The sixth of the Sabanci Foundation Philanthropy Seminars under the theme of “Philanthropy for Education: Innovations and Opportunities” was held on December 10th, 2012 at Sabancı Center in Istanbul Turkey. The seminar featured two speakers:  Irene Pritzker, President of the IDP Foundation, Inc. and M’hammed Abbad Andaloussi, founder of the NGO Al Jisr which works towards the improvement of education system via cooperation with private sector, foundations and the public sector.

Irene Pritzker shared information about the “Rising Schools Program” launched by IDP (Innovation, Development, Progress) Foundation, targeting the development of economically disadvantaged private schools and improvement of quality of education in Ghana. “It began as a pilot study with 105 schools serving 27.000 children. Our goal was to develop a sustainable scalable model based on micro finance to empower existing private schools serving the very bottom of the economic pyramid, and we managed to do so” said, Mrs. Pritzker. She added that the model was applicable in other developing countries of the world and the financial partner had kicked off the process of adding1.200 more schools into the program.

Ms. Pritzker asserted that, despite the education investments in the past 60 years, there were an estimated 250 million children without literacy skills around the world in addition to at least 61 million children who were not enrolled in any kind of school. “Education is a universal human right”, remarked Ms. Pritzker.

To view the speech of Irene Pritzker, please click here…

To read the speech of Irene Pritzker, please click here…