Somalia

Real lives

Community in Somalia uses goats to help finance their dream to educate their children

© UNICEF Somalia/2003

Members of the Bansofe Community Education Committee look on as one of the teachers stands among his goats.

In Somalia, if parents do not take the initiative their children will not get an education.

Only 17 per cent of school-age children attend school in this war-scarred country. Yet, in the small village of Bansofe, its 270 families banded together to make educating their children possible.

A year ago, a UNICEF-trained education supervisor arrived to help mobilize the community. Poverty and political instability notwithstanding, the villagers became excited about the idea of their children going to school. To this end, they formed a Community Education Committee, consisting of five men and two women.

First the community built three simple huts to be used as classrooms. Although the crude rooms could not protect students very well from the sun, rain, wind and dust, the parents hoped they could protect their children from a life of illiteracy, the legacy of civil war.

Community action

The Education Committee realized, however, that a building without a teacher is not a school. With low family incomes, the odds seemed insurmountable that they could afford to pay a teacher.

Determined to see the dream of literacy for their children become a reality, the committee was not about to let the lack of money deter them. They did not have much money.  But they did have capital – livestock.

“They came up with the idea of each child’s parents contributing one goat as fees for the teacher,” says one local leader. “To make the effort sustainable, they chose to give the teacher female goats to multiply his flock.”

The initiative seems to be working. The head teacher, Ali Adan Ali, has a flock of 156 goats. In return, Bansofe has a school filled with pupils in Grades 1 and 2 and an enrolment on the rise.

The Community Education Committee understands that every child has a right to a primary education. So the payment to the head teacher not only takes care of their children but also 27 orphans and 2 children from very poor families who could not afford the goat. The Committee decided that it was the community’s responsibility to support them.

© UNICEF Somalia/2003

An elder of the Bansofe Committee and a teacher hold one of the goats.

Focusing on girls

Currently, there are three teachers in the school and an enrolment of 166 students – 47 of which are girls.  The girls’ enrolment of 28 per cent is less than the 35 per cent average for Somalia. But the Committee vows that girls will make up half the pupils in the near future.

UNICEF supports the school with donations of blackboards, chalk, jump ropes, maps, globes, textbooks and other supplies. It also provides education kits and the Education Management Information System, a standardized school data-collection system that includes school and class registers and student report cards. Perhaps UNICEF’s most important contribution is teacher training.

There are still huge challenges. The school has no furniture. The floor is dusty, the roof is leaky and there are no sanitation facilities. But the core – the community’s will – is in place. With UNICEF and non-governmental organization World Vision, the parents are determined to see to it that the physical environment improves.

Regardless of its flaws, the school is tremendously important to the village.

“We have had so many years of suffering and our children have gone without an education,” says a committee member. “Even if it takes 100 years, we will educate our children.”

And they will – with a dream and a goat.