A bright future
"Every time I visit an e-learning center, I see children who have never learned the alphabet write curly letters on their screens."
- English
- العربية
In Sudan – the third largest country in Africa – almost seven million children do not go to school. Yet, desperately, these boys and girls need to be afforded opportunities for learning. Without urgent action, the learning crisis in Sudan will become a generational catastrophe.
Formal education opportunities in Sudan are widely unavailable and where they exist, they often exclude the most vulnerable children. With the exacerbating socio-economic situation, recurring conflicts, and prolonged school closures, once children drop out of school, the chances of girls and boys returning to school are low. Girls are especially vulnerable: evidence suggests that the economic crisis is deepening gender inequalities in Sudan, especially among adolescent girls.
Teachers require further training, classrooms need to be constructed, and government spending on education needs to increase. But even in places where traditional education cannot happen, meaningful and impactful education cannot wait. Therefore, we should not wait until schools are built but bring education to those boys and girls who have never seen a classroom from the inside.
Sudan’s e-learning programme offers out-of-school children an innovative education programme. Not regular lesson with books and pens, but an e-learning programme on solar-powered tablets. Local facilitators support the children in their learning. They receive a special training that includes child-friendly teaching and the technical aspects of the games and tablets.
"Every time I visit an e-learning center, I see children who have never learned the alphabet write curly letters on their screens. Like all children, they seem to become familiar with technology at a rate astonishing to adults like me. Many of them have never held a pen before, but they quickly teach each other how to swipe through the game. Though they don’t speak Arabic (yet), their smiles speak a thousand words: we finally learn, and we love it!"
Friends Sarah (left photo) and Amal (right photo) - both 13-year-old - attend e-learning classes during the same morning shift.
