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New toolkit on health literacy to support girls’ retention in education

UNESCO Nairobi has recently published a set of tools on Health Literacy and Behavior Change Practices among Adolescent Girls.

The kit includes a teacher’s guide, fact booklets, stories and drama scripts for students, and a sample radio drama script.

There is also a booklet of artwork from students involved in piloting the materials. Here is one student’s drawing, illustrating various forms of gender-based violence that an affect girls’ education.

Student's artwork depicting gender-based violence

The health literacy materials were developed by two of EENET’s consultants, Dr Anise Waljee and Dilu Kassam. The kit was created initially for use in informal settlements in Kenya, but is much more widely applicable.

Girls around the world often face significant risks to their education because of school-based violence, early pregnancy, sexual and reproductive health concerns, and harmful practices like female genital mutilation. This toolkit provides teachers with valuable advice and activities to help them support girls to stay healthy, safe and in school. The materials are designed for use with both boys and girls.

New thematic pages on INEE website

INEE – Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies – is making improvements to its website. A set of thematic pages has been developed. These pages contain introductory information and recommended reading materials for each theme.

Screenshot from INEE thematic pages showing list of themes

The following themes are available so far:

  • Accelerated education
  • Adolescents and youth
  • Advocacy
  • Conflict sensitive education
  • Disaster risk reduction
  • Early childhood development
  • Education and fragility
  • Education financing
  • Education for peacebuilding
  • Forced displacement
  • Gender
  • Humanitarian standards
  • Inclusive education
  • Peace education
  • Preventing violent extremism
  • Protecting education from attack
  • Psychosocial support & social and emotional learning
  • Refugee education
  • Right to education
  • SDGs and education
  • Teachers

 

 

 

**PAST** Call for DPO Participants, UK Global Disability Summit, London, 24 July 2018

Visit the International Disability Alliance website for more details

The UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Government of Kenya and the International Disability Alliance (IDA) will co-host the UK’s first Global Disability Summit in July 2018.  This is an opportunity to build on the current momentum on disability-inclusive development. It provides a platform to secure financial and political commitments by national governments, bilateral and multilateral donors, the private sector and civil society organisations.

As co-host of the Summit, IDA is facilitating and co-ordinating the engagement of disabled persons’ organisations (DPOs) to ensure their active and meaningful engagement in the Summit. 

To find out how to nominate a person with disability or their family members to attend the Summit, and to access nomination forms, visit IDA’s website.

Deadline for nominations: 23 March 2018

NOTE: This event is not organised by EENET. Please contact the organisers directly with any queries.

263 million still out of school

The latest data from UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) shows that one-in-five children and young people are out of school around the world – that’s 263 million. The figures range from 63 million being out of school at primary age, 61 million at lower-secondary age, and a shocking 139 million at upper-secondary age. The situation is worst in sub-Saharan Africa, where one-in-three children and young people of school age are not in school. And, not surprisingly, girls are more likely than boys to be out of school. UIS’s data also shows millions of children and young people not achieving basic learning outcomes even when they are in school.

The data suggests that progress has stalled, as the figures have barely changed in the last five years. This picture offers us a clear reminder of why we need to keep working hard to make education more inclusive for all, so that every child and young person is able to access education, participate fully in the learning process, and achieve to the best of their abilities.

The data certainly motivates EENET to continue helping stakeholders exchange experiences and ideas for improving education, collaborate and work together to strengthen education initiatives, and more effectively influence the policy makers and budget holders who need to be taking bolder steps to reform education systems worldwide. Find out how you could help EENET exchange, collaborate and influence for more inclusive education systems globally.

Enabling Education Review 6: Street-connected young people and inclusive education

The latest edition of Enabling Education Review is now available in pdf and html formats.

EER6 is a special issue on street-connected young people and inclusive education. This edition showcases some of the many different ways that organisations support young people living and working on the streets to access education. A number of the programmes included can be adapted to learners in other contexts.

Cover page of Enabling Education Review 6

EER 6 features articles from the following countries:

  • Ethiopia
  • Haiti
  • India
  • Kenya
  • Panama
  • Peru
  • Philippines
  • Uganda

This edition of EER has not been printed in hard copy yet. If you or your organisation could help to fund the printing costs, please visit our Donations page, or contact us to discuss.

 

IASC online survey on inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian action

The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Task Team on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action has launched a global survey to seek opinions on how to improve the inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian action. They want to hear from a wide range of stakeholders including field-based organisations and DPOs, to ensure that these perspectives are considered in the development of the IASC Guidelines.

This may provide our readers with an opportunity to share some suggestions regarding ensuring the inclusion of persons with disabilities in education within humanitarian action.

The online survey is open until 10 March 2018.

Getting Care Right for All Children: Online Course

Online training course on Implementing the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children.

Visit the course website for more details.

Taking the UN Guidelines as a framework, this free online course will help you gain insight into how the unnecessary placement of a child in alternative care can be prevented; how alternative care can constitute a suitable, positive experience for a child when it is necessary; and how children and young people who are leaving care can best be supported. Learn with alternative care specialists from CELCIS, UNICEF and the UN.

  • Week 1 – Introduction to the Guidelines, the Principles, and Gatekeeping
  • Week 2 – Upholding the ‘necessity principle’: Supporting and Strengthening Families
  • Week 3 – Upholding the ‘necessity principle’: High-Risk Children and Gatekeeping
  • Week 4 – Upholding the ‘suitability principle’: Selecting from a Range of Formal Care Settings
  • Week 5 – Upholding the ‘suitability principle’: Deinstitutionalisation
  • Week 6 – Leaving Care

NOTE: This event is not organised by EENET. Please contact the organisers directly with any queries.

 

**Deadline expired** Team Manager, Early Childhood Programme, OSF

Full details available from OSF website.

Application deadline: 30 March 2018

Open Society Foundations Early Childhood Programme is recruiting a Team Manager to join its team of experienced early childhood and international development professionals. The position will be based in either Washington, DC, New York City or London and is intended for a senior professional who is committed to promoting the rights of young children and their families. 

NOTE: This is not an EENET vacancy. Please communicate all queries directly to OSF.

 

**Deadline expired** Inclusive Education Project Team Leader, Plan International, Ethiopia & Somalia

Full details available from Plan International’s website.

Application deadline: 4 March 2018

Plan International is looking to recruit a Team Leader to lead a multi country (Ethiopia and Somalia)  European Commission funded education project, the position will be based in Ethiopia with regular travel to Somalia. The Team Leader will work closely with the Ministry of Education and other key internal and external stakeholders. The project aims to contribute to community and institutional resilience in Gambella and Puntland by improving access to and quality of inclusive education in a safe and secure environment.

NOTE: This is not an EENET vacancy, please contact Plan International directly with any queries.

 

2018 EER call for articles from young writers

We had such a busy year last year that the scheduled anniversary edition of Enabling Education Review has been slightly delayed. If you have not had a chance to submit your articles you still have time!

Call for Articles for Enabling Education Review Issue 7, 2018

The theme of the 2018 edition of Enabling Education Review will be:

“Young People’s Views of Inclusive Education”

The new deadline for submitting first drafts of articles is 31 March 2018. Details of suggested topics are provided below.

Contact info@eenet.org.uk with any questions.
__________________________________________________

We are looking for both written submissions and drawings from children and young people under the age of 25 years.

A written submission could be in the style of an article or news report. We also welcome poems, songs, short fictional stories or even posters.

We would also like to receive lots of different drawings, including cartoon strips that tell a story, and maps showing the inclusive or non-inclusive parts of a school.

Written pieces should be a maximum of 500 words, but of course can be shorter than this. Photos and/or drawings can be sent to accompany the written piece.

If you are a teacher, parent, youth worker or other person working with children and young people in education, you may need to provide them with some encouragement and support to write or draw a submission for EENET. However, it is important that you give the children and young people freedom to express their opinions.

We would like to know about children and young people’s experiences of inclusive education and/or their ideas about making education more inclusive. This is a very broad subject.

The following are some ideas for topics:

They could write about themselves, e.g.:

• What makes you feel happy, safe or welcome in school?
• Who is your favourite adult at school? Why?
• When did you do something at school that made you proud of yourself?
• When do you feel left out of things at school?
• What are your dreams and hopes for the future? How does education fit into these?

They could write about their experiences of school or another educational experience, e.g.:

• Describe a good teacher.
• What makes your school inclusive or accessible?
• Are there issues related to food, water, sanitation, or getting to and from school?
• Who helps you and who helps your teachers?
• Who are your friends at school? Why are they your friends?
• What is difficult about going to school? Why?
• What is fun about going to school? Why?
• Do you have a school council in your school? What do they do?
• Do you get consulted about what happens in your school?
• Describe something that happened in school that made you laugh.

They could write about inclusive education, e.g.:

• Begin or end your article with “For me, inclusion means…”
• Have you been involved in any campaigns to help children who are not in school to get into education?
• Are sports or arts important to including people in school? Why?
• What stops you from going to school?
• Do you get to talk about how inclusive your school is? If so, explain.

They could write about their education experiences outside of school:

• Do you learn outside of school? If so, explain.
• What makes you really annoyed, frustrated or sad about education/school?
• Who are your heroes/heroines? Why?

Or they could write about another personal experience of education.

If children and young people choose to write fictional stories (something made up, for instance describing their ideal school or a perfect lesson), please write a note on the submission to tell us that it is fictional.

Written pieces can be submitted electronically as a Word document, or as plain text in an email message. Our email is info@eenet.org.uk. We also accept submissions via private message through our Facebook page.

Handwritten documents can be submitted. You can send original handwritten documents to us via post, or they can be scanned/photographed and emailed to us.

We are also happy to accept audio or video recordings, if the young authors want to read aloud what they have written and record it on a camera or phone. You can email us the audio/video file if it is small enough, or use a file-sharing site. Contact us if you need advice about sending us an audio or video file. Please ensure that the child and his/her parents/carers are aware that we may want to share the audio or video file on our website. If they agree, they should give you written permission for this.

Please ensure you include the name, age, grade, school and contact details for every child or young person who submits something.