by Sara Harba | Nov 21, 2021 | Uncategorized
Many children in the Middle East and North Africa are deprived of education. Throughout the years, almost 18 % of adolescents and children were out of school on average in the region, which is the highest across East Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
This is especially true for females who recorded higher average of dropout rates than males by 2.2% in the region over the years.
The increase in dropout rates is due to several reasons and poverty plays a major role in increasing the rates of children out of school. It is evident that rates of people who make $1.90 per day has been increasing since 2013 in the Middle East, making it hard for parents to afford education expenditures for their children such as tuition fees and school supplies.
This leads families to pull their children out of school in order to work and help the family during financial hardship. As there is a positive linear relationship between children who are out of primary school and children employment, when the average rate of children out of school increases, the rate of children’s employment increases.
Furthermore, the norm that females are not supposed to work is enhancing the idea that females do not need to learn as they will not be able to participate in employment. This is encouraged by the average ratio of female to male participation in the labor force which is 33.09 below the average rate across all indicated regions.
Therefore, it is important to bridge the gap of poverty to ensure that people can have sufficient funds to be able to send their children to school. This can be done by providing financial aid dedicated to school fees and supplies. That is because lower poverty rates indicate lower dropout rates among children since there is a positive relationship between the two.
Moreover, it is important to raise awareness of the effects of dropping out of school on the future of children. Because the higher the average of adolescents out of school the more likely they will be considered as vulnerable employees in the future, which in turn lead them to be used and manipulated by employers.
Additionally, the higher the average rate of people completing at least a Bachelor degree, the higher the rate of salaries and wages. This means that if children where to stay in schools, they will be able to get higher salaries, which will provide them with a more stable future.
All the above factors are important in guaranteeing a better future for children. However, it is recommended that they be accompanied by the right laws that prevent child employment and provide equal opportunities for females to participate in the workplace.
by Sara Harba | Nov 11, 2021 | Dashboard, Visualization
Do you know that at least one person dies per day as a result of a car crash in Lebanon? and that most probably this person’s ages between 5 and 29 years?
Roads are shared by various users with different levels of risk exposure between cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles, mopeds, pedestrians, and other travelers. Globally, road traffic crashes became one of the leading causes of death and, unfortunately, the number is rapidly increasing year after year.
Besides the shared worldwide factors, Lebanon suffers from unsafe road infrastructure and inadequate traffic law enforcement, which makes road traffic deaths a more serious and critical problem.
Every year around this time, during the festive season, an increase in road crashes is noticed in Lebanon. We, a team of Master’s in Business Analytics students at AUB, decided to address this problem, as part of our curriculum requirements, aiming to create an impact by raising social awareness and providing institutions that are keen about road safety with measurable and effective methodologies.
We designed an interactive dashboard that highlights the effect that road traffic strategies applied around the world have on the frequency of crashes and compared it to the frequency in Lebanon. Also, the dashboard showcases some of the risk factors and their preventive procedures to help in limiting road traffic injuries. The proposed solutions are backed by visualizations performed on data published by the WHO on road traffic injuries.
If you are interested in understanding the reasons associated with high road death rates in Lebanon, have a look into our dashboard and let us know what do you think below in the comments!
This was created by Sara Bou Hamdan, Nohra Chaghouri, Johny El Achkar, Sara Harba, and Ghina Koteich
