Campaign Status

Ongoing Offline: The campaign is currently ongoing offline and, thus still in the process of collecting funds. 

Summary

The campaign aims to establish a digital e-learning platform that provides educational opportunities to students and children, especially those from marginalized communities in Somalia.

Challenge

Education is a basic human right for all. Children have the right to access quality education. However, Somalia is facing two broad educational challenges: access and quality. Given this, digitization of education and developing a platform where students can access educational content (recorded lessons, textbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks) online from their homes is very crucial because it will not only represent an alternative method of learning at times when schools are closed due to unexpected crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, but also it can support students with additional learning opportunities beyond their daily school routine. More importantly, the platform will also be made available for the most vulnerable children who are internally displaced and have no access to learning facilities, as well as out-of-school children and youth (OOSCY) or other remote educational opportunities.

Among other factors, the major identified challenges hampering the quality of education in Somalia include:

1- Lack of appropriate teaching and learning resources (curricular content).

2- Lack of the culture of reading: Somali is an oral society; it lacks the culture of reading, and there is a significant reading gap among students at different stages of learning.

3- Language barriers for readers. The difficulty of understanding foreign languages.

4- Lack of an enabling environment for reading.

5- Low literacy rate of 37.8%. 

Solution

We are targeting the most disadvantaged groups that have limited access to quality education: children from internally displaced persons (IDP) or poor households, rural children, particularly those from pastoral communities, and children with disabilities or from minority clans.

Girls specifically face critical barriers to achieving equity in education due to social pressures for early marriage and expectations that girls support households. Hence, our target beneficiary groups are:

a) Primary and secondary students, especially those from vulnerable communities.

b) Alternative basic education students.

c) Internally Displaced People (IDPs) and Returnees.

d) Out-of-school children and youth.