Some 3.5 million children living in the Lake Chad Basin in Africa’s Sahel region do not have access to education according to the UN-backed Education Cannot Wait fund.
The children who are refugees from other countries, internally displaced by conflict and drought and those simply living in some of the poorest parts of the country have not been able to go to school.
The Lake Chad Basin, which includes Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria is one of the most deprived and dangerous regions of the world. Climate change and environmental degradation have exacerbated the challenges the region faces, while Boko Haram extremists have terrorized people across the four countries causing much of the displacement.
With support from a broad international coalition and the Government of Chad, Education Cannot Wait, a newly created global fund for education in crisis, has already reached over 150,000 children like Ibrahim in Chad. This includes 69,000 girls. In the neighboring Central African Republic, the Fund has reached some 65,000 children, including 31,802 girls, and a newly announced US$2.5 million grant will reach some 194,000 displaced children in Nigeria, 52 percent of whom are girls.
To support children, Education Cannot Wait worked with Chad’s Ministry of National Education and Civic Promotion and UNICEF, engaging through the UNICEF partnership with international NGOs including Fondazione Acra, the Jesuit Refugee Service and Refugee Education Trust International, to support the delivery of sustainable, equitable and inclusive quality education services for children and youth from within the refugee and host communities.
Through a US$10 million grant, community mobilization activities have taken place and classrooms have been built, boys and girls have received backpacks and school supplies, teachers have been hired and trained, and students have begun attending classes – sometimes for the first time in their life.
Original source: UN News
Published on 20 November 2018
