Together to ensure boys and girls’ right to quality education
To reduce the dropout rate in the department of Atacora, improve participation in school activities by boys and girls and their families, and promote greater awareness of the importance of the right to education. A project co-funded with Eight Per Thousand funds from the Waldensian Church.
The context
Benin ranks 166th out of 191 countries in the Human Development Index (2021). The expected years of schooling expectation for each child is 5.5 years, thus failing to complete the primary education cycle. Despite various efforts, in general, educational provision is still weak in rural localities, particularly in the Atacora department, where the primary education completion rate was 65.41 percent in 2022, or a rate of 34.59 percent of children under 15 not attending school (2022 data from the Ministry of Education in Benin).
This situation is fostered by a lack of community awareness of children’s rights, low regard for the right to education (despite the fact that Benin’s Constitution makes it mandatory), and inadequate child protection mechanisms.
In these areas where poverty is concentrated, access to school is not guaranteed for children from large, poor families whose priority remains daily survival.
Goals
In order to succeed in combating the high dropout rate while trying to spread awareness of the importance of the right to education to children and their families, the project aims to reduce the dropout rate in the department of Atacora. The goal is to improve participation in school activities by boys and girls and their families and promote greater awareness among the population of the importance of the right to education.
The activities
Provide students with school kits
Distribution of school kits to school children to combat school dropout in beneficiary localities. 300 children from 20 schools will receive a kit consisting of a folder, a set of school supplies (notebooks, blackboard, pens, textbooks as well as a flashlight for evening study).
Ensuring additional income for families
300 families will receive one rooster and three chickens. It is the families themselves who have indicated the chicken farming activity as one that is easy to manage, with few infrastructure costs and a good income margin. To best implement the action, it is planned to involve a trainer with expertise in poultry farming of local species who will conduct specific training.
Fostering the supportive parental role
In each of the 20 schools, an awareness-raising session will be organized on parental participation in the pupil’s own home and school monitoring. Participants in this session will be: at least one parent of the 15 beneficiary pupils per school and 2 members of the Parents Association of Students, as well as the 3 teachers of the 3 classes of the beneficiary pupils. The project facilitator/trainer will remain in contact with both teachers and families.
Raising students’ awareness of the importance of schooling
To make school-age children understand the importance of school, an in-depth session will be organized at the end of each quarter in each of the 20 schools, targeting a total of 50 children per school. During these sessions, the theme of the importance of school for a child/youth will be developed and two educational manuals will be used, which the project team will draft and print, and which will then remain available to the school.
Raising awareness about the right to education
To spread the importance of the right to education, radio programs, given by specialists, will be produced on issues related to children’s rights, disseminating some of the key points of the Children’s Code in the Republic of Benin, deliberated and adopted by the National Assembly on January 23, 2015. Radios are a very important channel of information, as they are able to reach a large part of the population of the four target municipalities. Radio programs will be disseminated in local languages and broadcast on four local community radio stations.