A non-governmental organisation (NGO), Education Cannot Wait (ECW) has renewed multi-year investment that has exceeded its targets and reached over 400,000 children and adolescents with quality, holistic education in areas affected by the crisis in North-East Nigeria with up to $15 million.
On a high-level mission in Nigeria, ECW executive director, Yasmine Sherif, accompanied by high-level representatives from the governments of Germany and Norway, announced a planned $15 million allocation to renew the ECW Multi-Year Resilience Programme in the North-East of the country. The funding is subject to ECW’s executive committee approval.
On the mission, Dr Heike Kuhn, co-chair of the ECW Executive Committee and Head of Education Division at Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Merete Lundemo, co-chair of the ECW Executive Committee and special envoy for Education in Crisis and Conflict for Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and ECW’s executive director Yasmine Sherif met with senior government officials, including the minister of education, Prof Tahir Mamman, and Borno State governor, Prof Babagana Umara Zulum, and aid partners.
In coordination with the Borno State government to ensure the right to education for girls and boys, the delegation travelled to the North-East, where the violence of the Boko Haram insurgency and other armed groups has disrupted the education of nearly two million school-age children.
Attacks against schools and other grave violations of children’s rights are regularly registered in the region. Thousands of children and youth – in particular girls and young women – have been abducted. Many girls have been enslaved and sexually exploited and boys have been forced to become child soldiers.
In Maiduguri, the delegation visited communities affected by the conflict and other interconnected crises and saw first-hand the positive impact of ECW’s initial Multi-Year Resilience Programme (2021-2024), delivered in coordination and jointly by the Norwegian Refugee Council, Save the Children and UNICEF.
The delegation also met with survivors of conflict-related sexual violence who are co-creating a new innovative project launched by the Global Survivors Fund with funding support from ECW.
The initiative provides formal and non-formal education as a form of reparation for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence and their children.
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