A child's passport to dignity

About half of schools in Syria, North east  Nigeria, Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Jordan have been disrupted by conflict. These children are then forced to stay are home or are refugees with little or no access to schools. We they continue in this vicious-cycle ? We have to stand up for them. 

More than 300 schools run by the United Nation have been attacked, damaged or rendered inoperable by armed conflict and violence in the Middle East over the past five years, disrupting the education of thousands of children, a new report says.

In Syria, more than half of schools run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, have ceased to function due to damage, access restrictions or the need to use the premises as shelters for displaced families.

More than 400 qualified teachers have left the country, forcing UNRWA to hire untrained teachers, the report says. Most schools have been looted of equipment and learning materials.

Altogether, almost half of UNRWA’s 700 schools in Syria, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Jordan have been badly disrupted by conflict.

Building a world for these children.

Building a world for these children to have a brighter future...

Osun, Students wear church garments to schools

Christian secondary school students in Osun State on Tuesday wore church garments to their schools, in a dramatic but defiant protest against the use of Hijab by female Muslim students.
Students attended Baptist High School, Adeeke in Iwo town of Osun State and Salvation Army Middle School, Alekuwodo, in the church robes.
The state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria has been up against the state government allowing Hijab in schools.

Last week, CAN warned that Christian students in public schools will start wearing church garments to school if Governor Rauf Aregbesola goes ahead to implement a judgment by the state High Court legalizing the use of hijab by Muslim students.
A statement released Friday by CAN chairman, Elisha Ogundiya, said the decision was taken at an emergency meeting of the association’s executive committee, and heads of Churches held in Osogbo on June 7.
“Where the Osun State Government is inclined to implementing the judgment Christian students in all public schools founded by Christians with the toil and sweat of our forefathers in the faith will have no choice but to start wearing Christian garments and vestments as part of their school uniform for the propagation of our own faith given the Justice Saka Oyejide Falola declared right of Muslim Female Students to do same as what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander as well,” the statement read.
“Adherents of other faiths who have their choice to make in this matter can wear theirs as well.”
The association appealed the court ruling, which amongst many things, it said implied that hijab was a means of propagation of Islam which it stated was a fundamental right of Muslim girls and ladies.

They have lost their homes – they must not lose their education

At the world humanitarian summit next week in Istanbul, Turkey, governments have a rare opportunity. By getting behind an initiative aimed at delivering education to some of the world’s most vulnerable children, they could make this a summit that delivers something more than vague promises and a communique that is long on words and short on action.
The initiative comes in the form of a ground-breaking financing mechanism. The education can not wait fund will be launched at the summit by the UN special envoy for education, Gordon Brown, and a group of development agencies, including Unicef, UNHCR – the UN refugee agency – and the Global Partnership for Education.

The aim is to raise $4bn-5bn (£2.7bn-3.5bn) over the next five years to reach children whose education has been disrupted by conflict and other humanitarian emergencies.
We need this initiative for a very simple reason: the current aid architecture for education in emergencies is broken beyond repair.
Consider Syria. In the space of a single primary school generation, the country has gone from education indicators comparable with those in Thailand to levels comparable with South Sudan. Six years of conflict have left some 2.6 million children out of school, either inside Syria or in the neighbouring states.
Describing the international response as inadequate does not do justice to the scale of the shortfall. UN agencies have been responding to a protracted humanitarian crisis in education through chronically under-funded annual appeals to donors. The World Bank’s lending rules have hampered the delivery of concessional finance to middle-income countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. It has taken a protracted effort by the Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, to establish exceptional financing facilities that are delivering modest amounts – commitments to Lebanon’s refugee education strategy are $100m.
 As the international community has fiddled, the education opportunities of an entire generation of Syrian children have burned.
One symptom of the education crisis is the epidemic of child labour. Another is the flight of refugees. Recent research has identified the desperation of parents to secure education for their children as a major reason for undertaking the hazardous journey to Europe.
While the Syria crisis has been in the spotlight, other education emergencies get less attention. Today, one in three children in Central African Republic miss out on education because of violence, displacement and a shortage of teachers. Children among the forgotten refugee populations of Burundi, Eritrea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have not only lost their homes. They have also lost the chance for an education that could enable them to rebuild their lives. Conflict in Yemen has pushed the education system into freefall.

Armed conflict is not the only problem. When disasters strike – floods in Pakistan, earthquakes in Nepal and Haiti or Ebola in west Africa, the restoration of education is often viewed as a second order priority. In 2013, less than 2% of humanitarian appeals were directed to education. Yet parents and children affected by armed conflict and other emergencies consistently view education as a priority.
Based on a proposal framed by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the Education Cannot Wait fund could mark a step towards changing this. For the first time, the facility would establish a pooled resource dedicated to education provision in emergencies. Operating under the auspices of the UN and the Global Partnership on Education, it could help curtail the turf wars and coordination problems that blight education.

OAU Non-Teaching staffs protest over new VC's appointment

All activities at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife were paralysed on Wednesday when the non-teaching staffs of the university locked down the instituton to protest over the appointment of the new vice chancellor, Prof Ayobami Taofeek Salami for the Institution despite court order restraining it.

The Governing Council of the OAU had on Tuesday announced the appointment of Professor Ayobami Salami as the new vice chancellor of the institution.

Vehicular movement came to a halt and was disrupted causing traffic gridlock for over three hours within the institution.

The protest which is the second in less than a week was started around 8:30 am, which was led by the Chairman of Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities, (SSANU), Comrade Ademola Oketunde and Chairman Non Academic Staff Union of Universities, (NASUy, Comrade Wole Odewumi.

The two union leaders expressed shock at the violation of court order by by the Governing Council.

The protest started in February this year when eligible candidates were signifying interest in the post of the new VC which became vacant on the 23rd of this month.

The protest after some hours turned to a prayer session where they were calling for God's intervention.

The union members also later staged their protest to the house of the VC, which was alleged to have been renovated with N150 million.

Addressing the it's members, Comrade Oketunde described the appointment of Prof Salami as the new VC of the university as a 'contempt of court order'.

"We started this protest since Tuesday when we heard that the university governing council has appointed a new VC without waiting for the court judgement we filled against them. ‎The court has ordered them not to appoint any VC until they give their judgement but they went ahead to fault this order" he said

Oketunde disclosed that the union has filled a contempt of court against the university management and it's governing council, adding that the case will be for hearing on Friday.

Efforts of the outgoing VC, Prof Bamitale Omole and the Chairman of the Institution's Governing Council, Prof Ndoma Egba to douse the tension, were not successful,

However, Public Relations Officer, OAU,Abiodun Olanrewaju said the guidelines for appointment of the new VC was never violated.

Olarewaju noted that the institution's council followed due process and ensured transparency in‎ the appointment of Prof Salami as the new VC.

Ibadan School inaugurates Think Tank Group

The Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (ISGPP) has inaugurated its multi-disciplinary Technical Core Think Tank.

The group, which has 25 members, was inaugurated on Wednesday at the school’s board room in Bodija, Ibadan.

The Think Tank is made up of experts on governance, media, institutional reform, macroeconomics, energy economics, trade and tariff policy, demography, social statistics, local government and rural development, legal reforms and jurisprudence, science and technology policy, crime, criminality and security, foreign policy, labour and industrial relations, education, youth activism, gender, ICT, spirituality, religion and ethics, entrepreneurship, business and investment analysis, banking and finance, among others.

While inaugurating the body, the school’s Executive Vice Chairman, Dr. Tunji Olaopa, explained the mission of the school which he said was to rethink the governance space in Nigeria and Africa, so as to “get government to work better.”

According to him, in this era of change when the nation is seeking to migrate from the bad policies of the past, the school, which he said is research-driven, will mobilize expertise to get those in government to perform optimally.

Dr. Olaopa said the aim of the school was to grow to become a national think tank and resource centre for policy makers.

He said that The Think Tank was at two difference levels, one with Professor Akin Mabogunje as chairman and the other which was being inaugurated.

Among others, he said, the terms of reference of the group was to “brainstorm on topical issues deemed relevant for understanding of Nigeria’s development and democratic challenges and rethinking the direction around which issues of development and democracy can be crafted.”

The technical core group is made up of such scholars and practitioners as Professor CBN Ogbogbo of the Department of History, University of Ibadan; Professor Ayo Olukotun, Dr. Stephen Lawani, Dr. Festus Adedayo, Dr. Omo Aregbeyen of the Department of Economics, University of Ibadan, Dr. Adesina Afolayan of the Department of Philosophy of the same university, Dr. Akeem Amodu of the Lead City University, among others. 

157 years of Secondary School education in Nigeria

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 The CMS Grammar School in Bariga, a suburb of Lagos in Lagos State, is the oldest secondary school in Nigeria, founded on 6 June 1859 by the Church Missionary Society. For decades it was the main source of African clergymen and administrators in the Lagos Colony.

The seed funding for CMS Grammar School, Lagos was made possible by James Pinson Labulo Davies who in April 1859 provided Babington Macaulay with £50 (equivalent of ₦1.34 million as of 2014) to buy books and equipment for the school. With the seed funding Macaulay opened CMS Grammar School on June 6, 1859.

 In 1867, Davies contributed another £100 (₦2.68 million as of 2014) toward a CMS Grammar School Building Fund. 

Other contributors to the CMS Building Fund were non Saros such as Daniel Conrad Taiwo AKA Taiwo Olowo who contributed £50. Saro contributors also included men such as Moses Johnson, I.H. Willoughby, T.F. Cole, James George, and Charles Foresythe who contributed £40.[4] The CMS Grammar School in Freetown, founded in 1848, served as a model.

The school began with six students, all boarders in a small, single story building called the 'Cotton House' at Broad Street. The first pupils were destined to be clergymen. The curriculum included English, Logic, Greek, Arithmetic.

Geometry, Geography, History, Bible Knowledge and Latin. The first principal of the school was the scholar and theologian Babington Macaulay, who served until his death in 1878. He was the father of Herbert Macaulay.When the British colony of Lagos was established in 1861, the colonial authorities obtained most of their African clerical and administrative staff from the school.

Putting smile on the faces of these children

UNICEF & partners have reached 145,977 children (35% girls) with Education in Emergencies this year thanks to our donors.

FG cancels POST UTME ten years after

The Federal Government has scrapped post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations, UTME, as a pre-condition to gaining admission into universities in the country. The government and stakeholders in education sector also pegged 180 as the benchmark for 2016 admission into universities, polytechnics and colleges of education to improve the quality of education in Nigeria. 

These decisions were reached at the 2016 Combined Policy Meeting on Admissions to Universities, Polytechnics and other higher institutions in Nigeria. The Minister of Education , Malam Adamu Adamu,while declaring open the meeting, said since the federal government and stakeholders had confidence in the examinations conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriulation Board, JAMB, there was no need for other examinations to be conducted by universities after JAMB exams.

 He said: “As far as I am concerned, the nation has confidence in what JAMB is doing, the universities should not be holding another examinations and if the universities have any complain against JAMB, let them bring it and then we address it. 

’But if JAMB is qualified enough to conduct tests and they have conducted test, then there will be no need to conduct another test for students to gain admission. “The ministry expects that all candidates given admission must be from JAMB. but JAMB must stop issuing admission letters, JAMB should get in touch with institutions before offering admission to students. ‘’The closing date is November 30th and no university should exceed its admission capacity and any tertiary institution that doesn’t follow the rule, the ministry would start sanctioning them. 

‘’Institutions should stop admitting students into un-accredited courses in their institutions. The institutions should stop writing JAMB to increase their quotas because JAMB cannot do that.” 

The minister also said institutions should stop writing J AMB to increase their quotas as there were relevant agencies to do so. Adamu also reminded the stakeholders that the criteria for admission was still in force, and asked the institutions to adhere to it. “Merit is 45%, catchment area 35% and educational development in less developed states 20%, this is for federal universities and for states universities, merit 40%, catchment 40 % and less developed local governments get 20%,’’ he said. 

The Minister also asked the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board to stop extra charges on several categories of changes on admissions such as the change of course, change of school and others. The Registrar of JAMB, Professor Dibu Ojerinde, while talking to journalists after the meeting, said institutions were free to go above the 180 benchmark. “180 benchmark is even, no one will go below it this year. Universities can go above it.

 This year, we have more than enough candidates because over 1.2 million candidates scored above 180, so we have enough candidates this year. “There won’t be any written post-U TME but they would screen the candidates. It is a necessary thing to screen the candidates. ‘’We agree and the Minister of Education also agrees but the issue of taking another examination is no longer going to happen,” he said.

Alarming rate of African children missing schools to get water

At least 17 million women and girls in Africa collect water every day, which increases their risk of sexual abuse, disease and dropping out of school, a study published yesterday has found.

It is one of the first studies to calculate how many women and children were responsible for water collection in Africa, the researchers said.

Using datasets from the World Bank, the United Nations children's agency UNICEF, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), researchers found that around three million children and 14 million women collect water in sub-Saharan Africa. 

"The absolute number of adult females affected by this practice was a shock to me," Jay Graham, lead author of the study, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 

"I knew it would be large... but I didn't realise it would be that high," added Graham, who is professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University.

The daily practice causes musculoskeletal damage, soft tissue damage and can lead to early arthritis, Graham said.

People also have to contend with water-borne diseases like schistosomiasis, an infection caused by parasitic worms living in fresh water, he said.

Across all 24 countries examined, including Sierra Leone, Malawi and Niger, more girls were tasked with water collection than boys. Women were also the primary water collector in all countries.

Children are pulled out of school for the daily task and many women cannot earn an income because of the time and energy it takes to collect water, Graham said.

A Malian girl carries a water from a water pump in Gao

Since they often need to walk long distances to find water, women and children are also at a higher risk of sexual abuse, he added.

In a statement issued last month, the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone said drought was putting even more pressure on children to find water.

"Children, particularly girls, are out in the street very late at night or as early as 4am in search of water," the statement read.

"This heightens their vulnerability and contributes to increase in teenage pregnancy, child labour, high rates of school dropouts and poor school performance," it said.

Demand for water is expected to increase by 2050 as the world's population is forecast to grow by one-third to more than nine billion, according to the UN.

As climate change strengthens, drought is becoming more frequent and severe in southern Africa, and that - combined with this year's El Nino phenomenon - is taking a heavy toll on rural lives and economies.

"With climate change, it's going to be more of an uphill battle," said Graham. "If there's focused attention on it and resources, we can improve upon the situation but I do think it's going to become more difficult."

But it also crucial to address gender inequality and to recognise the unpaid labour that women do across the globe, he said, which he believes is the underlying issue.

"There is a need to address cultural values and really shifting the belief that women and men are equal too."

The Journey to school.

This isn't  the way it should be!

Authorities in south-west China have vowed to come to the aid of an isolated mountain village after photographs emerged showing the petrifying journey its children are forced to make to get to school.

To attend class, backpack-carrying pupils from Atuler village in Sichuan province must take on an 800-metre rock face, scrambling down rickety ladders and clawing their way over bare rocks as they go.

Images of their terrifying and potentially deadly 90-minute descent went viral on the Chinese internet this week after they were published in a Beijing newspaper.

The photographs were taken by Chen Jie, an award-winning Beijing News photographer whose pictures of last year’s deadly Tianjin explosions were recognised by the World Press Photo awards earlier this year.

Chen used his WeChat account to describe the moment he first witnessed the village’s 15 school children, aged between six and 15, scaling the cliff. “There is no doubt I was shocked by the scene I saw in front of me,” he wrote, adding that he hoped his photographs could help change the village’s “painful reality”.

Chen, who spent three days visiting the impoverished community, said the perilous trek, which he undertook three times, was not for the faint of heart. “It is very dangerous. You have to be 100% careful,” he told the Guardian. “If you have any kind of accident, you will fall straight into the abyss.”

So steep was the climb that Zhang Li, a reporter from China’s state broadcaster CCTV who was also dispatched to the mountain, burst into tears as she attempted to reach Atuler village. “Do we have to go this way?” the journalist said as her team edged its way up the cliff face. “I don’t want to go.”

Api Jiti, the head of the 72-family farming community which produces peppers and walnuts, told Beijing News there had been insufficient room to build a school for local children on the mountaintop.

But the perils were evident. The villager chief told the Beijing News that “seven or eight” villagers had plunged to their deaths after losing their grip during the climb while many more had been injured. He had once nearly fallen from the mountain himself.

The trek to school is now considered so gruelling that the children have been forced to board, only returning to their mountaintop homes to see their families twice a month.

Villager Chen Jigu told reporters the wooden ladders used to move up and down the mountain were, like the village, hundreds of years old. “We replace a ladder with a new one when we find one of them is rotten,” he said.

More than 680 million Chinese citizens have lifted themselves from poverty since the country’s economic opening began in the 1980s but grinding poverty continues to blight the countryside.

In Atuler village, residents reportedly live on less than $1 (70p) a day.

President Xi Jinping has vowed to completely eradicate poverty by 2020 by offering financial support to about 70 million mostly rural people who survive on less than 2,300 yuan (£240) per year. “Although China has made remarkable achievements seen across the world, China remains the world’s biggest developing country,” Xi told a poverty-reduction conference last October. But experts say that number does not take into account the existence of a forgotten class of “new urban poor” that emerged after tens of millions of Chinese workers were laid off in the late 1990s ahead of China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation.

In a recent interview, Dorothy Solinger, a political scientist and urban poverty expert from the University of California, Irvine, said she believed there could be as many as 40 million urban people still living below the poverty line in China’s cities. “In the cities there is new poverty and they don’t talk about that,” Solinger said. “The city poor have been pacified [through limited cash handouts] and I think that satisfies the central government … They are not helping them escape poverty. They are helping them stay minimally alive.”

Here, you have a similar situation in Nigeria and many other African countries.
This might not be your home country but be sure, the situation isn't totally different in where you are.
The change start from you.

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