Nov 20, 2015 Thousands of internally displaced children in Malakal have been out of school since the crisis in South Sudan started in 2013. In response to this, several aid agencies have set up learning centers within the IDP sites to give children hope for a future after the conflict.
Stephen Deng, a school registrar at one of the sites, said:
“We were working at the old POC. Now we are in the new extension and now we again start a new phase of registration because there are more new children to add to the old registered. We decided that it should be a new registration and we have started lessons so we need to know the exact figures of all the children, after which we can raise the report to UNICEF to supply books and other items,”
Parents were also encouraged to take an active role in the registration process.
Mary James, a mother at the camp said:
“When my children come alone to register they get side-tracked. I would like them to concentrate on their lessons well. They may try to lie to me that they are from school but in actual fact, have only been playing outside school. This is why I brought them to register, and also so I can tell their teacher to see that they are always in class,”
Paulin Nkwoseau, Chief of field Office UNICEF in Malakal emphasized the importance of education while highlighting some challenges:
“Education is one of important thing we need to promote in the POC; unfortunately, we have a huge school age population in the POC. We are lacking of space so we are working on it with UNMISS, with the community to see how we can improve. We have some solutions but it’s not enough so we continue to work hard on it,”