UN Body Supports Northern Ethiopia With Additional $2m Grant

Posted by Eric Ojo African News, Latest Headlines, North Africa Saturday, May 7th, 2022

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – Education Cannot Wait (ECW) the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises has announced the approval of additional $2 million grant for the Northern region of Ethiopia.

The new grant brings the ECW ongoing Investments in Ethiopia to over $30 Million. It also builds on the impact of ECW’s $1 million Tigray response, announced in April 2021, along with the Fund’s ongoing Multi-Year Resilience Programme in the East African country.

The UN body supports quality education outcomes for refugee, internally displaced and other crisis-affected girls and boys, so that no one is left behind. ECW also works through the multilateral system to both increase the speed of responses in crises and connect immediate relief and longer-term interventions through multi-year programming.

In addition, the organisation equally partners with governments, public and private donors, UN agencies, civil society organizations, and other humanitarian and development aid actors to increase efficiencies and end stilted responses.

Meanwhile, conflicts in Northern Ethiopia’s regions of Afar, Amhara and Tigray, have pushed children and adolescents out of school and are fueling humanitarian needs in the region and the ECW $2 million First Emergency Response Grant will reach more than 20,000 refugee and displaced, as well as host community children and adolescents

The 12-month grant will be delivered by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and local strategic partners, focusing on early childhood education, primary education, accelerated learning programmes and secondary education, in and around refugee camps, as well as a settlement in the region.

The interventions are intended to primarily target refugees in the camps of Aysaita and Serdo in Afar, Alemwach site in Amhara, and Mai Aini and Adi Harush in Tigray. Approximately 62 percent of the people to be reached with this assistance are girls, and 10 percent are children with disabilities.

The ECW investment will further support the construction and rehabilitation of classrooms including temporary learning spaces and latrines to increase access to safe, protective and gender-sensitive learning environments for emergency-affected children. Innovative cash transfers will incentivize families to return their children to school, as part of the wide back-to-school efforts.

The programme also includes the recruitment and training of teachers and school administrators and the provision of individual learning materials. Teacher training will cover subject knowledge, curriculum, planning and pedagogy topics. The funding will also support strengthening of school and community capacity to provide gender and crisis-sensitive education for emergency-affected girls, boys and children with disabilities.

As a result of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict, children and adolescents in Afar, Amhara and Tigray have missed education opportunities. To date, approximately 13 percent of previously enrolled refugee children and youth in Ethiopia have not returned to school.

Director of ECW, Yasmine Sherif said refugee and host-community children and youth are in urgent need of safe and protective learning environments, adding that children and adolescents face high risks of recruitment into armed groups, human trafficking, radicalization and exploitation

“They have already lost their homes and loved ones. We cannot allow them to also drop out of school and thereby destroy their very last hope: an education that will empower them to arise from their dispossession and suffering”, she said.

Similarly, the UNHCR Representative in Ethiopia, Mamadou Dian Balde also noted that education does not only provide protection to children and support them to return to normalcy, it is also beneficial to their mental and psychological health, which according to him, are critical for effective learning.

“ECW’s valuable funding will support interventions to address the educational needs of the affected girls and boys as quickly as possible and will significantly contribute to strengthen the co-existence between the displaced communities and their hosts in Northern Ethiopia”, he added.