Listed below are feature stories detailing the efforts of students, teachers, communities and the development professionals community to restore education systems in countries around the globe.
NEW YORK, USA, 27 July 2011 – The floods that hit Pakistan one year ago are considered to be the worst in its history. Triggered by the annual monsoon rains, the water floods claimed hundreds of lives, destroyed 2 million homes and washed away more than 2 million hectares of crops. Among the thousands of buildings lost in the floods, 10,000 were schools, heavily impacting the education of children in Pakistan.
Children and families continue to cope – and rebuild their lives – a year after devastating monsoon floods struck Pakistan. This is one in a series of stories on their situation, one year on.
By David Youngmeyer
NOWSHERA, Pakistan, 1 August 2011 – In July 2010, when floods reached the village of Kheshgi Bala, Maryam’s school – located right next door to the Kabul River – sat directly on the front line. Normally a sleeping giant, the river swelled with the intense monsoon rains and surged onto the land, filling the school with up to three metres of water and half a metre of mud.
NEW YORK, 28 July 2011 – Since 2007, the Education in Emergencies and Post-Crisis Transition (EEPCT) programme – a partnership among UNICEF, the Government of the Netherlands and the European Commission – has aimed to support countries in emergency and post-crisis transition situations as they seek to establish a viable path of sustainable progress towards quality basic education for all.
Education for peace, citizenship, life skills, disaster management and other emerging issues
In 2008, UNICEF, together with the Sierra Leone Ministry of Education and the national Teacher Training institutions, developed the “Emerging Issues” Teacher Training Programme.
BENGHAZI, Libya, 26 July 2011 – Aisha and Aya in Benghazi, Hassan in Al-Bayda and Haya from Nalut all tell me the same thing: They want to go back to school. In fact, virtually every child I speak with in Libya expresses hope for a return to the classroom as soon as possible.
Since the outbreak of conflict here five months ago, most of the country’s schools have closed, leaving the education of nearly 2 million children under the age of 18 in flux – and an academic year lost.
GRAND GEDEH, Liberia, 20 July – In a nation still recovering from a ruinous civil war – a place where many people have no access to electricity, safe water or health care – hundreds of communities have opened their doors to refugees from neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire.
Eight months after a political crisis erupted in that country, more than 150,000 Ivorians remain in Liberia. Most of them are being hosted by families in remote villages dotting the Liberia-Côte d’Ivoire border.
