This sounds interesting. I would be interested in hearing your selection methodology!

I'm intrigued, too, Ben - please update us when you know more!

The event has taken place and a number of very interesting areas have developed, as a result.

Essentially, it was a small piece of research, with just six village children aged 12 to 15 participating, 3 girls and 3 boys.

We devised a number of tests, to cover areas of potential talent: a) Verbal b) Artistic c) Musical d) Visual-spatial e) Technical f) Creative g) Leadership h) Reasoning i) Numerical j) Memory

We also interviewed them quite rigorously about their life and aspirations.

Two of the participants were from remote villages, where they were seven hours walk from the nearest village. Neither of these two could write with any degree of fluency, although they knew how to hold a pen.

It was clear to us that the elder boy, who could not write had a significant level of intelligence, as he was able to tackle complex questioning and was able to offer good reasoning and creative skills. He was also something of an artist.

Of the girls, none came from the remote areas, but one showed a level of intelligenmce significantly higher than the other two (as would not be unexpected.) The tests were not all successful and some were particularly hard to measure. We were uncomforable wioth our numerical ability testing, as the children were unable to complete it - the intention was to avoid Maths at all costs, but set up a complex counting task and also a "selling" task, where they had to work out the change from a fruit-selling transaction (as I understand Brazilian streetkids are used to doing).

The younger "remote village" boy performed poorly on almost all tests (barring the artistic and musical), but he did not strike me as being less intelligent than the rest. On the memory test, he did extremely badly.

I will be writing up the results soon, as there were clearly some interesting findings. I have a new idea as a result, which is to offer a rural centre, where remote children can come for weeks away, so they can enjoy the broader range of lifestyle that others enjoy. This is clearly unfairly holding them back and some action needs to be taken to give them more opportunity.

I have just these purely qualitative results and a follow-up and more "serious" testing process will I hope be developed from here. Working with the "remote" children was a definite success and one could see changes in their ability levels in only a single day (more than the others in the group.) We promised we would involve them again in something in the New Year.

I am the Education Consultant for the National Association for Gifted Children in the UK and have been endeavouring to help and advise Ben a little on the Butterfly Project. Its extremely hard to obtain conclusive intelligence test results in the best of circumstances so this was a real challenge and I look forward to viewing the data once it is completed. IQ testing is often only as good as the circumstances on the day and requires the participant, in most cases, to have a certain level of drive, motivation and education. We would not recommend testing under the age of 7 years and the intelligence test should never stand alone, there has to be many other factors taken into account when assessing the participant and looking at the results, e.g. level of education, background, upbringing, values and morals, beliefs, culture, gender, learning disabilities and/or difficulties, schooling, teacher and mentor references, coaching, life experiences etc. This of course is all relative within the local environment of the participant. In order to assist the children of Nigeria we need funding to put skills classes into place for them but first we need to train and pay salaries to high quality teachers who can make a difference to the future generations of Nigeria.

I suspect in this case there needs to be a component of EQ testing as well...and maybe that is the biggest part!

Linda, I am not very familiar with EQ testing - is there any chance you could elaborate on your remark, as it sounds like it could be significant?

I would suggest the book "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman.

Book arrived today:)

I will be interested to hear what you think. When I read books like that around here, there is no one to talk to about it. It might be another interesting book for the "book discussion group."

I have started this book, which is certainly very interesting from a perspective of how best to proceed with the Butterfly Project. EQ as a measure, if it exists, might well be of value.

I would suggest, though, that we do have a balance of "tests", which include leadership and problem-solving which are not traditionally associated with IQ, but we could include aspects such as "teamwork" or gauge their empathic response to situations in some way, so we will see how this develops.

I thought readers might be interested on the testing that we did, so I will delineate the various tests and ask for feedback on their content:

ICEBREAKER - This was a traditional learn about your partner and then introduce them to the rest of the group.

VERBAL - we simply asked them (on film) to describe their normal day, in as descriptive a way as possible, with a view to trying to interest us.

ARTISTIC - each participant was given a knife and lots of fruit and they were asked to make a floral fruit display fit to grace the chief's table. I will put the pictures of this in at some point.

MUSICAL - each was asked to sing and their ability measured on how they handled the "Happy Birthday" song. Happy Birthday is particularly strange in that it is one of the most well-known songs that few can sing properly.

VISUAL-SPATIAL - the participants were shown around the site and told that they would be given some pictures soon, the locations of which they would need to identify later. The pictures were taken digitally and circulated on-screen once and they were challenged to find and draw signs, which were at the locations photographed. They would need to plan their route to be fastest.

TECHNICAL/MECHANICAL - one by one the participants were shown (once) how to put together an electrical switch. They then had to put another one together, as quickl as possible.

CREATIVE/PROBLEM SOLVING - we tackled this in two ways. Firstly individually and on film they were asked to find ways of trying to solve a particular problem that they had as a group agreed was important to solve in their village. Secondly, they were asked to name a sweet and describe its ingredients.

LEADERSHIP - the group were briefed on a game and told that they were going to be measured on their leadership potential. They were to be in charge of a team of younger children, who were going to play the game. They would have to explain to them the rules (with help from us), devise a strategy to win and then coax their team to ensure they achieved the best results. They were not allowed to play the game themselves, just take a leadership role.

REASONING - This was a group participative activity, where all were encouraged to come up with a problem in their village and then each asked to prioritise that problem and explain why they felt that this was the highest priority. The session was on film for latyer assessment.

NUMERICAL - There were two parts to this; a) A swift counting test, where many objects were shown and they needed to be counted. b) A "use of money" test, where objects were given a monetary value and mental arithmetic had to be done to establish the right amount of change from a complex purchase. Although this did not work, as it was found to be too hard, I believe that highly numerate children would have been able to complete the task and the idea was to assess high levels of numeracy.

MEMORY - This was a simple Kim's Game format, made slightly more difficult, in that the objects were described in some way and the participants could gain bonus points if they were able to remember how the object was described in exact words. The memory test concerned me, as one of the boys with the lowest educational level performed very badly and this could indicate either that he was less intelligent than the others (which I don't believe) or that "education" is correlated somehow to memory. I guess too that he could have been intelligent but with a bad memory.

Overall, I believed that we proved that such an assessment was feasible and, with a level of slickness included, could be completed in half a day, a full day, if it was viewed that the tests needed to be "fun".

We used logic to devise the tests, not a sophisticated psychological testing professor's thesis. The tests definitely demonstrated levels of intelligence and from the session perhaps one would have made it through to a second and more intensive testing process, where Butterfly project members would be selected.

For those interested in such things, here are some photos from the Butterfly Testing Day

The group had around 90 minutes computing, with about half an hour to themselves.

None of the children knew their heights and so this was a fun exercise for them to do prior to the actual testing. This is the best picture I have of the actual participants - Dogara, Elizabeth, Suleman, Angela, Monica and Ayube

Not everyone could write their name and this was an immediate issue we had to tackle. I wonder how an intelligent child can spend five years at school and still not be able to write their own name. This shows that there is more to the educational issue than simply bringing in supposed teachers.

The artistic test involved each participant being given a bowl of identical fruit. They were told to make an attractive design for the chief's table. The above was one of the best. The variation in quality on this test was very significant.

Emmanuel Nehemiah took a session on camera where each were asked to describe the problems in their village and to prioritise them, justifying their reasons. Later they were asked to provide solutions to the problems they had raised on an individual basis.

Slightly more controversial, the counting test was basically a "race" to count up all of the items in the picture. It wasn't meant to be easy, as the test is for gifted and talented and only one was able to come up with a result. Counting was used, as we viewed that maths would add bias to the assessment (at least more than counting would).

The photograph shows the venue we used for the day; the activity shown was the leadership game that was played.

Fantastic pictures and so great seeing everything happening.

Yes I second that - wonderful, Ben! Much thanks!

Cool ... and thanks! :)

Ben it sounds like the testing was a real learning experience for the kids as well. I'm wondering, how did you select the kids to participate in this?

Christina Jordan said:

Ben it sounds like the testing was a real learning experience for the kids as well. I'm wondering, how did you select the kids to participate in this?

We selected the six, from three districts in the chiefdom, that we interviewed as part of the Ethanol project, which is talked about on another thread. In that project we discussed the roles of men, women and children in the production of ethanol. We simply chose a selection of the children from those that were confident enough to speak up in front of the rest of the village about cassava farming. I was also particularly keen to include two from the remotest village we visited, as I knew these could be the hardest to "test". One was actually selected by members of one of the villages and he turned out to be the one that performed the best.

My hope is that we can allocate time next year to run tests in all ten of the districts, where the children are actually selected by members of the village and their teaching staff. We will then do our more formal testing and possibly pick one in each district for a more determined pilot.

My hope during this year is also to supply this chiefdom with internet access, so we can follow up by providing them with an XO laptop and a bit of training, as soon as they become available. The internet access will be tied into the cooperative federation work we are hoping to do, if we can prise some funding from somewhere.

Naturally the pilot will also include some central activities at the Kamuru Centre, which are designed to begin to interest the participants in becoming social entrepreneurs.

Funding for this project has been hard to place, as it seems to cross a lot of boundaries and is perhaps a bit too radical or perhaps even "elitist" for some. I think we have taken the view that we like the project very much and we will put it into action regardless of funding, but in a much smaller way. If we can show some early success, perhaps the state government can be persuaded to run a statewide pilot.

One was actually selected by members of one of the villages and he turned out to be the one that performed the best.

Yes, it seems to me that villagers know very well which children among them are the brightest stars.

Funding for this project has been hard to place, as it seems to cross a lot of boundaries and is perhaps a bit too radical or perhaps even "elitist" for some.

I've been reading lately about the Law of Attraction... you need to stop describing it in that way if you want that to change! I think you are putting together the basis of something very fundable. But just like you might need to invest in a prototype of a new product to be able to find an investor, in our sector we've also got to invest in developing our models before investors will be ready.

I'd suggest you not limit yourself to thinking about the state system - there might be a lot you could do with a club structure, for example. If you could narrow down a cost per regional club start-up you might be able to link with entrepreneurial organizations like Rotary or AIESEC to get local chapters sponsoring/connecting with your clubs of kids in Nigeria.

Sorry about the slight negativity. I do feel strongly that we need to "demonstrate the model" as you suggest and certainly our model needs some more detail applied to it.

I will pass the idea of Rotary and AIESEC to Emmanuel to see if he has any ideas how to instigate this in Nigeria. I had personally thought that the districts themselves might even sponsor one of their children on the project, as in small measures, the medicine is easier to swallow.

Many thanks for your interest.

Ben, here's one thought I just had on your testing methodology. Something has been gnawing at me about the leadership test, and I think it's that you've observed the kids being tested in a position of leading younger children, but you haven't tested for leadership among their own age-mates. (Or maybe you have and I missed that?)

Have you involved all of the kids being tested in solving complex problems as a team? When they need to work together to create a skit, or build something, or plan something, then I'm thinking you would have a higher quality indicator for leadership than by only watching the same kids lead younger children. A lot of kids have experience with younger children that they gain from the home context, but being good with younger children is (imo) a different social skillset than mobilizing and organizing one's own peers or community members of an older generation. I guess I'm thinking all of these are what you want to see in your potential social entrepreneurs.

Another something I wanted to share was that in Gulu the children held an election to elect their club leaders. We made sure every child could vote by offering a private oral vote in addition to a ballot. In advance, the children who wanted to vote orally selected the person who would record the oral votes. That person sat at a table well out of earshot. The children voted on self nominated candidates. I'm thinking perhaps this could be an idea to help you select from the village level. Let the children tell you who their best social leaders are. Perhaps nominations could come from adult community leaders or teachers so that you have those voices included in the mix.

Well, to give an idea of the mix, the teams were 90% younger with 1-2 in each team (of about 8) of similar age, but I take the point that this "family context" older being of a higher rank than younger could impact on the assessment. We certainly were viewing the teams and some of the best leaders were "organising" and "motivating" more than others. Some were more "enthusiastic" and some were clear-spoken and good at giving instructions, but these are qualitative assessments. there probably ought to be some measures out there for "leadership skills", so perhaps I need tor esearch this a little more.

The girls performed worse in this test too (3rd, 4th and 5th of 6), which might indicate that there are cultural issues that need weighting against too, but it is a little too early to be certain on this.

I very much like the idea of children selecting candidates for their "social leaders". The districts are quite large and so we would have to work out a sensible methodology for picking 12 from 500 or more 10-14s.

ben this is really interesting work! i am curious: how would you define "success" for the butterfly project's first cohort of graduates?

Well I think early success would cover a number of areas:

1. "Buy in" from the communities - we have already achieved that.
2. "Stretching" tests which were communicated effectively - only partial success so far
3. Finding genuinely gifted and talented children from a range of different areas, distinguished by the testing process - minimal success here, but then the sample was only 6. 3 were clearly "above average".
4. Smooth operations and timings - abysmal failure on this, but we will do better! It needs to run sweetly, as the intention is to "process" fairly large numbers.
5. I would also like our tests to have obvious credibility, which we simply do not have, as yet. I hope to gain this from gifted children experts like Elaine at NAGC.

This may not answer your question, however. Presuming we have say 30-40 graduates from an intake of 48 after the first year, my expectation would be that each one of them would have instigated a social project back in their village, which was sustainable.

My vision for the time post graduation is less easy to predict, as the gifted and talented group can be very wayward, whilst brilliant. However, I do feel that we should have some channels for them to plough, which are as follows:

1. IT-based - the VirtualAfrica project, which will provide far better means for westerners to give directly to villages and see results.
2. Graphics-based - an art studio based in the rural areas, which trades its work through internet technology - video-conferencing and other internet technologies
3. Music/Art - the development of local cultural assets, selling them to global markets
4. NGO start-up - support for starting an NGO in an area for which the graduate has a specific enthusiasm e.g. HIV/AIDS, health, education etc.
5. Politics - governments need more rural dwellers in their ranks to make the changes needed
6. Solar power development - we are about to start a small business in this area and can see the opportunity to have more experts able to take it forward
7. Other rural technologies - stoves, sustainable forestry, biofuels, agriculture model farms

There will be no pressure to move into any of these areas, but often the gifted and talented group will need a peg on which to hang their abilities.

Remembering that probably 70-80% of our participants would stay most of their lives in their village and become farmers, I would regard a success as being part of any of the above seven topic areas.

Of the 30-40, I would not be surprised if half became social entrepreneurs in the sense that we know it, with the right inspiration through the programme from Ashoka fellows.

Thanks for the question, Lars, as I can now see that more planning needs to be done.

Ben, great stuff - thanks! Now that I have a sense of what "success" looks like for the Butterfly project, I have another, which is about the larger context into which your project inserts itself - and how those shape expectations - in at least two ways:

• Success rate for social enterprises is shaky. Many entrepreneurs aren't successful until they've not succeeded a few times and have ways to problem solve and improve their ideas. As one report put it, "The success rate for nonprofit enterprises is the same as small businesses: a large share fail. The difference is, with the social mission attached, it is harder for nonprofits to let go."
• The skills students learn could be invaluable preparation for life paths other than founding a social enterprise - for example: leading a small business, joining the staff of a multinational NGO or business, or furthering their education in a college or university. Perhaps sparking a passion to make a life-long contribution is already a significant rewriting of a community's future...?

Just two thoughts. 100% "success" rate is very admirable - and I don't hope you will not be disappointed if you should see your children, after all you have taught them, choose a different path...

Cheers,

lars

I wouldn't expect a 100% success rate - it is hard to know what percentage we would feel positive about, at this stage.

I ran a social enterprise for four years for my sins and it was way more difficult than a standard enterprise. The bonus is that it's not just your own organisation that wants you to succeed and our many followers and supporters in local government helped us through the boom and bust of funding streams.

There are few examples of social enterprise in Nigeria and the terminology is certainly not known and understood. However, my impression of normal business in Nigeria is that it is not so hard. Salaries/rents are so low that if you have the product that people want, you don't need to sell many at all to make a profit and if you can find a product for the rich - say solar power - you can use that business to subsidise solar installations in rural areas, where they would struggle to support the cost.

Regarding your second point, there will be no pressure to become a social entrepreneur, other than when conducting a village project, while they are participating in the programme. We may even include sessions on commercial business within the various programmes we run and I agree that instilling a lifelong contribution to society could in many cases prove more fruitful than an unsuccessful sortie into the pitfall-filled world of social enterprise!

Ignoring all of that, and moving several cohorts along, what if we were able to develop a consortium of expert indigenous rural developers with high integrity, that could facilitate rural upgrade, because they know the people and the terrain and they can create buy-in from the communities? Would they not be in high demand for overseas funders?