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Our Children, Our Future

Education Cannot Wait celebrates World Children’s Day with inspiring stories from Colombia, Lebanon, and Mali

By Education Cannot Wait

November 20^th, 2022

World Children’s Day offers us the opportunity to celebrate inclusion for every child. It’s our chance to promote equality and advocate for their rights around the world.

An inclusive education provides these girls and boys with the opportunity to learn and reach their full potential. For the 222 million children and adolescents caught in conflict, displaced by climate-related disasters and living on the frontlines of the globe’s worst humanitarian crises, education is, in fact, life-saving.

As the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and our strategic partners stand up for every one of the children who urgently need education support.

These joint programmes are providing holistic educational opportunities to children with disabilities in Colombia, child refugees from Syria in Lebanon, and internally displaced children in Mali.

COLOMBIA

Ten-year-old Sammy from Venezuela wakes up every morning asking if she is going to the ECW-funded school in her neighborhood in La Guajira, Colombia.

Sammy has always been a dreamer and a fighter.

Despite facing adversity throughout her life, she has never given up. When she was only two years old, her family found out she couldn’t walk. Ever since, she has spent her life trying to work around her disability. The journey hasn’t been easy. After fleeing her home country and settling in Colombia, the young refugee wasn’t able to attend school.

But now, through an ECW-funded programme implemented by Save the Children Colombia, Sammy is back to a safe learning environment. She is attending the Child Friendly Spaces, which provides her with classes that boost basic literacy, numeracy and social emotional skills.

Sammy practices one of her lessons at the ECW-funded learning space in her newfound community in Colombia. Photo © Save the Children Colombia/María Hernández

“It has been incredible to see Sammy’s significant learning gains with these classes. She has shown us that when you have dreams you can make them a reality. She has every desire to learn and have a life like any other girl her age would,” says Sammy’s mother.

Today, she dreams of one day becoming a doctor or a chef.

LEBANON

Thirteen-year-old Yara and eleven-year-old Jana quickly write in their notebooks while occasionally glancing over at a mobile phone for instructions.

Like millions of others in their home country of Syria, the sisters were forced to flee due to violence.

But their situation hasn’t stopped them from dreaming.

“When I grow up I want to be a doctor, I want to help the sick,” says Jana, her eyes sparkling with ambition as her sister Yara adds that she also wants to help people.

After settling in their new home in Lebanon, Yara and Jana had almost lost all hope of attending school. Their journey coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to school closures, leaving children out of the classroom and putting the most vulnerable children at risk of never returning.

With ECW funding, Save the Children Lebanon and two local partners, Mouvement Social and Al-Ribat Association, implemented a basic literacy and numeracy programme. Through this programme, teachers harnessed technology during the pandemic to give supplementary exercises and follow-up lessons to children. They were also able to support students using techniques and tools acquired from their anti-harassment, child safeguarding, disability inclusion and social emotional learning training.

The two Syrian refugee sisters study remotely from their mobile phone. Photo © Save the Children/Shkeir

“I study Arabic and French. My favorite subject is math, although my dream is to become a lawyer,” says Yara.

Thanks to ECW, the sisters are one step closer to realizing their dreams.

MALI

Fourteen-year-old Amadou sits at the front of the class, actively responding to the lesson that his teacher, Mr. Salifou, writes on the chalkboard. As playful voices echo off the walls of the bright room, Mr. Salifou asks the children in his class 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 to an education 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.

They settled in Sarema, where Oumar, Amadou’s dad, works as a security guard at a local bank to help pay for housing and school.

Amadou and his family’s story speaks for over 400,000 internally displaced people in Mali, 64% of whom are children.

Thanks to an ECW-funded programme implemented by UNICEF Mali, over 100,000 children and adolescents like Amadou have been able to access quality education in crisis-affected regions. Teachers have not only received remedial training to facilitate re-integration of children like Amadou, but also psychosocial support training to better help their students, many of whom are victims of violence and trauma.

“When I grow up, I will be a deputy, and the return of peace to Mali will be my first priority,” says Amadou.

He’s had to work hard to make up for lost time, but hopes to get his diploma in three years. Eventually, he wants to return to his home school and be reunited with his friends.

Amadou and his family sit outside their new home in Sarema, Mali. Photo © UNICEF/Keïta

AN INVESTMENT IN THE LEADERS OF TOMORROW

Leading up to ECW’s High-Level Financing Conference taking place on February 16-17, 2023 in Geneva, ECW and its global partners are calling on world leaders, donors, governments, private sector companies, high-net-worth individuals and other advocates to turn their commitments into action.

The conference is a unique and opportune moment for leaders to make contributions to ECW and its global promise of inclusive and quality education for all, as outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals.

The #222MillionDreams✨📚 of crisis-affected children and adolescents cannot wait. Working together, their dreams can be a reality.

Students in Mali raise their hands as they wait eagerly to be called on by their teacher to answer a question. Photo © UNICEF/Keïta

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