I began to write this project as an intention to increase people’s awareness about the female education in Rwanda. I hope this can be used as a reference for any one who is interested in changing the current condition in Rwanda.

Abstract

The lack of female education leads to an unequal participation in the labor force and the feminization of poverty. Most of the women can only work on farms to support the family and become more vulnerable to contracting HIV when they have to exchange sexual behavior for additional food. This gender disparity in income earning causes lots of mothers to prefer boys instead of girls, aggravating the gender inequality condition. As a result, girls are more likely to drop out schools to work on housework than boys do. This results in a vicious circle.

The Current State of Female Education

World Bank studies show that 150 million children currently enrolled in school will drop out before even completing primary school, and 100 million of them are girls. The gender gap between boys and girls in primary school completion is greater than 10% points. In other words, millions more girls than boys are dropping out each year. What is more, after primary school, female students who attend secondary school in Africa are only 17%.

Impact of Education

Education can lead to higher wages. Data shows that an extra year of education beyond the average can boosts female wage by 10-20%. Thus, women are able to receive a higher return on education. In addition, women will get a higher return, 15-25%, if they can complete secondary education. World Bank data also finds out that 1% increase in share of women with a secondary education can boost annual per capita income growth by 0.3%. This is a significant increase for developing countries. Educated women help reduce malnutrition by 43% between 1970 and 1995 due to more productive farming. What is more, an extra year of female education can decrease infant mortality by 5 to 10%. Most importantly, educated women have more impact on children’s schooling than the educated men do. For example, a study shows that children of educated women study two extra hours per day. In other words, educated women knew that education could change the future generation’s lives and highly support education for both genders. Lastly, a review of 113 studies indicates that school-based AIDS education programs are effective in reducing early sexual activity and high-risk behavior. In other words, educated women are less likely to contract HIV.

Disparity Between the Benefits of Education and the Low Level of Attainment

Gender parity in primary enrolment had already been achieved by 2000/01 and now the rate is slightly higher for girls (87%) than for boys (85%). Thus, by 2005, Rwanda has achieved the Education for All Goal of eliminating gender disparities in primary education in terms of attendance. However, girls are lagging behind boys in terms of completion rates and on exam scores. Gender disparities emerge after the third grade, as well as in upper secondary schooling and higher education. The Education for All Goal also emphasizes the need not only for girls to be present in school, but also for attention to be paid to their needs in relation to teaching and learning practices, curricula and the safety of the school environment. The girls’ education policy includes a school campaign to encourage girls’ performance in school as well as remedial classes during vacations. Rwanda’s approach to achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment is based on three major pillars: established political will and support; appropriate mechanisms within government and society at large; and existence of a strong autonomous women’s movement.

Despite having achieved parity at primary school level, girls dropout school and have low enrolment at higher level of education are because of both economical and social constraints The increased number of government and private tertiary institutions, technical schools, and universities has increased the access of women to university education.

Recommendations:

One suggestion to further promote education in Rwanda is to adopt an education policy that prevents parents who prefer male to female education due to financial constraints.

The government can also cooperates with global organization to create special programs for promoting female education. Most importantly, the government should enforce legal and constitutional guarantees for women’s rights.

Citations:

NISR. (2007, September 1). Millennium Development Goals– Towards sustainable social and economic growth. Retrieved November 15, 2014, from http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/MDG/english/MDG Country Reports/Rwanda/MDGs-NOV2007.pdf

Musoni, J. (Ed.). (2008, March 1). Rwanda: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. Retrieved November 15, 2014, from http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2008/cr0890.pdf

Psacharopoulos, G. (2002, September 1). Returns to Investment in Education: A Further Update. Retrieved November 15, 2014, from http://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/pdf/10.1596/1813-9450-2881

What did you learn about teams, yourself, and marketing?

After taking COMM 296 Marketing, I realized that marketing is not simply about selling and promoting a product. It consists of other elements including supply chain management in Human Resources and break-even point in Finance. It is such an important and useful course for any entrepreneur who want to establish a business. While having meetings with my team members, I learned to respect others’ ideas instead of immediately rejecting them. We also tried to divide the work fairly according to our strengths. For example, because I am not good at proofreading, I did more research instead.

What skills did to enhance or develop, if any?

I enhanced my research and analytical skills from doing the Marketing assignments. Before, I would just take down any relevant information I found and did not try hard to find more scholastic information. Now I would try to spend more time to search for some in-depth and valid resources. In addition, I developed some communication skills through my team. Instead of simply typing all my ideas on a paper, I would try to explain my opinions and convince my team first.

What would you do differently next time?

I would try to learn media skills first and help working on my team’s video. I would like to learn how to cut videos from other resources and combine them into one. Also, I hope I could take a lead in my team and be more organized. Most of our meetings were directly after the class, and sometimes one or more people could not attend. We also began the video a little bit late, so we could not spend a lot of time making the video together. If we could have one more chance, we would definitely start the project earlier.

There are over 800 million unique users visit YouTube every month and millions of subscribers happen everyday. As a result, some YouTube celebrities become so famous and are well known to the world. However, I began to have many questions in my mind. How did these people swiftly rise to fame? Why these people are willing to spend their whole time on creating videos? Can they really make a living from creating these videos?

Apparently, there is a standard rubric for the earning on Youtube: $3 for 1000 views; $33 for 10,000 views; $330 for 100,000 views; and $3300 for 1,000,000 views. Thus, the most popular celebrity, Shane Dawson, who had a view of 431,787,450 during 2010, can earn up to $315000 per year. This is an incredibly high amount!

Youtube is willing to pay these celebrities high payments because the more famous these celebrities are, the more subscribers there are to watch their videos, the more companies want to post their banner ads on these videos. The Youtube would then splits the revenue with all the Youtube celebrities as an action to encourage people creating more successful videos.

What is more, lots of these top grossing Youtube celebrities are still in their early twenties. Not only they can get paid for a large amount of money from the Youtube, but they can also earn even more though working with the sponsors and making promotional videos. Therefore, a great number of teenagers are inspired and motivated to create more popular videos.

Resources:

http://www.aussiepete.com/2010/08/you-tube-made-me-rich-top-10-richest.html

http://socialtimes.com/money-youtube-partners_b21335

https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html

It is true that online communication facilitates how people get to know and link with more new friends. It becomes very convenient to establish relationship with a new client from the existing friends on social network like LinkedIn. Massive online network users also lead to a great number of online business opportunities. Lot of big brands such as Facebook and Tweeter are popular social medias. However, there are some unfavourable features that are hard to avoid. First of all, anonymity or fake identity give people freedom to say and share whatever they want, but at the same time, lots of people are taking the advantage of this feature and begin to bully others.

After reading “Brands must do more to recognize the pitfalls of anti-social media“, i was shocked after reading a news that a 16 years old girl committed suicide because she was bullied on a social network, Ask. fm. that people asked her to kill herself. Unfortunately, this is not the first time happening and there is an increasing number of bulling and trolling online that has resulted in lots of tragedies. These violence aroused people’s attention and make people begin to wonder how social network can protect all the online users. Some solutions that are implemented by Facebook include reporting the comment to the system and deleting other’s comment on people’s own wall.

In addition, i believe privacy protection is the most important problem in social media. I also heard that when you give social network permission to use your album or locate your position, it can access to all your future pictures, locations and information. There are many news reported that many criminals exploit this feature to commit a crime. In conclusion, all of these social network should beware of these drawbacks and try to protect their users.

Resources:

http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/news/1174917/Brands-recognise-pitfalls-anti-social-media/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH

Apple’s products all give people a sense of being superior to other brands, such as LG, Acer and Amazon. These products are often described as being lighter, thinner, greater looking and contain more functions. People appreciate these qualities and they are willing to pay a much higher price to buy Apple’s product than other similar products with different brands. However, in such a competitive market of technology, how can Apple keep such a high selling price and still generate a much greater profit than other competitors?

According to the article of “How Apple Sets Its Price“, Apple uses four retail strategies: House advantage, carrot and stick and when good discounts go bad. First of all, Apple employs a strategy known as price maintenance in its house advantage. In other words, Apple takes an advantage by limiting the way other retailers could advertise their products due to its strong popularity. Apple tries to reduce the wholesale price to other retailer, and therefore, those retailers have little or no room at all to have a discount on the Apple products or earn a lot of revenue. Thus, Apple could firmly grasp all the customers to its own Apple stores since it is considered to be more trustworthy and there is almost no price difference in the other retailer stores. Secondly,carrot and stick is an interesting term to indicate that Apple is only willing to give a little bit more wholesale discounts if the retailers can advertise their products above the minimum advertised price (MAP). I believe this is very efficient because not only Apple can reduce competitions from low price offered by other retailers, but it can also prevent any retailer to establish a strong market position and can have advantage in negotiations in the future. Lastly, many retailers such as Rogers and Tellus offer cheap iPhone but with a long-term contract in order to compensate the high costs. However, a big discount is actually bad for Apple since the market for retailer is also very competitive. If one retailer store lower the price, other retailers would do the same thing to attract customers.

Overall, Apple’s retail strategies help it control the whole distribution channels, reduce its competitors, prevent the drop in price and maximize its profits. Customers are very satisfied with Apple’s selling price since its quality deserves this price and there is no variability in the price in different retail or its own stores.

Resources:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2024257/how-apple-sets-its-prices.html

After reading Pei Hsuan Huang’s post, “Reflection on False Marketing“, I can fully understand what she meant because I also had many unpleasant experiences of online shopping.

There are numerous clothing stores online which feature many fabulous clothes that celebrities wear or clothes that are on the top list in magazines. However, the actual clothes that I received are totally different from the ones shown on the pictures. When I complained it online, the sales person would say that “Oh it looks different because of the lighting of the camera. If you don’t like our products then you are welcome to shop at other store…” People can do nothing about it because if they want to return the product they have to pay the shipping fee themselves. Therefore, if people are looking for high-quality clothes with accurate size that fit them, they should try out the real clothes and buy them in actual stores.

A picture displaying the dress on a gorgeous model.

The actual cloth that customers receive.

What is  more, almost every clothing store is applying photoshop to make their models looks pretty and skinny in order to attract customers who want to look like them. Below is a set of pictures I found to be ridiculous and I was so shocked to see how professional these people are who can change the entire clothes without being noticed.

One online store uses photoshop to change celebrity Taylor Swift’s clothes with clothes in their own store in order to attract more consumers. On the left are real clothes that Taylor Swift worn, and on the right are clothes in the store.

At first, people are very surprised to see Taylor Swift appearing in this store and are interested in buying the clothes she is wearing. However, when people finally found out that the store deceived them, it aroused people’s anger, especially Taylor Swift’s fans. I really hope that these people who operate online store can be honest to their customers. At least, displaying real model with real clothes can avoid customers’ post purchase disappointment, and in turn, it can increase customers’ loyalty and retention.

KFC is the biggest foreign restaurant chain in China in recent years. Now it continues to expand by planning to open 700 new stores next years. However, in late November 23, 2012, Chinese Media accused one of the suppliers to KFC, Su Hai Group, of pumping its chickens toxic chemicals in order to accelerate their growth to 45 days.  An owner of a chicken farm reported the he received more than 10 chemicals from the Su Hai Groups and used it to feed all the chicken until it grows big enough for slaughter, but actually it will take more than 8 months for a chicken to grow big if it is fed with grain. Therefore, the chicken is toxic and unhealthy.

After this news was announced, despite KFC’s denial of this accusation, there is a massive social response against fast-growing chicken. Below is a survey conducted by China’s three leading websites.

Even though most people are still questioning the reliability of this shocking news, there were actually many photos and posts showing worms in chicken meat and four legs fast-growing chickens in the farms before. Thus, this big scandal attracts people’s attention and they all begin to worry about the safety of their food. In my opinion, KFC already occupies the premium market segment and is earning an enormous profit in China, it is ridiculous for them to destroy their long-building reputation just to save some costs from feeding the chickens. This unethical practice of selling fast-growing chicken eventually led to a drop of 4% in sales and a 10% drop in share price. Overall, there might some unknown factors behind the whole KFC China chain, but this is an alarm for the KFC U.S. chain to take action and stop selling toxic chickens.

Related Readings:

http://english.caixin.com/2012-12-10/100470746.html

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-11/27/content_15963075.htm

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!