Restoring Essential Educational Services to Conflict-Affected Children” in Oromia Region: West Showa Zone, Ambo Woreda.
With support from the European Union and UNICEF in partnership with I1D, ODA started a new project called as Restoring Essential Education Service for Conflict Affected Children to address conflict-affected children to meet the needs of out-of-school children affected by conflict by providing access to safe, high-quality education and protection services. It is expected to create innovative ways of connecting stakeholders, including communities, project implementers, donors, and beneficiaries, to promote sustainable education development. The project improves learning through equitable access to resilient and quality education and child protection services for emergency-affected children in West Showa Zone Ambo Woreda of Oromia region, Ethiopia. provide psycho-social support for vulnerable children, CWD, Gender Based Violence survivors and with other vulnerable issues. It also helps with identification and response at all levels. A strategy designed to empower the learning facilitators to be able to give both child protection and life skill services and the other way round. It is unique in its integration of three pillars that are learning, child protection, life skill and GBV.
The project targeted 27,947(6700 boys, 7803 girls, 6722 Women and 6722 Men) girls and boys living in Ambo district of West Showa Zones (Barkume Kulit, Diki, Mankata and Tule Site). 50% of beneficiaries are women and out-of-school-aged girl’s children, children with different protection concerns, facilitators/teachers, PTA members, CBO leaders, and communities receiving learning and protection concerns are the direct beneficiaries. Our area of implementation were found in active conflict areas. As result, there is no school, health and other social services at the time of intervention.
The project has specific objectives, which are to provide accelerated education programs, and protection services to enhance learner well-being, increase the participation and retention of learners affected by conflict through accelerated learning programs, and reduce drop-out rates in pre-primary and primary education at conflict-affected areas. The interventions include reconstruction/ rehabilitation of damaged schools, provision of school supplies to improve access to education and quality of education, building a protective school and community/family environment, and providing mental health and psycho-social support services (MHPSS).
Accelerated Learning Programme (AEP age 8-10 and age 11-14) were established at four learning sites and 4 conventional schools. The Woreda were chosen in consultation with UNICEF’s Oromia field offices using three criteria: the number of internally displaced school-aged out-of-school children (ages 5-18) in the Woreda, the presence of other education and child protection in emergency service providers’ interventions, and Woreda’s severe impact from multiple emergencies such as conflict and drought. consequently, with the highest number of out-of-school children without access to education and child protection services and experiencing extreme severity and distraction were given priority for project implementation. This was achieved through extensive collaborative efforts of the Regional Education Bureaus (REB) and demonstrated high convergence among UNICEF.
During the life of the project quality education access provided to 1000 (480 Girls) children aged 7-14 who were previously out of school, 63 (27 Girls) children having different disabilities addressed, one inclusive education resource centers were established and equipped with different materials such as Montessori kits, computers, and assistive devices, 1000 (520 boys and 480 Girls) children received full package of scholastic materials and recreational kits, 25 ( 5 female) AEP facilitators /teachers and Woreda and Zone education office personnel trained for five days on condensed formal and flexible curriculum, child friendly and Gender sensitive pedagogy, gender, GBV, and the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) by teacher’s education college trainers, 3563 (1632 girls and 1931 boys) children reached through improved instructional practices, 2000 (901 girls and 1099 boys) 63 (27 Girls) CWDs children accessing life skills development opportunity 3488 girls’ conflict-affected girls who benefited from remedial/catch-up classes, 2136 (975 girls, 1,161 boys) 178 (75 girls) CWD) children accessing mental health and psycho-social support, 735 (472 Girls) have experienced gender based violence reached by health, social work or justice/ law enforcement services, 137 (60 girls and 77 boys) UA and Separated children including CHH identified and registered for case management service and reached in NFI, 12,395 (2770 girls, 3423 boys, 2864 women and 3338 men) people benefiting from EU-funded programs, 53 (24 female) teachers, Community Service Workers, and administrators (m/f) trained on gender specific topics including PSEA, 7779 (1936 girls, 2280 boys, 1632 women and 1931men) children and adults have access to a safe and accessible channel to report sexual exploitation and abuse and other main activities accomplished during the life of the project at West Showa Zone Ambo District.
