As a parent of two active children, I see the amazing skills and knowledge they’re gaining at school every day. Yet the vital right to education is just a dream for 75 million children impacted by emergencies and crises. Across our global community, we cannot wait any longer and must act today to reach all children with quality education.
Education in emergencies more often than not is focused on building safe places, structure, and strong programs for children working through trauma and grief and without any other options due to overloaded government systems and limited educational resources.
What is lacking, however, is effective programming for teenagers in emergencies. We hear a lot about child-friendly spaces, and see activities taking place for those ages six to twelve, but once they hit their teenage years, the number of programs available drop drastically.
Education is a human right. More than that, it is a lifesaving humanitarian response. School provides stability, structure and routine that children need to cope with loss, fear, stress and violence. Being in school can keep children safe and protected from risks, including gender-based violence, recruitment into armed groups, child labor, and early marriage. In periods of crisis, parents and children identify education as one of their highest priority needs.
Despite significant progress made in achieving the second Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal primary education, an estimated 63 million adolescents remain out of school. Barriers to education disproportionately affect girls and include poverty, gender-based violence, child marriage, and pregnancy. WomenOne and the Global Campaign for Education-US (GCE-US) are dedicated to ensuring the provision of quality education to all children. Recently, WomenOne focused our efforts on improving quality of education for a small community in rural Haiti.
In times of crisis, there are always people running towards the problem – not away from it. These are the people who inspire hope in others. And that hope, in turn, is terror’s greatest enemy. This has never been more relevant than today, as the world faces down the largest refugee crisis since World War II, with more than 51 million refugees displaced from their homes by terror attacks and political strife.
It’s hard to believe that only seven months have passed since the devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal. Since then, there have been another 7.2-magnitude quake and numerous aftershocks (some quite powerful), countless mudslides and landslides, washed-out bridges and roads, and more recently the serious fuel shortage affecting transportation and people’s ability to heat their homes and cook their food.
Even with so much working against them, the Nepali villagers whom Educate the Children (ETC) is proud to serve are firmly committed to building healthier and better lives for themselves and their families.
"The only thing my father left me with was this advice before he died: 'I don't have anything to give you, but I ask you to continue with your education. Education will be your mother and father when I am no longer there,” says Charles, 21, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo now living in Malawi’s Dzaleka refugee camp.
The mentioning of the name of the girls’ education project IGATE in full to stakeholders and communities was always greeted with many interesting questions: “What about boys?”; “Do you want parents to forget about the boy child and focus on the girl child?” These were some of the questions that were quickly asked by the communities and stakeholders. Explanations and clarifications about the project’s support to boys’ education were not easily understood. This story provides a detailed account of how IGATE is also benefiting boys’ education with specific reference to the case of Thulani Munkuli, who was assisted by the Mothers Group (MGs) to re-enroll after dropping out of school.
For over four years now, discomforting images and stories of entire neighborhoods leveled by bombs, of families mourning children taken too soon and of thousands of refugees leaving everything behind have served as daily reminders of our failure to end the conflict in Syria.
When I think of girls’ education in Africa, I dream of a continent where women and men are treated equally. I long for a continent where women are equal contributors to society; a continent where girls receive the same opportunities as their male counterparts so they can tap into their inherent potential. I would love to see every single girl have access to a free, quality education in Africa.
