OUR WORK

TEMPORARY SCHOOL

Setting up a school in the Tharawan displaced persons camp

This temporary school was set up in 2019 in the Tharawan displaced persons camp in Yemen, 100 km to the north of Sana’a, on the initiative of the Associations Al Baradoni and My Future Yemen. This school, created thanks to donations, is attended by pupils, deprived of their normal schools due to the war. It also provides their families with food aid.

Ever since the start of the school year in the autumn of 2020, the number of children attending school (in tents) has doubled in the Tharawan refugee camp. It was thus necessary to create a second class for the pupils who had passed their 1st year exams and had gone on to their 2nd year, all the while maintaining the 1st year class which welcomes new refugee children. 

My Future and Albardoni currently provide 130 students in the Tharawan camp with access to schooling for the school year of 2020-2021

The situation in Yemen

Today in Yemen, thousands of schools have been shelled and obliged to close, leaving 5 million children without access to education. Some of them have been recruited to fight, while many families have been moved into camps such as Tharawan to the north of Sana’a where children are left to fend for themselves.

This is where the Association’s first temporary school was set up. The project also aims to help children recover from the stressful ordeals they have undergone. The activities proposed aim at reinforcing their ability to survive and to acquire social skills, at developing their adaptability and their capacity to manage their emotions, as well as at keeping them safe.

Kick-off

After a few local issues, a tent was finally put up, and enrolments in the school began: 70 pupils, from 45 families, were written down. To date, some 66 children continue to attend regularly. The decision was made to form two groups of the same level for the first year.

School books and supplies were handed out at the start of the school year, i.e. for each child a backpack, six exercise books, a pencil, an eraser, a ruler, and four books. The teachers kept the coloured pencils to give to children as a reward.

An extra item on the budget was the recruitment of a guard, to watch over the tent at night and make sure it was not looted or damaged.

Additional aid to families

Our aim was to combine education with food aid. The 45 families of the children regularly attending school receive food – flour, oil and sugar – once a month.
The aim is to ensure they continue to send their children to school and to improve their extremely precarious living conditions.