Education Cannot Wait and Partners Launch Multi-Year Education Programme to Deliver Emergency Education to 30,042 Children in Oromia, Ethiopia
ECW invests initial ETB 82.14 million and Geneva Global Provided about 6 million ETB on cash and cost share of partners totaling 14.5 million to roll out the first-year program.
28 January 2021, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – The Government of Ethiopia – Ministry of Education (MOE), UNICEF, Geneva Global, and Education Cannot Wait (ECW) – the global fund dedicated to education in emergencies – launched a new multi-year program that aims to provide education to over 30,042 children and adolescents in crisis-affected regions of the country. The ECW program coordination unit of MOE, UNICEF, and Geneva Global HQ will provide technical support and follow up on the design and accomplishment of the project in four woredas of eastern Oromia and one woreda of western Oromia.
Geneva Global and the five consortium members – Oromia Development Association (ODA), Development Expertise Centers (DEC), Imagine One Day (IOD), Humanity & Inclusion (HI), and Whiz Kids Workshop – won the competitive bid and obtained seed funding from ECW through UNICEF (82.14 million Birr) to implement the education program in five districts in Oromia regional state. The seed project upon successful track record aims to scale up by mobilizing additional resources from public and private donors to be fully funded and reach all targeted children and youth. The outcomes and the program interventions are aligned to the National Education Reform and Education in Emergencies Strategy and to the country’s Humanitarian Response Plan.
The project will improve access to education for vulnerable children severely impacted by the crisis. It will also prevent learning loss, limit the risk of dropouts, and reduce exposure to risks of child labor and forced marriage. The project appreciates that investing in education is critical to give girls and boys the opportunity to engage in society and realize their full potential to become active and productive citizens.
In its first year, the Education Cannot Wait project will focus on returning 8,274 internally displaced children to school and operating conventional pre-school and primary classes along with accelerated Speed School classes. The project will require further the renovation of school structures that were demolished during the security crisis. The project will also address the COVID-19 pandemic, which further resulted in the closure of all schools in Ethiopia for several months. Overall, the project will help the region strengthen its efforts to support education in response to the recent emergency.
Geneva Global Ethiopia in partnership with its implementing and technical partners will accelerate its actions and boost efforts toward greater educational results in realizing better education in safe schools and reintegrate out-of-school children, especially the most marginalized girls and children with disabilities.
The components of the project’s focus will be to strengthen the capacity of the teachers to use active, student-centered instruction to give all children recovering from the crisis the chance to learn and excel in their studies and life. This will include children with hinderances and overaged children who still desire to have a basic education. The second group will enroll in Geneva Global’s widely renowned Speed School Program, which has now permitted over 200,000 formerly out-of-school primary school-aged children to re-enter the government education system with success and fulfillment.
Geneva Global Ethiopia is the country office of Geneva Global, Inc., an international philanthropy advising firm located in Paoli, Pennsylvania, USA.
