Panafrican News Agency

Mali launches national annual children schooling campaign

The campaign is in response to the high rate of non-schooled children and for their access to special education needs, said the same sources.

According to the latest UNICEF estimations, more than two million children, aged between five and 18 years in schooling age, are still out of the education system.

The UN organisation said that the most exposed to that school exclusion were women, children of the most vulnerable and poor families, those displaced and living in zones affected by the crisis where more than 900 schools were still closed.

According to the Malian minister of Education, to eradicate the phenomenon of non-schooling of children, 4,700 school boys aged between 12 and 17 years were trained on the gathering of data, between August and September 2019 in Bamako and in all Mali’s regions.

Thanks to the "Edu Trac" innovation, those ‘’ambassador youths’’ of the 2019-2020 school year were trained to monitor the return of their unschooled friends through mobile phones.

They will also undertake a community sensitization session on the importance of education all across Mali. The goal is not to leave any non-schooled child out of school.

The young school boys will also carry out door-to-door campaign, sensitize their families, community through inclusive community dialogues, radio programmes to show the good example to non-schooled and unschooled children.

They are backed by their elder brothers of the second decade (JDD) trained also to make a direct plea for the return to school of their unschooled colleagues.

"Every child deserves to be in a quality school that responds to their needs. Every child deserves also to be able to have a dream, take further studies, and have support from his peers, family, and community to achieve their full potential. Every child deserves also at adulthood to be able to contribute positively to the development of their community, countries, educate their own children," said the UNICEF deputy representative in Mali, Felix Ackebo, who invited the young ambassadors to continue being the voice of voiceless children.

In a statement issued and received by PANA, the UNICEF representative in Mali, Mrs Lucia Elmi, said that education must not be a privilege but a constitutional right for every boy and girl.

On the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of the Convention on children’s rights, Mrs Elmi said that it was time for the government and its technical and financial partners to reengage to ensure inclusive education for every child in Mali.

The right for education is included in Article 17 of the Constitution of 25 February 1992 and in the Orientation Law on Education, said the Secretary of State to the Minister of Education in charge of the promotion and integration of bilingual education, Moussa Boubacar Bah.

This priority, he said, must materialize itself through the recent adoption of the 2nd generation of the ten-year development programme for the education sector and vocational training (PRODEC2) for 2019-2028.

He said that PRODEC2 was in accord with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the year 2030, with the 2063 African Union Agenda and the strategic framework for economic revival and sustainable development (CREDD 2019-2023).

The programme also takes into consideration the education needs of young children and teenagers, including those living with a handicap.

"Despite the several efforts made by the Malian government and the technical and financial partners, challenges still remain," said Bah who added that the 2016-2017 statistic date showed that more than 1.7 million children aged between 7 and 15 years, girls in the majority, had left school or were non-schooled.

 

-0-     PANA     GT/BEH/SOC/MSA/RA    14Oct2019