A Blueprint for Educating Every Poor Hungry Child in the Developing World
By Frank Shooster
There are 250 million children in the developing world without access to quality education. The conventional approach, foreign aid and charity, has not solved the problem in sixty years. The Blueprint asks a different question: what if schools could pay for themselves?
A Blueprint for Educating Every Poor Hungry Child in the Developing World is a 400-page model that answers that question with evidence, not hope. Frank Shooster spent 2,400 hours writing it, drawing on fourteen years of field work in Haiti, graduate study in public policy at the University of Chicago, and a method borrowed from energy policy: backcasting.
What the Blueprint Contains
The Blueprint models 74 distinct interventions across four strategic areas: revenue generation, cost reduction, quality improvement, and exclusivity. Each intervention is individually costed and collectively stress-tested across 10,000 Monte Carlo simulations.
The numbers: $117 per student per year in cost. $262 in projected revenue. A surplus of $145 per student. Not because anyone hoped the numbers would work, but because the model was designed to prove whether they could.
74 interventions modeled and costed
10,000 Monte Carlo simulations for stress-testing
$117 per student per year in cost
$262 per student per year in projected revenue
$145 surplus per student per year
400+ pages of evidence and methodology
The Method: Backcasting
In 1974, Frank Shooster worked in the United States Senate, where he applied backcasting to energy policy: start with the desired future outcome, then work backward to determine what steps are needed to get there. Amory Lovins, working independently, showed that integrating energy strategies yields returns far exceeding the sum of their parts.
Fifty years later, Frank Shooster applied the same methodology to education. No one, as far as he can determine, has previously applied backcasting to education in a developing country. The result was the same outsized payoff: integration of education interventions produces something greater than any single program could achieve alone.
The Companion Volume
Education as if Everyone Mattered is the companion volume to the Blueprint. It explains the intellectual foundation: the philosophical, economic, and moral framework that supports the model. Drawing on Amartya Sen's capabilities approach, John Rawls's veil of ignorance, and Peter Singer's drowning child thought experiment, it makes the case that educating the world's poorest children is not just possible but obligatory.
From Blueprint to Reality
The Blueprint is not a theoretical exercise. No Forgotten Kids is the nonprofit organization bringing the model to life. Haiti is the Proof of Concept site, with 13 of the 74 interventions already running at Academie Lead Haiti in Milot, including clean water systems, solar power, multi-grade classrooms, and parent volunteer programs.
Haiti is the proving ground. The model was designed to replicate globally.
Blueprint Academic Systems
Blueprint Academic Systems, LLC is the strategic holding company for the Blueprint model. It oversees content development, systems integrity, and consulting for governments, NGOs, and multilateral organizations working in fragile states. Frank Shooster serves as Brand Ambassador, ensuring fidelity to the model as it moves from proof of concept in Haiti toward replication in 50+ countries.
Where No Forgotten Kids implements the Blueprint on the ground, Blueprint Academic Systems stewards the model itself: the intellectual property, the economic framework, and the accountability systems that make global scale possible.