In December 2011 we launch Youth, Skills & Work, a new blog where young people can make their voices heard on education and skills needed to get decent jobs. Youth, Skills & Work is open to young people around the world. You can submit text, a photo, a drawing, a poem, or join the conversation by commenting on what others have contributed.
We are gathering opinions from young people as part of our work preparing the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, which will focus on the chronic mismatch between education systems and labour markets that plagues many regions of the world.
Young people who never attended school, who left early or who left without the skills needed to thrive in literate societies, are particularly vulnerable. The 2012 EFA Global Monitoring Report will ask what kinds of policies are needed to give all young people – regardless of where they live, or their gender, ethnicity or wealth – access to employment-relevant training to help them gain access to secure work that pays a living wage.
What do you think about the need for skills and training? Share your thoughts, questions, solutions and experiences at Youth, Skills & Work.
And pass on the word to friends! You can also share the movie clip above.
A quality education is the cornerstone of every child’s rights, yet across the developing world millions of children’s futures are stunted because they don’t have the opportunity to learn. UNICEF is addressing this deprivation with an innovative approach that aims to remove barriers to success in primary school by giving preschoolers the knowledge to successfully enter first grade. Called ‘Getting Ready for School: a Child-to-Child Approach’, the programme is a low-cost way to provide supplemental education to preschoolers, especially the most marginalized.
We asked UNICEF education staff around the globe to tell us about their most inspiring moment they experienced in 2011. Something that they would not forget and reminded them why they chose this profession. Here are some of their stories.
Elena Duro
Education Specialist
UNICEF Argentina
One of the most moving and motivating experiences this year was a visit to an indigenous rural school in the province of Salta, located at an altitude of 3,500 metres. There are many difficulties with regard to access in this area.
Arriving at the school after a long journey, we shared breakfast with children who had walked for hours through the mountains to get there. We spoke with teachers and principals who make daily sacrifices to provide these children with not only a quality education but also affection, comfort and shelter – this really inspired and motivated my daily work.
That school is one of 1,500 around the country participating in an educational quality self-evaluation programme. This participatory and democratic methodology, developed by UNICEF in partnership with provincial governments, instills an evaluation culture in schools (both primary and secondary) and has the main objective of increasing inclusiveness and quality of education.
John Ekaju
Education Specialist
UNICEF Afghanistan
I visited a Jogi community school in Mazar-i-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan with colleagues from the education section and Save the Children. This minority group is excluded from mainstream society as well as formal schools because of their cultural and linguistic background. Negative stereotypes and biases that have existed for generations have led to extreme discrimination and disadvantage.
Jogi children don’t have Afghani citizenship or birth certificates, rendering them stateless in their own country. Because of discrimination and derogatory language, they are forced not to attend regular government schools.
UNICEF, in partnership with Save the Children, initiated classes for these communities in Mazar-i-Sharif. The special classes provided an opportunity for the children to learn with a renewed sense of self-esteem and confidence. They are excited to come to their own school, where they do not face prejudice and discrimination. The young volunteer teacher we met was trained in pedagogy by UNICEF and Save the Children, thus ensuring that the classroom was interactive and the children enjoyed the learning experience.
A recent qualitative survey organized by UNICEF revealed signs of an emerging Jogi identity, with an increasing awareness about their rights and a growing, if still limited, assertiveness in denouncing the discrimination they suffer. I am excited to be part of this drive to advocate for these children, who are the hope for the future generation of this great country.
Low-lying Bangladesh is one of the countries most affected by climate change, and the people who live in the Chars – small islands created by floods or erosion in the vast Ganges delta—are the most vulnerable of all.
Life on Natwarpara Char is extremely difficult. Most families make a living from growing rice or fishing. There is little economic development and few employment opportunities.
“There is no electricity, no services. There are no good schools, people don’t want to live here; there are no real advantages to living in the Char,” said primary school teacher Farida Yasmin.
The one thing people in the Char can rely on are floods.
“Every year there is a flood. Some years the floods are worse than others,” said Natwarpara Primary School Principal Mohammad Monwarul Islam Mukta.
He heads a school of about 170 students who, thanks to UNICEF’s support, are all well versed in how to deal with frequent emergencies.
“I was very scared during the floods. There was water everywhere. My whole family was worried. Where would we stay? What would we eat?” said student Farzana Tarafder Nishi.
Fortunately Farzana, 10, who is a star student, had a safe space—her school. It was re-situated and is now able to stay open during emergencies. She did not miss a day of school, even though her village was inundated.
The UNICEF-supported Education in Emergencies and Post-Crisis Transition programme, also known as Back on Track, is an innovative programme designed to rebuild education systems, often in countries working to make the transition from crisis to normal development.
The five-year programme is funded by the Government of the Netherlands and the European Commission.
Back on Track also provides comprehensive instruction on disaster risk reduction, so students and teachers know how to stay safe during emergencies. The lessons are laid out in a book published by UNICEF and Save the Children.
“The book is called Tuni’s Rooster. I have learned from it that the school should be on higher ground. There should be a boat to ferry school children and the school should have a proper toilet and tubewell,” said student Tasmia Yasmin Trishti.
In 2011, significant strides were made in improving the education of children around the world: More children are now enrolled in primary schools than ever before. Still, in spite of remarkable progress, civil unrest and natural disasters have slowed down improvements in affected areas.
To wrap up the year, UNICEF podcast moderator Femi Oke spoke to United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education Kishore Singh.
Pre-school is a luxury in most of Bangladesh, where fewer than 23 per cent of children aged 3 to 5 receive any type of early childhood education.
Chinipara is no exception.
“We live in a remote area. We have a lot of poverty here. All the students are children of day labourers and farmers,” Chinipara Primary School assistant teacher Sarkar Faruk Shana.
For Mr. Islam, the chance to see his daughter step onto the education ladder, even before primary school, is very satisfying. “When I was a child I had wanted to study,” he said. “In 1985, there was a drought in this area, and since we were poor I had to start working in the fields at a young age.”
Education can play a key part in the prevention and transformation of violent conflicts. In an effort to investigate what role UNICEF can play to realize this mission, a team of researchers presented their global findings at a brown-bag discussion on Friday, titled “Education and Peacebuilding in Conflict-Affected Contexts.” The research team set out to collect evidence on the role of education in peacebuilding, how education interventions could have a stronger role in the UN peacebuilding structure and more specifically, how UNICEF can contribute effectively to peacebuilding through education.
Deved is a newly established NGO, based in Geneva, Switzerland that aims to change attitudes and approaches to education in the developing world by focusing on the delivery of relevant education, both in terms of content and teaching methods.
We believe in respect for people, culture and the environment. Education is key to our development both as individuals and as a society; it reduces inequality and increases opportunities. We see development as communities developing on their own terms, we approach this from a holistic perspective.
Our mission is to empower communities through relevant education, to increase opportunities and improve livelihoods prospects amongst young people in developing communities.
This year marks the 22nd anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Ratified by 193 states, the Convention has gained wide support worldwide and transformed the way children are treated around the globe. Yet, children’s right to education as a fundamental human right remains a challenge especially for those living in conflict areas.
UNICEF podcast moderator Femi Oke spoke with two experts, Professor Philip G. Alston and Professor David M. Smolin, about the achievements of the last 22 years as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
The Global Partnership for Education has helped more than 19 million children go to school for the first time. A campaign to renew support for these efforts will culminate in a pledging event in Copenhagen on 7-8 November. This series of stories seeks to highlight the Partnership’s work in the lead-up to this event.
Charles Tapp, Senior Advisor for Fundraising at the GPE, commented on current funding trends, and stressed the need for a greater focus on education. “One of the things that has been concerning is that education has been somewhat falling off the international development agenda,” he said. “We have decided that we have to really crank up our efforts and try to galvanize great global attention to the importance of education.”
As part of Save the Children's breakthrough project, new funding and technical support has been made available for education in emergencies. This film looks at how Save the Children is ensuring that education is part of every large-scale emergency response.
Representatives from United Nations agencies, governments, the private sector and civil society recently gathered at the Women & Girls Education Summit in New York, to explore linkages between girls’ education and economic development.
As a follow up to the event, UNICEF podcast moderator Femi Oke spoke with Martha Adams, producer of ‘10×10’, a film encouraging investment in girls’ education, Patricia Velasquez, president of the Wayúu Tayá Foundation, which provides culturally sensitive assistance to indigenous Wayúu children, Lakshmi Puri, the Assistant Secretary-General for Intergovernmental Support and Strategic Partnerships at the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) and Ariana Tsapralis, an activist at Girl Up, a United Nations campaign that engages girls in girls’ and women’s empowerment.
As school enrolment continues to climb throughout most of the developing world, the roles teachers play in our lives have become even more crucial. Tasked with providing a quality education to our current generation of students, teachers also have a significant hand in shaping the future by instilling in children essential cultural and social values such as tolerance, gender equality and open dialogue. Despite the heavy responsibility placed on their shoulders, in many parts of world they are rewarded poorly and in some countries even subject to deadly attacks.
Today will mark the annual celebration of World Teachers’ Day, and to commemorate the event, UNICEF’s podcast moderator Femi Oke spoke with Jamila Marofi, a high school teacher from Afghanistan, Gorma Minnie, a school administrator from Liberia and Professor Fernando Reimers from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in America.
Over 1.5 million children in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CEE/CIS) live with disabilities. Commonly locked up in segregated institutions or hidden away in their homes, children with disabilities are one of the most marginalised groups of our society. They are often denied their basic right to quality education and lack opportunities to interact with their peers and participate actively in the society.
To promote inclusive education for children with disabilities, 20 representatives from the CEE/CIS countries as well as relevant stakeholders are gathering in Moscow on 27-29 September for the first-ever regional conference of this dimension.
In the lead up to the Moscow conference, UNICEF podcast moderator Femi Oke talked to Ms Elina Lehtomaki, Researcher at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland and a pioneer in the field of inclusive education.
War, bullets and bloodshed – words which generations of Liberians are still more familiar with than books or schools. It’s only been eight years since the country knew peace; the scars from its paralyzing 14-year civil war remain visible as its people try to heal. Today, the government is working to rebuild the infrastructure that was completely destroyed – large parts of Liberia doesn’t have roads and millions are living without basic access to water, healthcare or electricity. But ask any Liberian what they need most and the answer is the same – education.
Prince Manguo, 16, realizes that education is his only escape from a life of poverty. He left his family behind in their village in Bahn and moved to Ganta, the second largest city in Liberia, with the single-minded focus of finding a school that would help him turn his dreams into reality. “I want to be a mechanical engineer because I want to help the country build some houses,” he said.
Alone but determined, Prince found his way to the newly constructed Ganta Public School. With its sprawling campus, well ventilated classrooms, playgrounds, solar powered electricity, computer laboratories, clinic and cafeteria where students are served lunch free of cost.
As the emergency escalates throughout the Horn of Africa, the numbers of those in crisis continue to grow. Currently, 12.4 million people in the region are in need of humanitarian assistance. Somalia is the worst-affected country, with more than 3.2 million people facing starvation.
This on-going crisis poses some crucial challenges to the education services. In south and central Somalia alone, more than 1.8 million children are unable to attend school due to displacement and lack of security.
Shefena Gebre Egziabeher, 12, is in the sixth grade and excels at school. “Of all the subjects I take, my favourites are math and English. I like them because they are simple if you apply yourself,” she says.
Shefena lives in the remote Tigray region of Ethiopia. Her ambition is to become a teacher – a process that she has already put in motion.
For one hour a week, Shefena tutors a small class of younger friends and neighbours in the basics of reading and writing. It’s part of a UNICEF-supported pilot programme to help four- to six-year-olds enter primary school.
The programme, ‘Getting Ready for School: A Child to Child Approach,’ has proven successful, cost-effective and popular.
The floods that hit Pakistan one year ago are considered to be the worst in its history. Triggered by the annual monsoon rains, the water floods claimed hundreds of lives, destroyed 2 million homes and washed away more than 2 million hectares of crops. Among the thousands of buildings lost in the floods, 10,000 were schools, heavily impacting the education of children in Pakistan.
At the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the monsoon floods, UNICEF podcast moderator Amy Costello talked to Ms Nafisa Shah, the co-chair of the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) in Pakistan and Chairperson of the National Commission for Human Development and Ms Shahnaz Wazir Ali, co-chair of the Pakistan Education Task Force (PETF), a nationwide government initiative aiming to widen access to quality education in Pakistan. Both Members of the National Assembly and highly involved with the education sector in Pakistan, Ms Shah and Ms Wazir Ali discuss the current situation of education in Pakistan and the challenges of achieving quality education for all.
In a nation still recovering from a ruinous civil war – a place where many people have no access to electricity, safe water or health care – hundreds of communities have opened their doors to refugees from neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire. Eight months after a political crisis erupted in that country, more than 150,000 Ivorians remain in Liberia. Most of them are being hosted by families in remote villages dotting the Liberia-Côte d’Ivoire border.
At the Barker C. Gaye public school in one border community, Zleh Town, Liberian students are sharing their playgrounds and their classrooms with Ivorian refugees like Sophie (not her real name), 13.
Many schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina still reflect the ethnic tensions that triggered the 43-month siege of Sarajevo in the mid-1990s. During that time, schools were destroyed and classes were held in basements and shelters. Today, some Bosnian schools house ‘two schools under one roof,’ with separate curricula for different ethnic groups.
Džemaludin Cauševic Primary School is exceptional as a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural institution open to all students.The school, which was rebuilt with support from UNICEF, its partners and the Danish Government after the war in the region ended, has adopted a new model of inclusive child-centred education known as child-friendly schools.
Many schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina still reflect the ethnic tensions that triggered protracted armed conflict in the region in the mid-1990s. They are divided into ‘two-schools under one roof’ and mono-ethnic schools, where children are segregated based on their ethnicity or nationality in mixed regions.
In these schools, children attend separate classes and have no interaction with students outside their own group.
On 9 July, South Sudan became an independent nation. Citizens of the newest country in the world, the people of Southern Sudan face immense challenges and immediate threats. Education will play a pivotal role in the future stability and economic development of South Sudan. To discuss the challenges of providing quality education in Southern Sudan, UNICEF Radio podcast moderator Amy Costello recently spoke with Yasmin Haque, UNICEF Director in Southern Sudan, and Carol Francis-Rinehart, Executive Director and President of Project Educate Sudan, a grassroots organization that works with community leaders and village elders to provide education there.
According to UNICEF, more than 70 per cent of young people are unemployed, the majority of them unskilled. To discuss the future of Kosovo, UNICEF’s podcast moderator Amy Costello talks to three young people who are working in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, to bring social change in their communities.
Forty-year old Philippe Cheugui used to teach history and geography at a school in Danane, a town in western Côte d’Ivoire. He was a successful teacher and public spokesperson, an inspiration to many.
Today, he finds himself seeking refuge under a tarpaulin shelter in Liberia’s Bahn camp. He watches his wife cook beside the tent with despair and relief in his eyes. He knows they are fortunate to have survived.
What does it take to educate a girl? Framed by the United Nations global initiative to provide equal access to education for girls by 2015, To Educate a Girl takes a ground-up and visually stunning view of that effort through the eyes of girls in Nepal and Uganda who are out of school, starting school, or fighting against the odds to stay in school.
Please note that the runtime of this film is 74 minutes. A trailer for the film can be viewed here.
In 1976, Mairead Maguire was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her extraordinary actions to end violence in Northern Ireland, her native country.
Since then, Ms. Maguire has dedicated her life to promoting peace, justice and equality around the world. She recently spoke with UNICEF Radio moderator Amy Costello about the situation of children in conflict zones and explained why education is a catalyst for peace and tolerance.
Hear Amy Costello’s conversation with Ms. Maguire in the podcast available here.
Getting girls back into school has been one of the rare Afghan success stories of the last 9 years. But the progress made is in danger of slipping away. In this short video by Oxfam Great Britain, Nazifa tells us her story.
At the start of the civil war in Sierra Leone, rebels from neighboring Liberia crossed into the country just south of the district of Kailahun. One victim of war was the education system: schooling in the area came to a halt for 12 years. Although a number of international organizations have focused on re-building schools, today, they are still suffering from a severe lack of qualified teachers. There is also a great need to identify and serve the needs of vulnerable children. UNICEF and its partners are working to improve these situations and bring education to all children through programs such as the Cross-Borders Schools Project. With UNICEF funding, Save the Children has been implementing this program, which trains teachers and school managers in topics such as managing child behavior, keeping students safe in schools and strategies for active teaching. Work in this area is allowing the new generation of children in Kailahun to grow up with hope for the future.
The 45-minute, interactive webinar was designed to be a practical orientation to the INEE Minimum Standards, as well as a platform to connect with other INEE members. The session includes ideas on how to effectively use the Minimum Standards in your work and information on where to find additional resources.
You can download and view the webinar orientation session here.
Reference Guide on External Education Financing
On February 8, 2011, INEE conducted a webinar on the INEE Reference Guide on External Education Financing. Developed by the INEE Working Group on Education and Fragility, the INEE Reference Guide on External Education Financing is a resource that explains donor education funding strategies and mechanisms.
You can download and view the webinar orientation session on the Reference Guide on External Education Financing here.
Guidance Notes on Teaching and Learning
On February 9, 2011, INEE conducted a webinar on the INEE Guidance Notes on Teaching and Learning. Developed through a widely consultative process led by the INEE Advisory Group on Teaching and Learning, the Guidance Notes on Teaching and Learning provide support on issues of curriculum adaptation and development; teacher training, professional development and support; instruction and learning processes; and assessment of learning outcomes for practitioners and policymakers working in crisis contexts.
You can download and view the webinar orientation session on the INEE Guidance Notes on Teaching and Learning here.
Pocket Guide to Gender
On February 10, 2011, INEE conducted a webinar on the INEE Pocket Guide to Gender. With the input of many INEE members, the INEE Gender Task Team has developed this quick INEE Pocket Guide to Gender to help practitioners ensure that education as part of emergency preparedness, response and recovery is gender-responsive and meets the rights and needs of all girls and boys, women, and men affected by crisis.
You can download and view the webinar orientation session on the INEE Pocket Guide to Gender here.
INEE Toolkit
On February 23, 2011 INEE conducted a webinar on the INEE Toolkit. The INEE Toolkit has a wide variety of tools to guide humanitarian aid workers, government officials and educationalists working in the field of education in emergencies.
You can download and view the webinar orientation session on the INEE Toolkit here.
The video “Education Can’t Wait” presents the work of the Education Cluster. The Global Education Cluster is the only cluster at global level co-led by a UN agency and a NGO, namely UNICEF and Save the Children International. Its vision is to enable all children and young people to have immediate access or ensured continuity to a quality education in a safe environment, in order to protect, develop and facilitate a return to normality and stability. This short film makes the case for why education is important in emergency situations. Using examples from a number of country situations, it explains the vital role that education can play in supporting children and young people throughout and beyond an emergency. The film also provides examples of the types of education interventions that can be organized from the beginning of a humanitarian response and the importance of working together and collaborating through coordination mechanisms like the Education Cluster.
Education Can’t Wait is intended to be used as an advocacy tool with a range of different actors. It can be shown at meetings, workshops and other events to promote the importance of education in emergencies.
Additional hard copies of the DVD are also available on request by e-mailing {encode="educationclusterunit@gmail.com" title="educationclusterunit@gmail.com"}.
In the Philippines, frequent typhoons, flooding, volcanic eruptions and landslides have compounded the challenge of creating lasting solutions for the educational system. It’s been just over a year since several typhoons, including Ketsana, killed hundreds and affected up to 10 million people in southern Asia. As a result, many Filipinos live in a constant state of fear as they anxiously brace for the next catastrophe.
This video from UNICEF features a town in Albay Province in the Philippines where students and the local community actively promote disaster preparedness and risk reduction. Students give regular first aid instruction to their peers and help them prepare for potential emergency. They also identify possible hazards around their school and a parent-teacher association helps to spread the word of disaster preparedness. An informed student body and local community can help in minimizing the effects of disasters. This is an example of resilience among students and communities where despite of disasters, children can still continue their education.
From January 2004 to August 2010, 137 state teachers, education staff and 36 state children were killed, with 157 injured in Thailand. 287 state schools have been attacked by arson. Islamic religious schools have also been attacked, but no data has been documented.
This report from Al Jazeera shows an alarming situation in Southern Thailand where teachers and schools are under attack. Both Buddhist and Islamic schools are targeted by extremists.
The floods are a children’s emergency, according to the assessment of Pakistan’s crisis from the executive director of UNICEF. Almost nine million children have been affected and more than 10,000 school buildings have also been destroyed by the flooding, according to the government. Along side child-friendly spaces which help children deal with trauma, there is an urgent long-term need for new schools to replace and perhaps improve upon what has been lost in the floods. But for now, thousands of children will do their learning out in the open.
The second World Humanitarian Day takes place this year on 19 August. The day will raise awareness of what it means to be a humanitarian aid worker by describing their work, explaining the principles that guide all humanitarians, and portraying the hazards that humanitarian aid workers face in the course of their work. World Humanitarian Day will also honour those who have been killed or injured in the course of their work.
This film is shot in over 40 countries, with the goal of showing the enormous diversity of places, faces and endeavors of humanitarian aid workers in 2010. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) provides more details on the event. Click here to read more.
Six years after its brutal civil war drew to a close, Liberia is struggling to pick up the pieces. Ghostly shells overlook the capital Monrovia, an ever-present reminder of nearly 14 years of conflict that saw the almost total collapse of infrastructure. The country’s youth were worst affected, many were killed, many were orphaned and many were recruited as child soldiers, losing childhood forever. The education system, too, collapsed as various rebel groups swept through the country often targeting schools for recruits. Almost every child in every classroom has missed out on years of learning and now they’re desperately trying to catch up.
Implementing free universal primary education in Liberia comes with its own challenges. While Liberia is on the right track, it will require huge amounts of time, effort and investment. And it is only through education that the youth of Liberia will be able to lift themselves out of their poverty to rebuild their country.
In a YouTube clip, Katy Webley, head of education at Save the Children, spells out the lessons that her organisation has learned from its Rewrite the Future campaign, including the message that “Education must become part of emergency responses, alongside food, nutrition, health and shelter.”
Decades of conflict in Chad have left children and youth vulnerable to recruitment by armed forces and rebel groups - leading to an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 child soldiers in the country. In this video, UNICEF’s Salma Zulfiqar reports on the demobilization, rehabilitation and reintegration of former child soldiers in Chad.
For five years, young Emmanuel Jal fought as a child soldier in the Sudan. Rescued by an aid worker, he’s become an international hip-hop star and an activist for kids in war zones. In words and lyrics, he tells the story of his amazing life.
Former child soldiers Ishamel Beah,Grace Akallo and Kon Kelei speak to moderator Amy Costello. All three have lived through and participated in conflict in their native countries of Sierra Leone, Uganda and Sudan. They share not only common experiences as former child soldiers, but also agree that it was education that enabled them to become the writers and advocates they are today.
This podcast has been provided by UNICEF. Please refer to their website for further information.
Resource Highlights High Hopes, Grim Reality: Reintegration and the Education of Former Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone. The complexity of providing education to former child soldiers in Sierra Leone and the potential challenges that may be associated with their return to school remain unexplored in the research. This study aims to fill this gap and presents the perspectives of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone, their caregivers, and community members speaking to the role of education in their psychosocial adjustment and community reintegration following the end of the civil war. Theresa S. Betancourt, et al, 2008.
The village of Santa Paz in Southern Leyte, Philippines is prone to floods and landslides. The school is situated in a particularly dangerous area and could be swept away by a landslide following a tropical storm. Plan’s Disaster Risk Reduction programme assessed the school and initially built a trench and concrete barrier to protect it. However, the schools situation makes it vulnerable and only by moving it to a different location can the children be properly protected.
Resource Highlights Children on the Frontline: Children and Young People in Disaster Risk Reduction. Plan and World Vision argue that children, who represent 50% of the world’s population, can and do play invaluable roles in planning and implementing disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation activities. In spite of this evidence, children are, by and large, excluded from the activities that contribute to building the resilience of their local communities. Children must be engaged as a vital part of the civil society mechanism that monitors Hygo Framework for Action progress. World Vision and PLAN International, 2009.
Some 175 million children are likely to be affected by climate-related disasters each year, according to Save the Children. Amy Costello speaks to UNICEF’s Antony Spalton, UNICEF Disaster Risk Reduction Specialist, and Rhee, a 16-year-old boy from the Philippines about the role of children in protecting their communities from natural disasters.
This video shows Sahar Adish, a resettled Afghan refugee, who talks of the power of a girl’s education. Sahar is now a 19 year-old pre-med student at the University of Virginia and recently received a prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for a film she helped to make telling her family’s heroic story of escape from the Taliban. On November 7, 2007 Sahar inspired a crowd of over 750 guests at the IRC’s Freedom Award dinner, which officially kicked off a year-long celebration of the IRC’s 75th anniversary.
Resource Highlights Educating Girls and Empowering Women: Gender and Post-Conflict Educational Reform in Afghanistan. Increasing access to school for girls is an important first step in making a society more equitable; this paper argues for the need to go beyond access alone to explore the role of education in actually improving the status of girls and women in the war-torn nation of Afghanistan. This paper was a finalist in the Jackie Kirk Commemorative Competition 2009. Jamie Vinson, 2009
Click here to visit the INEE Gender Task Team webpage. Email {encode="network@ineesite.org" title="network@ineesite.org"} if you are interested in learning how to get involved.
An estimated 100 million girls around the world are involved in child labour, according to the ILO. Chief Technical Adviser, the International Labour Organisation’s International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), Patrick Quinn; Professor Managing Director of the Sindh Education Foundation, Anita Ghulam Ali; and child labour activist Kailash Sityarthi discuss the importance of educating girls in the struggle to eliminate child labour.
This podcast has been provided by UNICEF. Please refer to their website for further information.
Resource Highlights Education in Emergencies: The Gender Implications. It is critical to establish gender-responsive education programs throughout the emergency relief to development continuum. Not only do girls and boys, women and men, experience conflict and natural disasters differently, but these crises contexts can also provide opportunities for systemic change that can increase gender equity within communities and national systems as they recover and rebuild. This Advocacy Brief lays out the supply and demand factors that influence educational opportunties for girls and boys in emergency contexts. It also provides an overview of guidelines, strategies and programmatic approaches to support practitioners and policy makers working to ensure gender-responsive education. UNESCO, 2006
Getting Girls Out of Work and Into School. In the Asia-Pacific region, girls’ labour, official and unofficial, continues to constitute a major obstacle to accelerating progress towards achieving gender parity and equality in primary and secondary education by 2015. This policy brief summarises the causes and consequences of girls’ child labour on their educational opportunities and describes some of the instruments and strategies in place to reduce girls’ labour. UNESCO, 2006
Click here to visit the INEE Gender Task Team webpage. Email {encode="network@ineesite.org" title="network@ineesite.org"} if you are interested in learning how to get involved.
This video from Teacher’s TV, shows how events occurring outside of the two West Bank schools can have a huge impact on the lives of both teachers and pupils. One month into an already stressful term and the two schools, King Talal boys’ school and Hajja Rushda girls’ school, are having to deal with the day-to-day realities of living under an occupation while attempting to teach and learn. A raid by the Israeli army on a nearby refugee camp brings chaos to the schools as well as tragedy for one of the students.
Resource Highlight Creating Healing Classrooms: Guide for Teachers and Teacher Educators. The importance of teacher training and support for restoring nurturing developmental opportunities cannot be overstated. With the protection and psychosocial needs of children in mind, trained teachers can communicate critical lifesaving messages, model caring adult behavior and help reestablish children’s trust; they have the potential to create a climate in the classroom that helps children heal. IRC, 2006
Moderator Amy Costello talks with guests Sibeso Luswata, UNICEF Southern Sudan Chief of Education; Paul Martin, UNICEF Representative in Colombia; and Geeta Verma, UNICEF Deputy Representative in Iraq about the role of education in countries affected by conflict or emerging from it.
This podcast has been provided by UNICEF. Please refer to their website for further information.
Resource Highlights
Education Under Attack: 2010. This UNESCO publication, the second global report on the subject, was released on February 2010. The first report from 2007 was seminal in drawing attention to this crime against international humanitarian and human rights law. The new report documents the trends of attacks since 2007, highlighting a tragic rise in violent attacks over the past few years. UNESCO, 2010
Protecting Education from Attack: A State-of-the-Art Review. This accompanying publication to the 2010 edition of Education under Attack presents key discussion points and 13 papers written by researchers and practitioners active in the field of protecting education from attack. UNESCO, 2010
This is the second film of a series of four, focusing on the impact which Rewrite the Future, Save the Children’s first global campaign has had on children in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rewrite the Future was launched two years ago with the aim of securing the right to education of children affected by armed conflict. Today, 37 million children are missing out on school in countries affected by armed conflict, more than half of all the children out of school worldwide. Save the Children launched Rewrite the Future to open peoples’ eyes to the needs and rights of children living with the effects of war and conflict. To make a direct difference to 8 million children’s lives by improving their quality of education getting 3 million of these children into school who weren’t before. To persuade governments and international organisations to mobilise resources and provide education themselves.
Resource Highlight Rewrite the Future: Education for Children in Conflict-affected Countries This document provides an overview of the issues facing those working to ensure children affected by crisis have access to educational opportunities, and was released at the begining of the Rewrite the Futures Campaign in 2006. An updated Save the Children Education in Emergencies Rewrite the Future Brief from 2009 is here.
Moderator Amy Costello talks with guests Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, and Gene Sperling, a Senior Fellow for Economic Studies and Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Council on Foreign Relations, about education as a human right and long-term development tool.
This podcast has been provided by UNICEF. Please refer to their website for further information.
Resource Highlight The INEE Minimum Standards are the foundational tool for practitioners and policymakers working to provide education to children and youth affected by crisis. They provide good practices and concrete guidance to governments and humanitarian workers for coordinated action to enhance the quality of education preparedness and response, increase access to safe and relevant learning opportunities, and ensure accountability in providing these services. They are being used in over 80 countries around the world to improve programme and policy planning, assessment, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation as well as advocacy and preparedness in order to reach the Education for All goals. The INEE Minimum Standards Handbook is available online here, with over twenty translations here.
In the past ten years, Afghanistan has made enormous progress. Schools have reopened and young people stream into classrooms. Afghanistan continues to work hard to remove barriers to learning, resolved to improve opportunities for its children to fulfill their potential.
Joyce Wanican, the International Rescue Committee’s education program manager in northern Uganda, shares her story: She was working with the IRC, training teachers at a refugee camp when rebel troops came through. She lost her home and all her posessions. All her students fled with their families—and almost had to miss the all-important national exams. But Joyce wouldn’t let that happen. She successfully appealed to the government of Uganda to reschedule the test. She found all her students at another refugee camp, 65 miles away, and asked them to go back to school the next morning and start studying. “Every big tree in the camp became a classroom,” she said. “We had no time to waste.” Despite everything, Joyce’s students’ exams came back with the “best results ever.”
The INEE Global Consultation 2009 kicked off yesterday with video presentations to the 270 delegates from Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and the President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and comments from Dr Arslan, Deputy Undersecretary from the Ministry of Education in Turkey, and the Deputy Secretary General of the Commonwealth Secretariat Ms Masire-Mwamba.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf spoke of her countries work since the end of conflict, the challenges of meeting the Millennium Development Goals and the importance of flexible and sufficient funding for education:
Archbishop Tutu’s address emphasized the importance of education in emergencies, particularly the crucial role that education can play in contributing to peace and justice.
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