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Education: a process of self-discovery, a revelation of reality and a first step on the path toward development.

In more than 20 years in East Africa and the Great Lakes Region, AVSI has viewed education as a critical aspect of an approach to each country, each intervention, each person

It is a component of nearly every programme, be it an initiative to help families send their children to school, a campaign to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS, or a project to build a community’s agricultural self-sufficiency

Across sectors, education fosters improved health, economic independence and personal development

Today, in countries that struggle to educate their young people to a backdrop of HIV/AIDS, poverty and conflict, AVSI emphasises a more comprehensive definition of education

Education is more than a transmission of knowledge

It is a process of self-discovery, a revelation of reality and an opportunity for an improved relationship with a child

With this mindset, AVSI staff in the field design teacher trainings, sponsorship programmes and community sensitisations

As a process of discovery and enrichment, education also becomes a path to work and contribution to society, and a driving force for development

This philosophy of education translates into support for traditional school sponsorships, adult literacy courses, sensitisations on HIV/AIDS, agriculture and nutrition courses, and vocational trainings

“Education is an introduction to reality”

Kizito Omala, a teacher in Kampala, Uganda, began facilitating AVSI trainings for teachers and social workers in 2002

These trainings, which use Luigi Giussani’s text The Risk of Education as a guide, are organised around five key themes: education, tradition, authority, personal verification and freedom

In the following conversation with AVSI, Omala explains the theory behind the practice

Question: What is education? Answer: I would give a definition that is not mine but from Joseph Jungmann, a Jesuit theologian, who says that education is an introduction to total reality

Total embraces helping a person become conscious of what he is

That is to say, we have a heart that has an infinite longing for truth, for beauty, for love, for peace, for justice

This is the first step: to help the person become conscious that he is a thirst for truth, a thirst for beauty, and it is an infinite thirst

The second part of this is to help the person link up with the reality of his environment

Q: How does this play out in the real world? A: The objective we underline is to educate children in criticism—this art or skill of being able to compare what has been proposed to them with the original thirst of their heart

The other point we emphasise is to help the children recognise this universal longing for truth—the notion that this longing was present for those who have gone before you and is also present for you

The method is to educate them so they can evaluate themselves and identify what is common in each person’s quest for truth

Q: When you talk of “the risk of education,” what is the risk? A: A teacher must risk—reveal—the whole of his humanity

This means revealing not just the content of the subject, but his humanity, who he is and how he has been provoked by the content of the subject

And the student must risk at the same time, to evaluate these hypotheses and to make them his own

It is a task that must engage people as a dialogue

Q: Is this kind of training relevant in countries where many people are facing very immediate, basic needs such as hunger? A: In the people we’ve trained, I observe that there is a new position in front of life

They are more deeply interested in the reasons for things

For me the greatest gift is this awareness: my consciousness and what I am in front of the world

With this consciousness, you are stronger in front of hunger and war

The starting point for this is education

Learning as a path to work

Conflict, poverty and disease all act as obstacles to education, cutting children off from the classroom for long periods of time

A child who has spent years in rebel captivity or fighting as a soldier often sees little value in returning to traditional forms of education

The case is similar for a child who is kept at home because a sick parent needs care or the family cannot afford school fees

For many of these young people, vocational training is more practical than a return to primary or secondary levels

AVSI helps facilitate training programmes for young people in both rural and urban settings in Uganda

In Kampala, this means helping to make Naguru Remand Home, a centre for offenders under the age of 18, a place that approaches residents as children rather than prisoners

Activities at Naguru are aimed at removing the mantle of punishment from the concept of work

As youth build furniture or weave baskets, social workers from a local nongovernmental organisation, Companionship of Works Association (COWA), build trust and help the youth recognise their inherent strengths

AVSI offers training and financial support to COWA, which stepped in to fill a void at Naguru in the early 1990s

Not far from the remand home COWA also runs a vocational training centre, offering young people a practical trade and a means of shaping their lives beyond Naguru’s walls

Education with a wider reach

For much of sub-Saharan Africa, education for all remains an elusive millennium goal

The U.N Development Programme reports that about 40 percent of the region’s school age children are not enrolled in primary school

While some nations, including Uganda and Rwanda, made significant progress in the 1990s, others, wracked by armed conflict or extreme poverty, slipped back

Where the law assures universal primary education, obstacles are often rooted in HIV/AIDS and armed conflict

These issues, present across Africa, are magnified in places such as eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where the United Nations reports that the rate of admission in the first year of primary school falls below four percent in some districts

Because great challenges remain, AVSI continues to deepen its commitment to education

In East Africa and the Great Lakes Region, AVSI’s Distance Support Programme (DSP) bolsters national efforts to educate the young by sponsoring nearly 6,000 vulnerable children

Through DSP, children receive school fees, uniforms and scholastic materials, and are followed closely by social workers or local organisations

AVSI relies on strong partnerships with community-based groups like Meeting Point, an HIV/AIDS outreach organisation that helps follow the school progress of children in Uganda

It is AVSI’s aim, however, that education initiatives do not just target a privileged few

In an effort to benefit all children, DSP goes beyond traditional sponsorship

The programme supports school rehabilitation projects, health and nutrition sensitisations, and capacity building for local partners

Working with communities, schools, educators and families, AVSI hopes to help children discover their own potential

Lining shelves of literacy

Each step on the road to literacy helps children carve out a more active role for themselves in their community and their world

Literate young people, while better prepared for jobs or further study, also have the ingredients for healthier lifestyles

They gain access to information about protecting from HIV/AIDS, improving nutrition, valuing education and contributing more fully to society

Youth who grow up reading grow with doors opening at every turn

In Rwanda, where adult literacy is around 67 percent, DSP funds allowed AVSI to launch a pilot project to establish libraries in primary schools

Reaching more than 7,500 students in its initial phase, the project provided each school with a bookshelf lined with 160 titles

Today, the librarian at L’école de Jean de Pape in Rwanda’s Gitarama District holds keys to a small, one-room library

The shelves are lined with gently worn books in French, Kinyarwanda and English

They include titles that are nearly impossible to find elsewhere—folktales, oral histories and song collections about creating a national identity as Rwandans

The library is open to the entire community, and the librarian says that on some days more adults than students come to check out books

But the children, she says, they love it most of all

Education as the first emergency  

In the Acholi region of northern Uganda, the education of thousands of children has been interrupted by a long-running conflict between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)

The LRA, an insurgency movement that took shape in the late 1980s, has built its army by abducting thousands of children over the past 18 years and forcing them to fight as soldiers

These children often remain captive for several months or years, and an uncounted number have died in the war

For those fortunate enough to escape, returning home is coloured by uncertainties

They find themselves far behind classmates and unable to concentrate on school activities

Since the 1980s, AVSI has worked to improve access and quality of education by targeting vulnerable children, particularly those orphaned by war and HIV/AIDS, and former child soldiers

Through projects funded by USAID and the European Union, AVSI uses its background in psychosocial support to build education initiatives, vocational and skills training, and income-generating activities for former child soldiers

This work touches the five key considerations in creating quality education: what learners contribute, environment, content, process and outcome

A critical aspect of AVSI’s interventions in this field is to build the capacity of educators, social workers, and religious and traditional leaders through training programmes in psychosocial skills, classroom management, HIV/AIDS awareness, landmine awareness, peace education and the rights of children

Protracted violence in the Acholi region has caused many schools to close or seek out new, temporary locations

As families abandon villages and rebels set fire to civilian homes and displaced camps, education has been an often-overlooked casualty

The government has established “learning centres” in an effort to provide stability and continuity for students

Despite committed efforts to help children in school, attendance rates at the centres tend to be extremely low

Acholi leaders worry that the long-term impact will be a generation of children denied an education as a result of war

To help maintain a viable learning environment, AVSI has provided emergency sanitation supplies, basic teaching materials and blankets for children sleeping out in the open

AVSI continues to work closely with the Kitgum District Education Office and Community Development Office to offer psychosocial support, teacher training, remedial and vocational education, and school-based peace clubs

All of these interventions are part of an effort to build resilience in children and communities

Restoring schools and opening doors

In January 2002, in the North Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a series of volcanic eruptions shook the city of Goma

Over the next 48 hours, as Mount Nyiragongo stirred, thousands were left homeless as lava flooded the city

While responding to emergency needs around Goma, AVSI looked for a way to strengthen education for the region’s children

The first such initiative was at College Mwanga, one of Goma’s most important academic institutions and then home to 1,300 secondary students

College Mwanga, located in the path of the lava flow, was completely destroyed in Nyiragongo’s eruption

In a population beleaguered by poverty and long years of civil war, Goma’s young people risked turning to a life on the streets or joining one of countless armed militias

To allow Mwanga’s students to complete their school year, AVSI set up large tents to serve as temporary classrooms

Students received tuition assistance and books were purchased in anticipation of the school’s new library

By late February, College Mwanga became the city’s first school to reopen its doors