ADDRESSING THE MULTI-FACETED HUMANITARIAN NEEDS IN EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN AFFECTED BY THE CRISIS IN THE NW/SW REGIONS OF CAMEROON
In the northwest region of Cameroon, a generation of children have grown and lived in a setting where formal education is restricted. this restriction is due to the Anglophone crisis that began in 2016 and separatist fighters having formal schools as their main target. over the years, a number of children have been recruited to join the course, others have been kidnapped, murdered and raped as well as their teachers these are life threatening situations, causing these individuals to forcefully to move from their homes to other places to find refuge, becoming internally displaced persons (IDP’s) and refugees.
From august 2024, GPA in partnership with UNICEF and sponsorship from ECHO, began mobilization in some 6 sub-divisions in the NWR (Bamenda 1,2&3, Oku, Ako, Babessi, Balikumbat and Nkambe) towards the implementation of a program which provides an opportunity for out of school children within the ages 6-9 return to school. children will be able to acquire knowledge through informal education, temporal learning spaces will be identified and constructed as well as these learning spaces will be equiped, competent facilitators will be identified and trained to better educate these children and most importanly, teaching and learning materials will be provided for to beneficiaries and facilitators. To this effect, staffs from the GPA office embarked on the mobilization process through door-to-door campaigns, community meetings and awareness sessions.
By October 2024, over 3000 out of school children were identified in these 6 sub-divisions and learning materials from the UNICEF supply division were being distributed to these beneficiaries.
