Education has been found to be one of the best means to address children affected by war, marginalised and poor children. Save the Children Sweden works through the schools to provide children ”normality” though they are living in difficult circumstances.
The rate of enrolment in schools in all of Eastern and Central Africa is very low. Southern Sudan’s education system was ruined by civil war, which ended with the signing of a peace agreement between the former rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the Sudanese government in early 2005. In southern Sudan only 18 per cent of children are enrolled in primary school, 55 per cent in Ethiopia.
One of the best ways to encourage girls to go to school is by enrolling them early. The girls love school, the parents see the value and then they are allowed to continue into primary school. The expectations that girls will be married off early does not give parents an incentive to send them to school. The organisation has supported communities to build pre-schools in southern Sudan and the refugee camps of western Ethiopia. The schools give parents a much-needed break, they teach children the basics and they give a chance for children to play.
About 8,600 teachers, the majority of whom are untrained volunteers, cover approximately 2,000 schools. Most of these “schools” consist of little more than a blackboard propped under a tree. Many children have to work instead of go to school, some cannot afford school fees and others are in such remote areas that schools do not even exist.
In northern Sudan and Ethiopia, the organisation supports local NGOs that provide “alternative education” to children. These are flexible school programmes that usually condense two school years into one. Because of the flexibility in the programmes, children are able to work for their families’ survival and go to school at the same time. The communities help to construct the small one-room schools and teachers are recruited from the area.
Save the Children Sweden lobbies the governments to endorse alternative education as a viable substitute to for-mal schools. In Sudan, the organisation is lobbying with the government to increase the annual budget allocation for education up to 12 per cent of GDP by 2010. In Ethiopia, the Education Bureau in Addis Ababa endorsed alter-native basic education and will accept children who have passed through that system into formal school, and in southern Sudan, Save the Children Sweden has focused its efforts to support communities in building new schools. The organisation has also ensured children have school supplies.
In Darfur, more than 17,000 children attended education services provided by Save the Children Sweden in 2005. In Ethiopia, nearly 30,000 refugee children attended basic education, and more than 10,000 children with disabilities, children living in the streets and orphans attended alternative basic education provided by the organisation.