Ikotos, a beautiful rural region nestled in the Imontong Mountains on the border between Southern Sudan and Uganda was devastated by the violent conflict. As a base for the rebel group Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the area became infamous for its violence. In 2005 the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed, bringing respite from violence but the conflict has left a legacy of poverty and deprivation.
We know how important education is to youth in the U.K. But in Sudan, education is vital to the recovery of a region. Education will enable Ikotos’s next generation to escape a life of poverty and lead prosperous lives. The future of the region will depend on the young generation becoming doctors, teachers, entrepreneurs. Conflicts flourish where opportunity is stifled so education will be vital to future peace and prosperity.
Where are the Teachers?
UNICEF has launched an initiative to get children back to school but there is a significant and un-addressed gap in teacher training.
Education was near non-existent during the civil war and has been slow to recover. Schooling mostly takes place in temporary shacks or under trees with limited or no teaching resources. Only 67 out of 353 primary school teachers in the Ikotos region received any training at all. Not only are most of the teachers untrained but some have not completed even primary school education. Few have access to basic teaching materials. Without sufficiently trained teachers, increasing the rate of school attendance will be ineffective. With 11,809 pupils in Ikotos needing education, this is a desperate situation and a severe block to Ikotos’s recovery.
Hope for the Future
Thanks to a direct grant from World Emergency Relief (WER), local NGO All Nations Christian Care (ANCC) is now building a teacher training college. With three rooms, two teacher trainers and an array of teaching resources, the school represents a future for the education services in Ikotos.
The project has secured sponsorship from the Government of South Sudan to train 50 new teachers every year. The training centre aims to be self-sustainable within 2 years. Without trained teachers, education will be severely limited.
Many of the men and women who will receive training have been tragically affected by the civil war and the new centre will give them a chance to leave their turbulent pasts behind and build new stable livelihoods. But more than this, by ensuring that good quality education is available to the next generation of Ikotos, the training centre will help the region to overcome its recent past and the poverty created by the conflict.
World Emergency Relief
+44 (0) 844 249 2129
Overseas please call +44 20 7839 3854)
