- When the brand new school built in Magalo-ad village, six km from the
Somaliland port of Berbera, finally opened its doors in September,
there were just 36 children occupying the eight-classroom building.
Built by the international charity SOS Children’s Villages and run by
the Somaliland government, the school brings educational opportunities
for the first time to the children of the nomadic pastoralist community
in the area. The disappointing rate of enrollment at the new school led the
authorities to mobilise rapidly to conduct an awareness campaign in
collaboration with SOS Children’s Villages.
As water and pasture are scarce, pastoralist parents with hundreds of
livestock are constantly on the move. Children normally move with them
and are tasked with taking care of the animals and doing other chores.
“Education is important for a village like this one with a large
number of children,” said SOS Children’s Village officer, Ayanle Ahmed
Mohamed. “SOS constructed this school for the village but parents failed
to bring their children at first, so we carried out a three week
campaign to create awareness.”
The campaign bore fruit. Eighty two children were enrolled as a
result of the community discussions, bringing the current school roll to
118 students.
Adan Mohamed Omar, a village council elder involved in the campaign,
said they sat with parents to persuade them to allow their children go
to the school.
“We went to their homes and discussed with parents on the importance
of sending their children to school. Some of them have already taken
their children to the school. Lack of knowledge about the importance of
education among parents was a major contributing factor to the low
enrollment rates,” said Omar.
Nur Farah Igal, the headmaster, commended the campaign for changing the attitude of parents towards education.
“Now people seem to have understood the importance of education
because since the launch of the campaign, we started receiving new
pupils,” he said.
Ibrahim Digale, Somaliland ministry of education coordinator in Sahil
region, said the ministry took over management of the school and will
meet the running costs.
“Our plan is to educate two out of every three children in every
pastoralist family. We will do everything to ensure the education of
these children is not disrupted,” Ibrahim told Radio Ergo.
“Our target is to enroll all school-aged children living in this
village so that no child is left behind. In the next five months, we
hope the number of the pupils in school will double.”
Amina Mohamud Ismail enrolled four of her children at the school.
“I have taken up the task of looking after the livestock myself and
decided to allow the children to go to school, after the elders came to
my house and convinced me,” Amina said.
Adan Mohamed Omar transferred his son from a school in Berbera town.
“It used to take an hour for the children from this village to get to
school in Berbera,” he said. “I decided to transfer my child to this new
school and I am happy with how it has turned out.”
Radio-Ergo
No comments:
Post a Comment