacher training and development, and Educational productivity, collaboration, and communication, as well as with, relevant support to other Community Education topics (e.g. federal government scholarship online registrations). This project assists in creating equality, given that CONAFE delivers educational services in poor, remote, and marginalized communities with the aim of using education to break connectivity, exclusion and poverty traps. Similarly, the MC4TPRA project creates solidarity by recruiting young women and higher education students to become volunteers and deliver educational services applying the ABCD tutoring model in the communities. There, an association of parents, share the responsibility of caring and hosting for the educational services and the CELs. CONAFE’s operations are always performed in an environment of care for the ecosystem and inclusion: migrant, indigenous, internally displaced, and disabled children are always welcomed and included. The ABCD tutoring model at the heart of CONAFE’s operation also promotes these values. The ABCD tutoring model is strongly based on building and strengthening peer-to-peer relationships. In it one student can teach another interested student about a topic they both like. On a level plain field, with mutual trust, respect, and genuine interest, anybody and everybody becomes a tutor or is tutored by a fellow human being and learns about something.