More Partner Projects

Since 2003, more than 2,000 children and women have been given the opportunity to receive primary education. During this time, the program also created 115 accelerated learning centers and 22 village libraries, and formed 20 mothers groups and early childhood development classes.

CRS hopes to build upon its successes in Panjshir and Kapisa by expanding its reach into the more remote areas of the provinces, and offering more classes in villages with high demand. With great outreach, children and adolescents, especially girls and young women, will have the opportunity to master all of the subjects taught as part of the Afghan national curriculum. Class will be held in homes or community facilities, and all activities will be coordinated with the provincial and district offices of education to ensure that students will be able to enroll in formal secondary schools after completing grade six.

We have developed an approach designed to strengthen the role that schools and especially teachers play in promoting the psychosocial recovery and wellbeing of children. We encourage an inclusive approach to education, in which all children are welcomed – including girls, children of different ethnic origin and children with disabilities.

Our approach recognizes that emergencies and displacement heighten the risks of abuse and exploitation faced by children, even within schools, and that training plus monitoring and referral systems are critical in making schools safe spaces. The approach particularly focuses on expanding and supporting the positive protective role that teachers play in these crises, in making and maintaining " healing" learning spaces, in which all children can recover, grow and develop.

We commit to expanding quality teaching, through teacher training, with ongoing support and professional development, that is meaningful and relevant. The Healing Classrooms Initiative recognizes the importance of understanding teachers' experiences, perspectives, and priorities to ensure this. The initiative is developing new ways of thinking about " becoming and being a teacher" that are grounded in the responsibilities of being an agent of child protection. It highlights and has developed strategies to strengthen community and government support to teachers, who are themselves also victims of conflict. Teachers are helped to apply the principles of psychosocial well-being and the " healing" of children. By integrating these with culturally sensitive notions of " good child-centered teaching," we have developed models of good pedagogy that are grounded in principles of child protection and child well-being.

Save the Children needs the international community to create a climate where Afghanistan can afford to, and has the long-term stability to, deliver its education goals. We will help the Afghan government to:

• raise the shortfall in funds - of around $500 million a year
• increase enrolment at primary level to 75 per cent for girls and 85 per cent for boys
• ensure 70 per cent of teachers meet a defined level of competency

• Basic literacy and math skills
• Healthy life styles, habits and choices
• Civic values
• Critical and creative thinking skills
• Appreciation of diversity
• Mutual respect and understanding across ethnic groups
• Gender equity

Teacher Emergency Package (TEP) started in Kirundo in 1999 and later in Muyinga (until 2007), Makamba, Rutana, Ruyigi, Bujumbura-Rural and Mairie, Bubanza and Cibitoke. TEP includes basic education to out-of-school children aged 9 to 14, and a training component for teachers. Successful completion of the TEP qualifies for entry into the public school system. Emphasis is put on educating girls. The Youth Education Pack (YEP) facilitates access to basic literacy and skills training to illiterate youth, with a gender balance, between the ages of 14 to 22, including demobilised child soldiers. The aim is to strengthen chances of employment and self-reliance. Around 67.900 children have been enrolled in TEP since 2001 and around 1.000 youth completed YEP since the project started in Makamba and Bujumbura in late 2004.

• The NRC TEP project in Burundi offers 10 months' intensive and accelerated education to IDP, returnees and vulnerable children aged between 9 and 14 who have not had access to schooling.
• Since 1999 the project has been implemented in 9 provinces.
• 56,700 children and youth have been enrolled from 2000 to 2007
• 11,400 pupils are enrolled in 2008.

AJWS believes that universal access to education is a basic human right. While traditional Jewish commitment to education has most often been framed in terms of Torah study, Jews have always recognized the deep link between literacy and social and economic empowerment.

AJWS’ support for universal access to education is a reflection of this legacy. Improving access to education is essential in any effort to effect positive social, economic and political change. Education and literacy provide access to livelihoods, health information, technology and political processes; they facilitate social exchange and collective action and enable disempowered individuals and communities to enter global conversations.
Access to education is at the heart of the Jewish values that inspire the work of AJWS. Education is necessary to liberate people from struggle and suffering, to support their pursuit of social and economic justice and to secure the dignity and well-being of all human beings.

Implementation of the Escuela Nueva Learning Circles Program™ for 60 migrant, displaced children, ages 6-15, of the municipality of Soacha. This Program facilitates the transition of these children of conflict into schools, attracting them and maintaining them when conventional schools fail to adapt to their particular needs. It also incorporates “youth tutors” from the community, which are trained in the Escuela Nueva system to lead the Learning Circles, reducing the number of youth working on the streets and joining illegal forces. By interacting with their peers, these young tutors gain practical teaching experience and develop their potential as community leaders.

Project with Colombia’s National Ministry of Education where ENF oversees and provides pedagogical technical assistance and guidance to 7 implementers of the Escuela Nueva Learning Circles Program™, developed by ENF, and adopted by the Ministry of Education as a national educational policy for displaced, migrant children of conflict. This project aims seeks for ENF´s supervision and technical orientation for a gradual national expansion of this successful program.

For over 50 years, internal armed conflict has taken a huge toll on a country with one of the highest levels of income inequality in Latin America. During the last fifteen years, more than three million people, 83 per cent of whom are children and women, have been forced to flee from their homes to safer areas. Approximately 14,000 boys and girls have been recruited by illegal armed groups, further fuelling the conflict.

Save the Children has been working with Colombian partner organizations and local and national governments since 1991 to improve access and quality of education for vulnerable children, youth and their families.

Our Target
Save the Children, along with our partners, will support the Colombian government as it works to:
• Provide child-centred teacher training to make education more relevant.
• Increase the number of alternative educational programmes
• Provide a quality education to displaced children

Our direct work with partners and local governments will ensure that more than 2,000 children affected by forced displacement and conflict gain access to basic education, and that more than 600,000 boys and girls will benefit from more relevant education.We will also work with children to inform and educate them about the risks and dangers of abuse and violence so that they can learn to identify when their right to life and freedom from violence are threatened.

Save the Children is committed to raising more than 6.8 million dollars to help children and youth in Colombia.

Community Sensitization on the Rights of Women and Children: Raises awareness through education and take actions to address human rights violations of conflict-affected women and children.

Local Peace Building Initiatives: Educates young people on the linkage between environmental rights and peace building activities in eastern DRC.

Child Soldier Project: Prevents, through education, the recruitment of children into armed conflict and reintegrate former child soldiers academically, socially and economically.

Save the Children will need the international community to create a climate where the Democratic Republic of Congo can deliver its education targets for 2010.We will support the Congolese government as it works to:

• increase its funding for education to 25% of national budget
• bring all children formerly involved with militias back into their schools and communities
• close the gender gap in education.

The direct practical work with community and government partners will help 79,000 more Congolese children go to school by 2010, and offer these plus 184,000 others a better and more relevant education.

• Training for AMEP Teachers in Bilingual and Intercultural Education: To implement trainings in bilingual, bicultural education for teachers working in schools served by the network's member organizations.
• Weaving Knowledge: Scholarships and Extracurriculuar Support for Mayan Children in Joyabaj: To implement support workshops and monthly mentoring visits to Mayan students and their families.
• Rights Action - Support to Community Education Programs in Guatemala: To support Rights Action's Community Education Program as it improves the quality, vision, and impact of selected model community-based education partners through a combination of training, technical assistance, and mutual learning.

The CMBM is committing to implement the first phase of this expansion, which over the next 18 months will train 150 local leaders who will provide counseling and support services to 25,000 children in UNRWA schools.

Our program will provide these children, for the first time, with a " safe place," small educational groups in which they can express and share the stress, vulnerability, hurt, anger, and hopelessness they feel and learn to help and heal themselves. In these groups, the children will receive simple, easy-to-apply instruction in practical techniques of self-care (including meditation, guided imagery, biofeedback and yoga) and self-expression (through words, drawings and movement). Based on previous research, this twelve-week long intensive small group experience (with periodic follow-ups) will give these schoolchildren significant, sustainable benefits, including decreased levels of anxiety and anger, improved mood and concentration, and an enhanced capacity to work effectively in school and to help themselves and their family members.

We believe this program will help the most traumatized members of the next generation of Gazans (as many as 70-80% of these children have been estimated to have posttraumatic stress disorder) to achieve the level of emotional stability, personal confidence, and intellectual and imaginative capacity— as well as the ability to feel compassion and forgiveness— that will enable them to effectively progress through the education system and to participate in the future as productive and creative members of Palestinian civil society.

The Center for Mind-Body Medicine's long term goal is to build this initial expansion into the largest intensive psychosocial program for war-traumatized children ever implemented. Over several years, CMBM aims to build on its 2007 CGI commitment to provide a powerful, educational, and therapeutic group experience to as many as 225,000 schoolchildren— almost all of whom live in refugee camps and attend the schools of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

To provide basic and advanced technical training for young people, the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW), on behalf of GTZ, is conducting a vocational training programme for young people between 15 and 25. The 18-month programme at a training centre near Freetown (Kissy) offers courses in motor vehicle mechanics, air conditioner maintenance, electrical engineering and welding. Through the use of mobile vocational training units, youths in rural areas are also to acquire fundamental skills in these areas, as well as in repairing pumps and in metalworking.The non-formal education program is oriented to the needs of youths and young adults in rural areas. These needs are determined on the basis of the capacity of various employment sectors to absorb job-seekers. The programme offers its services in four components:

• Apprenticeships in community training centres (five district level centres promoted)
• Community-based teaching of functional literacy in conjunction with relevant employment or income-generating activities (25 centres promoted in village communities)
• Socio-educational counselling of young people in community training centres and in literacy-teaching measures linked to micro-projects
• Capacity-building at all levels: ministries, district administrations, school committees, non-governmental organisations, youth social workers, and tradespeople

Vocational training and functional literacy curricula are reconfigured and oriented to the market, i.e. to the demands of the job market and the sales market for the products and services of self-employed entrepreneurs. The curricula are devised in cooperation with education ministry and university experts and are strongly aligned with the demands of economic reality. Basic education and functional literacy programmes are to impart the skills the learners need to sustainably solve their survival problems. The work is based on the results of the National Employment Survey conducted in 2006 as part of the programme for Promotion of Employment for Marginalised Youths. It contains information about the employment sectors with the most job potential and the skills they require.  

• Concerned Children and Youth Association: Identifies the needs of orphans and vulnerable children in northern Uganda, and to provide 40 OVC with bee-keeping training and materials and school tutoring.
• United Movement to End Child Soldiering- Peacebuilding and Education Project: Promotes peace education and support teacher training and scholarships for young people in Northern Uganda.
• Gulu Youth for Action – Participation is Real: Youth Education and Environment: Provides academic support to at risk girls in the conflict affected region and educates young people on human rights.
• Friends of Orphans - Let Me Do It Myself: Provides vocational training and academic support and tutoring to formerly abducted child mothers and orphans
• Pader Concerned Youth Association- Human Rights, HIV/AIDS and Life-Skills Program: Increases awareness of human rights, gender-based violence, HIV/AIDS, sports and culture among youth in Pader district.

Save the Children needs the international community to create a climate in which Uganda accepts that it must - and can - deliver its education targets for 2010. We will support the Uganda n government as it works to:

• increase the number of children who can afford to complete basic education
• recruit and improve the training of more teachers in remote, conflict-affected areas
• address the issues which keep girls from attending school.

Our goal is for more than 260,000 children in conflict-affected and post-conflict areas in northern and western Uganda to receive improved quality of education by 2010. Of those, 166,000 children will have gained new access to basic education.

Nationally, one of ASYMCA’s keystone programs is Operation Hero, a program that aids children from six to 12 years of age who are experiencing temporary difficulty in school, both socially and academically. Often these difficulties are caused by frequent moves and family disruption due to deployments. Referred by teachers, parents, or school officials, the semester-long program provides after-school tutoring and mentoring assistance in a small group with certified teachers. Operation Hero facilitates a positive environment, encourages responsible behavior, and gets children back on track in school, both academically and socially.

Operation Hero has served 5,000 students since its inception, and has expanded to now serve more than 1,300 students per year. Operation Hero is sponsored by General Dynamics, Sodexho USA, and the Marine Corps.