The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) manages refugee camps globally. They ensure refugees receive emergency services such as food and shelter, healthcare, and protection. UNHCR contracts Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) to provide education services to refugees in many parts of the world. JRS provides education services to all refugee camps in Chad. Watoto Read is partnering with JRS to fill the gaps and assist in reducing barriers to education in Chad.
Education is critical to enabling refugees to be self-reliant and productive citizens in their host countries, improves stability, and provides critical psychological support to children who have faced trauma, and yet the majority of children in the camps do not have access to education. Fewer than 50% of children in Chad register to attend school. One of the greatest reasons for this are the lack of resources, including funding, to provide for a quality education.
Current Education Challenges
- Poor Infrastructure: Lack of classrooms, Seating (Benches), Supplies (Writing supplies, paper, textbooks), Bathrooms
- Lack of qualified Teachers: there is a high turnover and most teachers have received no formal educational training
- Programming:
- No science curriculum
- Inadequate mathematics curriculum
- No access to technology
- No library
- Menstrual Hygiene Management: Pre-teen and teenage girls abandon school due to lack of menstrual hygiene supplies and bathroom facilities.
Currently, Watoto Read is working with JRS in the Goz Beida refugee camps in Chad where the relatively forgotten Sudanese refugees from Darfur have been for over 15 years. According to JRS, as of February 2020 there are over 45,000 children in the 3 camps in Goz Beida: Djabal, Goz Amir, Camp Kerfi. Watoto Read believes education is the one resource that can take them from mere survival to a hopeful future of independence.
Join Watoto Read in fighting to provide all refugee children in Chad by seeing how you can GET INVOLVED.