Contents

I. A letter to our fellow humanitarians

II. Role of Nutrition in Childhood Education
An Empirical Approach to Cognitive Performance
Iodine: From Handicapped to Top-of-the-Class for 0.15 € per year
Amplifying Disease Resistance Using Zinc & Selenium
Additional Essential Nutrients: Sulfur and Magnesium
Endocrine Disruptors and Neurotoxins
Heavy Metals: Lead, Mercury, Aluminum… 7
Agrochemicals: Glyphosate, Fertilizers, and Pesticides
Parasitic and Chronic Conditions
Glutathione – The Cells' Toxin Defender
Glycine Fortification to Counteract Glyphosate Damage
Promoting Growth and Immunity with B3/Niacin
One Powerful Anti-Parasitic: Nitazoxanide

III. The Hero Within : Innovating Engagement-Focused Learning Strategies 10
The Child's Mythology
Personalized Learning
INspiration to Find the Inner Hero
Allowing the Individual's Unique Authority
Community-Building

IV. EDC's Project Objective
EDC leadership team – experts in all relevant areas
Our International Advisory Board
Regional Franchise System
Pilot Program
Schools
Community Involvement and the Private Franchise

We believe,

as humanitarians and as citizens of this world, that all children have the right to be treated with
respect and raised with hope and dignity.

As the workplace is a habitat of the adult, the school is a natural habitat of the child. The school
is a place to receive resources, to be protected, to receive the mentorship of members of the
community, and to learn skills which can be useful later in life.

As Confucius said: "if your plan is for 1 year then plant rice. If your plan is for 10 years then
plant trees. If your plan is for 100 years then educate children."[1]

School is, moreover, a place of friendship where the difficulties and joys of social life can be
tested. It is a place of fond memories and the struggle to individuate one's self and to learn
one's place amongst the community.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC):

• 7 million children ages 5-17 have no access to education services.[2]
• 43% of children across dro have stunted growth due to severe lack of minerals and basic
  nutrition like iodine.[3]
• 38% of children are involved in child labor, especially the dangerous artisanal mining
  industry.

According to the WHO "undernutrition is associated with 45% of child deaths."[4]

EDC – Evolutionary Development Consultants proposes to spend 7 years building education
capacity in the region. Our program will amount to a complete revolution of the education
systems of Eastern DRC.

1. Kong Qiu Confucius. He was from modern-day China.
2. Humanium. "Realizing Children's Rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo".
   Humanium.org https://www.humanium.org/en/democratic-republic-congo/
3. Save the Children. "Help Save Children in the DRC". Save the Children website.
   https://www.savethechildren.org/us/where-we-work/democratic-republic-of-congo
4. WHO, UN. "Micronutrients". https://www.who.int/health-topics/micronutrients

The schools and other facilities will be built on our innovative 'community-involved private
franchise' model. Building systems rather than just individual schools means we can
cross-fertilize learning environments by having regional branches which administer to a portfolio
of school facilities.

Each facility is built using charitable and investment funds, and each regional system is owned
in part by public shareholders, partly by teachers and students, and to an extent by private
investors. Each school system will be regionally autonomous and self-sustaining after 7 years
and will be transitioned by EDC towards community-oriented management.

To all those sympathetic to our cause, we implore you to join us: help us work in collaboration
with our partners across Congo to bring a new level of education, protection, and economic
access to the children who are waiting for our support. Our partners are ready and willing to
expand access to vital child services across Congo.

Join with us and help us work to bring an end to child exploitation and to enjoin our efforts to
achieve sustainable development goals including school access, safety, and security for all
children across the world.

by Daniel R. Wilder, CEO & Chief Strategist,
EDC — Evolutionary Development Consultants

www.EvolveDevelop.com

DRW@EvolveDevelop.com
Info@EvolveDevelop.com

I. Role of Nutrition in Childhood Education

An Empirical Approach to Cognitive Performance

IQ (intelligence quotient) is an empirical measurement of rational intelligence. It is not a test of all thinking abilities, but it is a good place to start improving the lives of the children.

Iodine: From Handicapped to Top-of-the-Class for 0.15 € per year

An average IQ is in the 90-110 range, and neural retardation can be observed in individuals that test at 85 IQ or lower. The WHO has long known that iodine deficiency can reduce an individual's functional IQ by 15 points or more.⁵ Therefore a student who might otherwise test average in cognitive function could be reduced to a diagnosis of retardation if highly iodine deficient.

There is one visible symptom which frequently occurs in adults or children with iodine deficiency: swelling of the throat around the thyroid gland or flabbiness in the throat (goiter is one example).

According to Andersson M., et al in a study published in the Journal of Nutrition: "Young children are also particularly at risk because the brain still needs iodine for its development during the first two years of life. In addition, iodine deficiency in children is responsible for disorders in physical and cognitive development, and hypothyroidism."⁶

Availability of supplemental iodine is an essential characteristic of childcare in schools which must first seek to improve the student's chances of success before attempting to deliver useful information.

Dr. Tonglet et al in a paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded that "The oral administration of a single small dose of iodized oil is capable of correcting iodine deficiency for about a year."

Therefore it is essential that iodized oil be available for all school age children in a way that can be readily dispensed by school nurses and provided generally to faculty, students, family, and members of the community.

At least one dose per year of iodized oil must be rationed for every child and adult in the school system, as well as any members of the community participating in the distribution program. Doubtless the rectification of a 15-point IQ deficit in a parent or community member using iodine supplementation (at a cost of only a few cents) could also be expected to improve outcomes of the students and economic performance of the community at large.

Some evidence suggests that an individual's earnings may be increased by 3% for every point of IQ increase. Therefore a 15 point IQ increase could increase an individual's annual income by an estimated 45%, which may be alone sufficient to lift a family out of poverty.⁸

For a mineral-deficient individual in a small Congolese village where the average income is $1,000 dollars per year, that would result in a $450 increase to income for the individual receiving just the iodine supplement.

At the same time, iodine antagonists in the environment must be surveilled and held in check. Chlorine, fluoride, and bromine are derived from elements which are all halogens, like iodine, and are commonly found in water and bread. Compounds containing these halogens can have a neurotoxic effect in the body because of their chemical ability to reduce the availability of iodine to the brain and therefore to increase the nutritional intake of iodine required for brain health. If there is an abundance of these halides in the diet, a person may require far more iodine than normal to function without suffering a preventable IQ deficit. (Iodine: Health Implications of Deficiency Chris D. Meletis, ND).⁹

Other supplementary sources could also provide iodine but must be proven. One meta-study showed, for example, that contrary to the hype, iodised salt is helpful but not sufficient to combat the epidemic of iodine deficiency and the resulting preventable IQ deficiency, possibly because of prevalent quality control limitations in salt production.¹⁰

Amplifying Disease Resistance Using Zinc & Selenium

Two other essential minerals which people are often deficient in are zinc and selenium.

"[Zinc] plays a critical role in... metabolism, immune system, wound injury and... other biological processes associated with normal growth and development," according to Baldaci, et al. Zinc levels also impact the regulation of many hormones.¹¹

Selenium is an essential nutrient and helps to create dozens of selenoproteins that "play critical roles in reproduction, thyroid hormone metabolism, DNA synthesis, and protection from oxidative damage and infection," according to the National Institute of Health.¹²

One study analyzed patients admitted to a hospital ICU and found that "Plasma concentrations of zinc and selenium are low in critically ill patients upon admission to the intensive care unit." (Marina, et al). The study additionally found that greater deficiency of selenium and zinc was correlated with more severe illness.¹³

This indicates that low zinc and low selenium levels are likely predictors of serious disease. Therefore, we must make nutrition of zinc and selenium a priority in school-based food programs and provide supplementation options that can be made broadly available to the community via school nurses.

Additional Essential Nutrients: Sulfur and Magnesium

Sulfur and magnesium are the two chemical components of epsom salt (magnesium sulfate). They are essential nutrients that are valuable to monitor and prioritize in school-sponsored food programs.

Endocrine Disruptors and Neurotoxins

Two common types of chemicals which lead to health problems are hormone toxins(endocrine disruptors) and neurotoxins. Within these two categories, an enormous variety of toxic chemicals exist -- so many in fact that there is no conclusive list that contains them all. Therefore nurses and guardians of the public health must always be alert to identify new neurotoxic and hormone-toxic chemicals. They must also be alert to identify which types of treatment can reverse those toxic effects.

Generally, neurotoxins are likely to impact the electrical functioning of the brain and could result in thinking problems, nervous ticks, or mental instability, etc.. Known neurotoxins include many heavy metals. Three of the most common neurotoxic heavy metal toxins are lead, mercury, and aluminum.

Heavy Metals: Lead, Mercury, Aluminum, etc.

Lead is often present in old pipes and therefore readily becomes a contaminant of tap water. Lead is known by the WHO to result in severe reductions in functional IQ and a multitude of learning and developmental disabilities including a propensity towards violence. Even as a matter of national security and to reduce unnatural violent tendencies in the population, lead should be carefully examined and the population guarded against exposure to it.^14,15

Mercury is prevalent in the old style of tooth fillings known as 'amalgams' ('silver' fillings), old thermometers & equipment, and fish from polluted waterways. (Rosenfeld, Paul, et al).¹⁶ It is also a neurotoxin that reduces IQ.

Aluminum contamination is present in common products like antiperspirant and injectable shots and is suspected to play a key role in the development of Alzheimer's disease and other diseases of neurotoxicity. As noted by Corkins et al, "aluminum has no known biological function; however, it is a contaminant present in most foods and medications."¹⁷

Arsenic, cadmium, barium, and strontium are other notably common neurotoxic heavy metals that are likely to induce measurable reductions in intelligence.

Endocrine-toxic chemicals on the other hand are most likely to generate symptoms of hypothyroidism (low energy, cold feet and hands), metabolic disorder, sexual dysfunction, pressure in the glands of the brain, and unexplained cardiovascular stress. Endocrine disruptors are extremely common in the modern world, and many originate in the plastics and petroleum industries. See the NIH website for a list of many known, common endocrine disruptors.¹⁸

Agrochemicals: Glyphosate, Fertilizers, and Pesticides

We have an additional problem with the popularized use of agrochemicals including nitrogen fertilizers and poisonous pesticides. The most common of these toxins is the prevalent chemical called glyphosate (also known as roundup). In general, if these chemicals are not considered safe enough to drink then EXTREME caution should be taken in their application to crops and the environment.

The largest threat of toxic agrochemicals is perhaps that runoff will inevitably deposit a large quantity of these poisons into the water table beneath the ground. When the underground water table is contaminated, it means all wells that draw water from it will also be contaminated. It is common for farmers and municipalities to draw water from these underground water resources.

As noted by Shrivastava at the Department of Geology in India, "Pesticides can reach water-bearing aquifers below ground from [crop applications], seepage of contaminated surface water, accidental spills and leaks, improper disposal, and even through injection of waste material into wells."¹⁹

The damaging effects of this contamination are only beginning to be understood, but nearly all common diseases appear to be linked to exposure to these dangerous agrochemicals. For example, "there is now considerable evidence linking human exposure to agrochemicals with obesity," as noted by Xiao-Min Ren et al in the journal Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology.²⁰

This groundwater contamination is possibly the single largest cause of diabetes, cancers, and other pernicious health conditions amongst rural farmers whose families have historically lived into old age without health problems. If care is not taken to avoid overuse of toxic agrochemicals, countries like the DRC can be expected to see an exponential rise in these diseases in the coming years.

Parasitic and Chronic Conditions

Of course traditionally-recognized diseases are still a major concern, and the prevalence of parasitic diseases is also of utmost importance to understand. As it was noted in a paper published in the National Academies Press, Washington DC: "multiple regression shows that, of infectious disease, temperature, evolutionary novelty and AVED, infectious disease is the best predictor of intelligence by a large margin." (Parasite Prevalence And The Worldwide Distribution Of Cognitive Ability, Eppig et al).²¹

Another study published in Psychol Bull in 1997 showed that parasitic infections reduce IQ; numerous clinical descriptions lay out the scene of a child performing very poorly in school until they had a parasite removal treatment and became top student of the class (Watkins, 1997).²²

Glutathione – The Cells' Toxin Defender

For students and community members that are suffering disease, hormone imbalances from endocrine disrupting chemicals, heavy metal toxicity, or agrochemical poisoning, the most effective treatment is to support the body's underlying process of detoxification and healing.

Each cell of the body produces a molecule called glutathione which transports chemical toxins from all over the body to the kidneys and bowels so they can be excreted through the urine and feces.

One study lead by Dr. Laura Pérez showed that there was an extremely high correlation (p<.001) between a deficiency of glutathione in a person's body and the development of multiple types of diseases: "In conclusion, serum levels of tGSH [total glutathione] are inversely associated with multimorbidity development."²³

Support of glutathione production is therefore essential in healing from and preventing disease and chronic toxicity. Supplementation of glutathione precursors or complimentary immune system nutrients like sulfur, glycine, vitamin c, niacin and other b vitamins should therefore be available to nurses as a first line of treatment. These nutrients are all well researched and carry very low risk of toxicity.

Glycine Fortification to Counteract Glyphosate Damage

Glycine in particular is a very important nutrient for the prevention of progressive disease in individuals exposed to glyphosate. The top researchers in the field believe that glyphosate's neurotoxic effect is largely the result of its crowding out and replacing glycine molecules in the formation of proteins (Stephanie Seneff, Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry 17, 2017).²⁴

Promoting Growth and Immunity with B3/Niacin

Niacin, also known as vitamin B3, is especially important for supporting the body's ability to detox from multiple toxins, to create energy, and to resist premature aging. One study of extremely obese children showed that supplementing niacin significantly lowered free fatty acids (FFA), which are associated with disease. The supplementation of niacin also significantly increased growth hormone (hGH), which is associated with healthy growth and development in children (Galescu et al, 2018).²⁵

One Powerful Anti-Parasitic: Nitazoxanide

Treating parasites and chronic infections is also essential for improving student outcomes. Some of the highly safe and effective treatments for parasites and chronic diseases are both quick and cheap to implement but are blocked because of a lack of knowledge and access. For example, a protocol for treating parasites in a person of adult bodyweight might be as simple as taking 1 gram of nitazoxinide, twice a day for 10 days, taking a 7 day break, and then repeating the treatment for another 10 days.

This treatment protocol would require 20 grams of the drug, which can be purchased in bulk from Indian suppliers for a few dollars. This treatment would then be expected to dramatically improve learning outcomes for the infected students, as is well documented both in clinical practice as well as mouse models. Especially when combined with a metal removal protocol "Nitazoxanide... ameliorates learning and memory impairments..." (Fan et al, 2019)²⁶

School nurses/health wardens should also ensure basic hydration, salt intake, warmth, light, nature access, and nutritional intake. These nutrients like niacin and glycine are highly safe and provide potent resources for growing brains and bodies.²⁷

We must also reach young children and pregnant mothers in the community who have children that are not yet of school age with this lifesaving mineral program.

II. The Hero Within : Innovating Engagement-Focused Learning Strategies

Every person has inside of them: a hero that can rise to the surface and become fully embodied in power and authority.

The Child's Mythology

To coax the heroic potential out of every student is part of the art of teaching.

Myths are the great stories of heroism. Every culture in world history has collected their dearest stories and mythologized them, making them immortal. These stories still inspire people every day.

We should utilize all resources available to give children a wonderful learning experience. Mythology from all cultures, all continents, and all religions may be useful in this goal.

Every child is an individual, and every child is unique, but each one has a hero inside of them. We must to reach out to awaken that hero by any means possible!

There are so many heroes in the world's mythology; we can select the stories and characters which resonate most with our students. For example, we should build a curriculum of mythology that contains both male and female heroes, so that both male and female students identify with the stories. One hero may be shy while another hero is not shy at all; and this is the same way with the children, therefore by telling both stories we can engage both the child who is shy and the child who is not.

In the art of discovering which hero each student connects with, we can make use of various kinds of personality typing, learning styles typing, and other personalized learning. Abstractly, we want to connect each student with a story about a hero who shares the same personality type as them so they can completely identify and feel deeply inspired.

Let us honor the children by sharing with them the mythological stories that connect to their inner self and awaken their heroic potential.

Personalized Learning

Personalized learning is an expansive subject that should be elaborated upon by every single teacher and every single school. It is also a subject so valuable that it must be a topic of investigation for every single student: to learn about one's self, one's talents, the differences between yourself and others, and your natural roles in the community.

Currently, there are several different systems of personality typing in use today. The most neutral and straightforward model might be "The Big Five" OCEAN model.

OCEAN stands for 5 personality traits which are rated independently on a score from high to low: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

When we apply the OCEAN model to personalized mythology, we discover that for example Hercules is the story of a somewhat open, highly conscientious, highly extroverted, non-agreeable person with little neuroticism. If there is a student in the classroom who matches some or all of those traits, then we can predict that they may feel a connection to the hero named Hercules.

In the words of Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist and proponent of the OCEAN model, "Don't underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities. Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche put it so brilliantly."²⁸

The student is always right in this situation. We can't give the student a hero and insist that it should awaken their spirit if it doesn't, but we should use every trick possible to guide us into a space where each child can become maximally inspired. On the other hand, sometimes heroes are not who you expect them to be, some heroes are deeply flawed. Let us trust in the spirit of the inspired child, no matter how confounding it may seem to us.

INspiration to Find the Inner Hero

The Highest Authority knows that every person is born with a spark of divinity, with a meaningful soul, and with an opportunity to contribute something great to the world.

"Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again." -- Joseph Campbell²⁹

Greatness is the combination of truth and love. For many, greatness means doing work which is aligned to your natural talents and work that you love. Becoming inspired and bringing out the spirit of one's inner hero is an early step in developing the self-confidence, self-love, and self-knowledge to achieve one's full potential in life.

Allowing the Individual's Unique Authority

To allow a child to be his or her self without shame, without disrespect, without unfairly comparing him to someone who is very different, without abusing his trust. This is what the Highest Authority wants from us, and it is how we can elevate the children to the level where they will reach beyond what was possible for us.

For many children the most important thing we can do is to ask them for their cooperation instead of demanding it. Not only does this show respect but it builds the child's confidence and improves our chance of making a positive impact on his or her life.

For many students, happiness is the inner truth which guides them through this life. For others it is their sense of satisfaction, like an athlete who feels contentment after an exhausting game.

"If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be." ~Joseph Campbell

For others it is some aspect of 'the good life', like one girl who made a brilliant leader of the cafeteria because she had a talent for understanding what foods the students could benefit most from eating and could encourage everyone to eat enough of what they needed. Her classmates still remember her food leadership more than 10 years later, even though she was only 13 at the time and the first girl at her school ever to be elected to that role!

Why not give that young girl a hero who saves the day with food? Perhaps a hero who has such a powerful gut that she can survive drinking poison?

Recognizing the Unexpected Intelligence of Children

It is the right of the child to have its inner decision making process respected, whatever it is, even if it takes the child an entire month to make an important decision. There is nothing more

important that we can give than to honor the child's inner truth. After all, someday we will be gone and these children will remain, should they remain forever dependent on us?

“I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace.” --Ken Wilber³⁰

This life can be a wonderful adventure for all of us.

Then again, there are always those individuals who seem so unique that they don't fit into a "normal" role. In this case it would be better to use whatever creative means available to create an inspiring experience for the child.

Community-Building

Heroes can fight alone, but heroes can also fight together. After all, isn't that what we do in adult life? We work together. Let us build a community where we cooperate and build on the strengths of one another.

When the inner hero is awake in every child, we will not fail to solve all of our problems, to protect the weak and to heal the broken. There will be no challenge on this Earth that we cannot resolve.

III. EDC’s Project Objective

EDC – Evolutionary Development Consultants proposes to spend 7 years building education capacity in the DRC. Our program will amount to a complete revolution of the education systems of Eastern DRC.

The schools and other facilities will be built on our innovative 'community-involved private franchise' model. Building systems rather than just individual schools means we can cross-fertilize learning environments by having regional branches which administer to a portfolio of school facilities.

Each facility is built using charitable and investment funds, and each regional system is owned in part by public shareholders, partly by teachers and students, and to an extent by private investors. Each school system will be regionally autonomous and self-sustaining after 7 years and will be transitioned by EDC towards community-oriented management.

EDC’s International Advisory Board

We are in communication with experts around the world who are interested in contributing to this project. There are many talented people who can see the value of what we’re doing and are excited to contribute whatever they can. In particular we have our eyes on educators, theoreticians of pedagogy, childcare professionals, and experts on developmental psychology. Many of these experts can provide charitable contributions from wherever they live in the world over video calls, and some will participate on advisory boards, helping to steer development of the schools using the best ideas across the world.

Regional Franchise System

The school system is organized by autonomous regions, which should be an ideal fit for the provinces of D.R. Congo. Each region has its own franchise system which will remain plugged in but will function independently from the other regions after some time.

Each region requires an office to coordinate curriculum and franchise business. An office will also organize regional conventions and handle concerns about individual schools.

Each regional system is connected by a local partner, either a Congolese NGO or education company or team of education entrepreneurs. They work with a goal of integrating each franchise into the community and making each regional office independently functional within 7 years of its respective founding.

Pilot Program

Each regional office is home to the Pilot Program for that region. The Pilot Program is for ongoing research and development, especially to experiment with new pedagogy.

While R&D should be pursued organically at all locations, The Pilot Program is home to special resources not available to all schools. It is where the best practices of the curriculum is made and remade from the perspective of the schools in the region. Heads of the Pilot Program take lessons from one school and share it with others, work to increase classroom efficiency, and coordinate effective staffing.

In addition to running the Pilot Program, the regional office is responsible for taking in meta-data about school attendance and teacher performance and designing an annual program which will match franchise capacity.

The Schools

We create schools by using our expertise to build out the infrastructure of sustainable long-term capacity.

The schools of each region are set up in partnership with a local NGOs, businesses, and/or Education Entrepreneurs from the community. The ideal Education Entrepreneur is a person who has devoted their life to education but did not have the resources or training to create the school before we came along. These local entrepreneurs will often take lead roles in the administration of the school, such as principal, as qualified.

Individual schools in the community are set up with charters that make them a part of the independently-functioning regional franchise.

Although regional offices will play a special role in the rollout of new schools, a dedicated Setup Team organized directly by top EDC leadership will handle new school openings in coordination with our regional NGO and private partners and local leadership.

Community-Involved Private Franchise Model

A regional school franchise system is designed to be held in a trust for the public good, where the private sector can play a valid role in investing in the children’s future but where parents and local community leaders can be exalted.

The equity trust of a school is divided into sections, with some parts being held by the original local leadership and EDC as well as any land investors or other major donors who contributed to make the school founding possible. Other portions of the trust are allotted for local investors, with some also allotted for non-local investors. The biggest portion of the trust is reserved for local & regional investors, parents of the students, full teachers, and alumni.

This combination of private ownership with local community orientation will lead to new levels of stability and ensure that each school has the maximum opportunity to remain solvent and continue providing great service to the children of the region.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Daniel R. Wilder, CEO & Chief Strategist,
EDC — Evolutionary Development Consultants

www.EvolveDevelop.com

DRW@EvolveDevelop.com
Info@EvolveDevelop.com