Based on a UNICEF original story ‘From a Temporary Learning Space to a formal school’

Fourteen-year-old Amadou sits at the front of the class, actively responding to the lesson that his teacher writes on the chalkboard. As playful voices echo off the walls of the bright room, Mr. Salifou asks his students for the correct way to write a past-tense sentence in French.

“Pick me! Pick me!” they shout, holding their blue notebooks into the air.

It’s a joyful scene, but Amadou’s journey has not been easy. For a young teenager, he’s witnessed horrific things. Armed men killed his uncle and forced his family to relocate 62 miles away from their village in Bandiagara to the town of Sévaré, in south-central Mali.

A crisis driven by political instability, insecurity, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic has left over five million children in need of urgent help in Mali.

Countries in crisis around the world face a global learning catastrophe. Amadou is just one of the 222 million crisis-affected children and adolescents worldwide without access to a safe, quality education.

But with investments from Education Cannot Wait (ECW) — the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises — UNICEF Mali is helping girls and boys like Amadou to return to the classroom.