Challenge? What Challenge?
Monday, March 13, 2006By: Jason Nyantino
Students arrive at the New Waberi Primary School, located in Garowe, the capital of Somalia's Puntland state. Like most Somali children, these students face challenges such as illiteracy, war and poverty.
Moreover, these students live in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. At one time, they had little hope for a proper education.
Inside the school there is not a single gloomy face in sight. Students are happy and energetic. They smile proudly. Despite living in meager conditions, they feel as though they are the wealthiest kids in the world. Their pride has been restored and their challenges are now being overcome with an education. Students now have a bright future thanks to ADRA Somalia.
Like many Somali villages the instability and political fragmentation in the country left Waberi with very little capacity to deliver a quality education to children and adults alike. The country’s education system is in shambles and a generation of children without basic education has emerged compounding the problem of adult illiteracy. Unskilled and illiterate, these children and adults face a bleak and disadvantaged future in a country whose adult illiteracy rate is over 70 percent.
ADRA’s Basic Education Development project was implemented in Somalia to present better opportunities for children to access quality primary education. The result is a brighter outlook.
Students at Waberi School are happy according to the headmaster, Mr. Mohamud Ahmed, because their school’s classrooms and offices have been refurbished as a result of persistent planning and commitment between ADRA and the local Community Education Committee (CEC).
ADRA began by holding a two-day training workshop for the teachers on their roles and responsibilities in school management. ADRA also gave the New Waberi faculty training on coaching skills and lectures on management and implementation of games and sports to encourage more students to enroll. The CEC members were trained on fundraising techniques and how to start income generating activities to help the school generate funds for sustainability.
“We are very grateful for the capacity building efforts that ADRA has done for training our teachers on child-friendly teaching methodologies and also for training the CEC members on school administration and management,” says the local CEC Chairman.
Many schools in Somalia depend on donors for financial and technical support. The local community, however, decided to focus on their goals, and not the obstacles before them. Despite the grinding poverty facing the residents of Waberi village, they were now equipped with innovative fundraising strategies for generating money from within their own local community and their extended community living abroad. Thanks to their fundraising training, the Waberi community was able to reach out and raise $16,000 from Somali expatriates that helped build three classrooms, an office, and a store.
The community’s ability to obtain funds to build a school for their children has been exemplary. This change of focus to raise their own funds is a sure route towards achieving long-term sustainability for schools in Somalia.
“We are very grateful for the support we have received from the community and the donors, especially ADRA, because it is has been through their efforts that we have been able to build these classes”, says Mr. Ahmed.
“We have learned new ways of raising funds and cutting on the expense of erecting the buildings,” continues Mr. Ahmed. “Our brethren living abroad have been instrumental in giving us funds to set up this school but since we can also not just sit there, we put a basket in the school where each one of us throws in whatever little they have to boost this noble effort.”
Together with the CEC chairman, the school has mobilized community members to provide free labor for the ongoing construction in a bid to cut the costs further. Now the school has about 350 students with the numbers threatening to skyrocket. One reason enrollment is so high is that girls, who traditionally have not attended school are starting to enroll in greater numbers.
In response ADRA built a girls’ restrooms for the school as a permanent sign that girls are part of this educational revolution. ADRA also provided supplies such as stationery, textbooks, teaching aids and games equipment that will greatly improve the student’s experience.
The CEC chairman and the entire teaching faculty agree that with this footing and the support ADRA has given the school, they can all face the future with hope and confidence. The success of this school is the result of the sustainability programs that ADRA has put in place to bring primary schools in this region of Somalia back to their feet.
Having convinced themselves that their school has been born from a mixture of dreams, vision and struggle, the New Waberi Primary School faculty is not sitting on their laurels. They have already acquired more land for expansion and are appealing to donors to support them in realizing their ultimate dream of putting up an intermediate school, teaching grades 5 to 8, to benefit the poor children.
This is a story of a community that believes that if there is no struggle, there is no progress. The faces of the children that one meets in this school are the proof. These are faces eager to be transformed and molded by the quality education they are receiving.
The motto of the Waberi community reflects their newfound courage and determination: Challenge? What challenge?
Jason Nyantino is Public Relations Officer, ADRA Somalia
