Success Story on Rehabilitation of schools and Construction of TLS schools-Baidoa
EACII project-
Due to the compounded drought, civil war, economic crisis, and climate shock more than 3 million children in Somalia are out of school, although there is a try to overcome these challenges by humanitarian aid workers, gradually growing Somalia’s federal government and well-wishers still poverty, long distances to school, safety concerns, lack of teachers, particularly female teachers and low availability of sanitation facilities stopped parents from enrolling children, particularly girls in school.
When children make it to school, they are rarely able to benefit from it fully because of overcrowded classrooms, inadequate water and sanitation facilities, and a shortage of qualified teachers. Children living with disabilities face even more challenges and adolescent girls are rarely able to complete secondary education.
Families facing ongoing conflict and natural disasters are constantly on the move from one place to another and often denied their children’s rights to education, making it very difficult for them to continue schooling.
The already faced challenges and difficulties have been worsening again as the Covid-19 pandemic widely spread in early 2020 which has increased the dropout rate in Somalia.
To address these CARE in partnership with Gredo and Wardi, Launched EDUCATE YOUR CHILDREN II (WAXBAR CARUURTAADA II) PROJECT, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH EDUCATE A CHILD, A PROGRAMME OF THE EDUCATION ABOVE ALL FOUNDATION, project to identify 72,600 vulnerable OOSC to enroll and retain in formal primary education and 10,000 overage OOSC to enroll and retain in alternative basic education in Putland, Galmudug, Hirshabele, Banadir Jubaland and South West State.
Provision of teachers’ incentives in exchange for free primary seats and Flexi classes, capacity building training to use child-centered inclusive teaching practice, rehabilitation of schools, construction of temporary schools, and door to door community mobilization are some of the criteria adapted to identify and retain children in schools.
In the line of rehabilitation, GREDO has rehabilitated six (6) schools in Baidoa under the EACII project and this is the story shared by Yunis Abdullahi Muktar-Deputy headteacher of Konfurgalbeed Primary School in Baidoa.
“GREDO has supported us with the rehabilitation of 3 latrines along teachers set forms and repairing of a leaking roof. We highly appreciate these and many other supports we get from GREDO including teachers’ incentives.
Koonfur Galbeed primary and secondary school is a public school, we strongly depend on humanitarian aid workers and the ministry of education, currently, the greatest challenge we were facing was a shortage of latrines.
This school is hosting 1123 (590g) learners, 24 (1f) teachers, and 2 guards against 10 latrines. We have subdivided these into 3 for boys, 3 for girls, 3 for teachers, and 1 for security guards. However, noticed three latrines were not enough for our girls, we strongly worried about this issue although we had no budget to rehabilitate the existing latrines in bad condition or construct new ones.
Actually, GREDO has relieved us of the burden that was really our front need in terms of rehabilitation needs, the ratio of girls to latrines now goes down from 1:197 to 1:98. Still, the ratio is high but better than before.
We also thank GREDO for not only the support but also for consulting us before any activity is done because initially before rehabilitation starts GREDO team alongside the ministry of education representatives came to us to assess our priority needs.”