December 2018 Endure Primary School Update
In 2015, Operation Broken Silence launched the Endure Campaign, a fundraising movement focused on sponsoring the Endure Primary School in Yida Refugee Camp, South Sudan. This is an update on how your fundraising and giving is leading to real results at this special school.
Background
People in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan have been living in emergency conditions since June of 2011, when the government of Sudan launched a relentless campaign of terror and death against their communities. The Sudanese government has officially banned all aid and media organizations from the Nuba Mountains in an attempt to cover up it’s war crimes. The deteriorating situation here has become a forgotten conflict for much of the world. Click or tap the map for a visual.
A fragile ceasefire is currently in effect in the Nuba Mountains, but many expect it not to last.
Tens of thousands of children have fled the war and genocide in the Nuba Mountains and are sitting in refugee camps where few educational services exist. Dozens of Nuba teachers have been unable to get back to work due to a lack of financial resources. This education crisis is an enormous long-term issue threatening the future of not only the Nuba people, but also all of Sudan.
Building and supporting classrooms, paying teacher salaries, and ensuring that children have access to a quality education is one of our organization's top priorities. You can watch the Endure Campaign video to see what that actually looks like on the ground:
Endure Primary School Update
Beginning in 2015 with the launch of the Endure Campaign, we began supporting four small classrooms in Yida Refugee Camp. Since then and entirely because of your fundraising and giving, this school now has ten classrooms led by twelve Nuba teachers and a principal. Every week they teach more than 700 students who have fled from the Nuba Mountains. Some of these children have lost their parents or been separated from them due to the Sudanese government's war.
Last update, we brought you information about a bad rainstorm in Yida that severely damaged most of the classrooms at the school. Thankfully no one was hurt, but attendance was temporarily cut by roughly 40% until repairs could be made. That was the bad news. The good news is that operations at the school are already back to normal!
Our Nuba education partner has informed us that all classrooms at the Endure Primary School have been repaired! This includes the new Primary 8 classroom added earlier this year. Here is a small photo slideshow of part of the school. We apologize that the pictures are a lower quality than usual. The camera our education coordinator normally uses was not in Yida when repairs were being wrapped up:
Attendance is already back up to just over 700 students. But your fundraising and giving this year didn't just help repair the school, your efforts also helped to expand things a bit.
A simple fence, which you can see in one of the above photos, has been added around the school property. Tarps are also being added as part of the roofing one classroom at a time, which will help keep maintenance costs down during the rainy season. The school has also added a small sports program that includes a male and female soccer team and a male and female volleyball team. And there is a small student choir that tours around Yida from time to time singing traditional Nuba songs!
The school also now has an unarmed security guard and a cook/cleaner. Both were hired from the local Nuba population in Yida.
The school's situation was desperate then, but today it is much improved. Here is a more recent photo from a few years ago when one of our media teams visited:
There is still much to work be done through the Endure Primary School in the coming months and years. While the school is one of the top performing in the area, textbooks remain a primary need at Endure, and every other school in Yida for that matter. Teachers could use some additional training, and chalkboards in roughly half of the classrooms need to be replaced.
Additionally, a curriculum change that occurred a while back transitioned the primary teaching and learning language to English, which means Arabic will have to be reintroduced back in as a seperate series of classes at some point.
Progress rarely occurs in Sudan overnight; however, becuase of your fundraising and giving the past several years, the Endure Primary School is in a much better place today than it was in 2012 when it was founded. The teachers and students have taken your support seriously and made it what it is today. On behalf of them, our Nuba education partner, and our small staff, thank you for joining us on this journey.
Here are a few ways you can be involved for the remainder of this year and into 2019:
