Uganda's Refugee Education Plan Could Become a Global Template

During the coronavirus lockdown and subsequent school closures, close to 15 million girls and boys, including children living in refugee settlements across this East African nation, were affected. And while pupils in their final years of school, estimated at 1.2 million, returned last month, more than 13 million remain at home, with some still unable to access learning materials. Thanks to Uganda's Education Response Plan for Refugees and Host Communities in Uganda (ERP), facilitated by Education Cannot Wait (ECW), while other refugee children may not be attending school during the lockdown, some in Uganda enrolled in the programme are able to continue learning from home as they were supplied with reading material. In total, ECW allocated U.S.$1 million in emergency funds to its education partners in Uganda. The consortium distributed 38,000 home learning kits and more than 900 solar-powered radios that were given to some of the poorest households to ensure children in refugee hosting communities were able to listen to lessons over the radio. This project, the first of its kind globally, was launched two years ago by the Ugandan government together with local and international humanitarian and development partners."It targets children and youth in 12 refugee-hosting districts in Uganda where more than half a million children are currently out of learning and out of school," according to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency.