26 January 2009
Living in a country where only about 500 girls finish school each year, on paper the odds against Martha achieving her one great ambition are pretty high. But the 19-year-old is determined that, through hard work, one day she will become a doctor.
Many other young people in Southern Sudan have similar ambitions. They may have been born into poverty, and endured astonishing hardships, but they haven't given up believing in the value of an education.
Fortunately for Martha, her school – Majak Akon primary – is one of 46 in this part of the country supported by the Rewrite the Future project.
A better way of life
The project, which is run by the development agency Save the Children and backed by DFID funding, provides school places to children who might otherwise miss out on an education. In this once war-torn region, this means, in particular, girls, disabled children and former child soldiers.
Two central elements of the project are a drive to train more teachers to a professional standard and an effort to get parents fully behind their children's education. Teacher training has seen thousands of people, women as well as men, acquire the skills to help unschooled children catch up on years of missed lessons.
And to change parental attitudes, each participating school has set up special volunteer groups. These go out into local communities, spreading the message about how life-changing an education can be.
Martha is an active member of her school's team. "We go from house to house in the village and talk to parents about sending their children to school – especially girls. And we also try to be good examples of how girls can benefit from education," she says.
"We persuade parents by telling them that life after school will be better than just living in the village. When we tell them how good the income will be when we get a job and how much employees are paid, they become interested."
From battlefield to classroom
The statistics show that the words of Martha and her fellow team-members haven't fallen on deaf ears. Across Southern Sudan, girls' enrolment is rising by around 20% a year (30% in Save the Children's schools).
In addition, more children with disabilities and from disadvantaged ethnic groups are now going to school. The same is true of the children of refugees and internally displaced people.
The benefits of getting these children into school are far-reaching. In a nation that has been torn apart by conflict, quality education for all is a crucial step towards long-lasting peace.
For ex-soldiers like Luka, for example, the Rewrite the Future project has done exactly what its name promises. He was recruited as a child soldier by the Sudan People's Liberation Army at the age of 11, where the closest he got to an education was being taught how to fight. Three times he went to the frontline, and though he says now that he was never scared, he witnessed boys his own age killed in action. Escaping from the army at 13, he spent weeks walking through dense forest to get back to his family.
Now Luka is in the fifth year of Madhol primary school. His past meant that it took a while for the other students to accept him, but eventually he settled in. Though the students don't always have enough to eat, and a lack of facilities means they often have to take classes outside, Luka enjoys the lessons, especially English, and he feels comfortable in the newly constructed schoolrooms. Life is hard, this experienced young man admits, but, thanks to Rewrite the Future, it is getting better.
Facts and stats
- Save the Children first received a DFID Partnership Programme Agreement (PPA) in 2001. The current PPA runs from 1 April 2008 until 31 March 2011 and is worth £23,370,000.
- In Northern Bahr el Ghazal state and Upper Nile state, more than 30,000 children are getting an education as a result of the project. In 2007, 1,184 teachers were trained by Save the Children, 241 of whom were women, and 475 classrooms and 214 toilets were constructed.
- Thanks to the project, total enrolment for both formal and non-formal education increased from 32,231 in 2006 to 66,397 in 2007. Girls’ enrolment increased from 11,739 to 19,740 over this same period.
- The project set up 211 children’s clubs in 2007. Twenty of these are involved in child rights advocacy and 33 in social advocacy. One hundred and eleven parent teacher associations have also been established.
- The project uses Accelerated Learning methods to squeeze eight years of education into four. Following its successful use by Save the Children, the government of Southern Sudan is now implementing Accelerated Learning on a wider scale.